by Ian Robson | Dec 19, 2019 | Customer Success |
Almost every discussion of segmenting customers for customer success includes the ‘position’ of the author. “ARR is absolutely the wrong way to do it.” “To be truly customer centric we must segment by need.” “Industry vertical expertise is a must have.” Every one of...
by Ian Robson | Dec 10, 2019 | Customer Success |
I’ve seen this a bit recently. This idea that there are good and bad customers. That there are customers we should divorce because that would be better for everybody. Let’s unpack this idea a little. We live in the real world so companies are going to sell to...
by Ian Robson | May 23, 2019 | Hiring |
Can You Do The Fandango? Hiring Great CSMs A while back I read a bunch of job ads as part of some research for an article I was writing. Below are just some of the requirements I’m sure I recall seeing mixed in with the more typical requirements: Astronaut Tour de...
by Ian Robson | May 16, 2019 | Organisation |
People who have heard of Nassim Nicholas Taleb usually know of him as the guy who popularised the use of the term “Black Swan” to describe hard to predict, extremely high impact events that lie outside the realm of normal expectation. Initially his focus was the...
by Ian Robson | Apr 29, 2019 | Outcomes |
Things move on. For a while measuring success was all about page views or user counts. Your bragging rights, and more importantly investor interest, was all about getting people onto your platform to do something, anything. In 2012 Marc Andreessen called for an end to...
by Ian Robson | Mar 5, 2019 | Foundations, Hiring |
It’s Time To Move Past Adoption. Customer Success Management is a fast developing profession that’s critical for any B2B SaaS company. As an emerging profession it can avoid the deep level of scrutiny that’s common in for example in Sales, or Marketing. We...
by Ian Robson | Feb 21, 2019 | Foundations |
Automation has a long and extraordinary history. You could argue it started with the wheel, the first piece of technology to dramatically improve human efficiency. The revolution it started continues at an ever accelerating pace so that today, for example, we can use...
by Ian Robson | Feb 14, 2019 | Foundations |
Scaling any function is a challenge. As a team grows we need to find and hire great people, decide how to re-organise and re-focus as we grow, adjust to the challenges of managing ever larger numbers of people, and adapt our plans when things don’t turn out as we...
by Ian Robson | Feb 7, 2019 | Foundations |
The fundamental scaling challenge facing a customer success function is relatively simple to state. “How do we provide the most effective guidance and support to all of the appropriate stakeholders across our customer base using the most cost efficient engagement...
by Ian Robson | Dec 5, 2018 | Foundations, Hiring |
As was pointed out when I asked for input to this article on LinkedIn, the environment a CSM operates within is as important to their success as the skills, experience and characteristics they themselves bring to the role. So, before you can answer questions about the...
