Customer Success vs Customer Support: What‘s the Difference and Why It Matters
Customer success and customer support – you‘ve probably heard both terms tossed around, sometimes interchangeably. But while these two functions are undoubtedly linked, they actually refer to distinct roles within a company. Understanding the difference is crucial for delivering an exceptional customer experience that drives retention and growth.
In this in-depth guide, we‘ll clarify how customer success and customer support differ, share best practices for implementing them in your organization, and explore the future of customer success. Let‘s dive in!
Customer Success vs. Customer Support: What Sets Them Apart
While both customer success and customer support teams work to serve the customer, they diverge in their core focus:
Customer support is reactive and transactional. Support reps respond to incoming customer issues and questions, aiming to troubleshoot and resolve problems. Each support interaction has a clear beginning and end.
Customer success is proactive and relationship-focused. Success managers work closely with the customer on an ongoing basis to help them derive more value from the product and achieve their goals. There‘s no defined end-point to a success engagement.
Another key difference lies in the metrics used to measure each function:
- Support metrics zero in on the quality and efficiency of the support interaction itself. Common ones include response time, resolution time, Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Net Promoter Score (NPS).
- In contrast, success metrics focus on long-term outcomes for the customer and the business. Think retention rate, repeat purchase rate, revenue expansion, and customer lifetime value.
Implementing Customer Success: A Step-by-Step Guide
Now that we‘ve clarified how customer success and support differ, let‘s explore some best practices for building out your customer success function. Implementing success the right way is vital, as a poorly structured program can do more harm than good.
1. Define your Customer Success Manager role in detail
"Customer Success Manager" is a broad title, and CSM responsibilities can vary wildly across organizations. To set your success team up to, well, succeed, you need to specify exactly what the role entails.
Consider what specific activities your CSMs will own, such as:
- Onboarding new customers
- Conducting regular check-in calls or "Quarterly Business Reviews"
- Monitoring customer health and proactively reaching out
- Delivering strategic recommendations and best practices
- Expanding product usage and combating churn risks
Document each activity and approximately how much time it will take. This brings us to our next point:
2. Build a capacity model based on CSM workload
Many organizations take a top-down approach to growing their success team, assigning CSMs an arbitrary number of accounts and increasing that number as they scale. But this is backwards.
Instead, take a bottom-up approach, using the activities you defined in step one. Let‘s say a Quarterly Business Review takes a CSM three hours between prep, presentation, and follow-up. If they‘re responsible for delivering QBRs to 20 accounts, that‘s already 60 hours per quarter!
Do this for each core activity to calculate your CSMs‘ overall workload. Then use that to determine the ideal CSM:customer ratio and model your headcount needs as you grow.
3. Measure value delivery and return on investment
To prove the value of your success team and unlock further investments, you need to demonstrate a clear ROI. Start by identifying the metrics that matter most to your executive team, whether it‘s revenue retention, upsell/cross-sell, or customer loyalty.
Then, build a system to track those metrics and tie them back to specific CSM activities. For example, if an at-risk customer decides to renew after an intervention from their CSM, attribute that retained revenue to the success team.
Equipped with this data, you can calculate the ROI of your success program and make a strong case for its business impact. An advanced technique is to A/B test – compare retention and growth rates between customers who receive success support and a control group that doesn‘t. The delta is your program‘s ROI.
The Future of Customer Success
The field of customer success has grown exponentially over the past decade, but it‘s still relatively nascent compared to customer support. As more and more companies wise up to the value of proactive success management, the role of CSMs will only expand.
We‘re already seeing a shift from CSMs as product experts and reactive problem-solvers to strategic advisors and business consultants. Top CSMs today don‘t just help customers use the product better – they help them achieve their overarching business goals and KPIs.
Looking ahead, we expect customer success to become a standard role at nearly every B2B company, much like sales and support are today. CSMs will be armed with predictive analytics to proactively combat churn risks and AI-powered insights to deliver hyper-personalized guidance at scale.
Forward-thinking companies will increasingly loop success into the full customer journey, involving CSMs in the pre-sales process to set expectations and allowing them to trigger well-timed upsell offers. We also anticipate a rise in tools purpose-built for success teams to manage customer health, track engagements, and measure outcomes.
Success Stories: 3 Companies Delivering Customer Success With Impact
Want to see customer success in action? Let‘s take a look at how three leading companies approach it:
Salesforce
Salesforce is renowned for its customer success prowess. Their secret? An obsessive focus on understanding the customer‘s desired outcomes and aligning success plans accordingly. Salesforce‘s CSMs are trained in their customers‘ industries to serve as strategic advisors and tailor recommendations to each client‘s unique needs.
HubSpot
HubSpot takes a data-driven approach to customer success. They‘ve developed a proprietary "Customer Happiness Index" that factors in product usage, support interactions, NPS, and more to predict a customer‘s risk of churning. CSMs proactively engage at-risk customers with a plan to get them back on track towards their goals.
Gainsight
No discussion of customer success is complete without mentioning Gainsight, one of the pioneers of the customer success movement. Their CSMs take a "lifecycle" approach, delivering unique engagements tailored to the customer‘s maturity stage, from onboarding through advocacy. Gainsight also treats success as a company-wide mission, not just the responsibility of CSMs.
Strategies to Take Your Customer Success to the Next Level
We asked a few customer success leaders to share their top tips for excelling at customer success. Here‘s what they had to say:
- "Invest in your CSMs‘ skill development, especially soft skills like communication, empathy, and business acumen. The best CSMs are trusted advisors, not just product experts." – Sarah Johnson, VP of Customer Success
- "Integrate customer success into your product roadmap. Mine CSM conversations for feature requests and improvement ideas, and close the loop with customers when you deliver." – Raj Patel, Chief Customer Officer
- "Evolve your success engagement model as your company and product mature. What worked for a scrappy startup likely won‘t cut it at scale. Continually reassess and innovate your approach." – Emily Thompson, Director of Customer Success Operations
Closing Thoughts
We‘ve covered a lot of ground in this guide, clarifying the difference between customer success and customer support, sharing a roadmap to implement success, and exploring the bright future of this burgeoning field.
The key takeaway? Customer success is about so much more than helping customers use your product. It‘s about building lasting partnerships, orchestrating value delivery, and aligning your product to your customers‘ goals. When done right, success is a win-win – customers achieve better outcomes and stay loyal, while your company benefits from negative revenue churn.
No matter your company stage or industry, it‘s never too late to invest in customer success. Craft a clear vision, build a framework to measure outcomes, and continually iterate your playbook. We hope this guide has left you educated and inspired to elevate your own customer success program. Here‘s to your success!
