The reason people find customer success so confusing is that we refuse to use the words “account management” and “customer success” in the same sentence.
Account management is fundamental to customer success, minus the responsibility for an expansion bookings number. It includes:
Relationship development
Utilization expansion
Proving value prop
Driving adoption
And… impacting commercial ($) retention and expansion.
So many companies are building duplicative roles, overlapping with support, services, and sales because we simply won’t acknowledge that customer success is an evolution of account management.
I hope this community knows that I believe in customer success with all of my being. It’s the answer for a customer-centric SaaS company, but it must make a material, unique impact on business outcomes or we risk causing confusion.
❤️
