Divya Apte Up Close!

By: Divya Apte

I often get asked how, as VP of Customer Success in a B2B SaaS company, I plan to build and scale the customer success organization to help the company go from $xM to $yM ARR in Z years while making sure every customer has a seamless experience and stays engaged.

For me, the solution lies in constructing a well-oiled machine: each part must work well and fit together smoothly. With a clear strategy and the right team, this goal can be achieved!

Keep in mind that the company’s overall goal (North Star metric) should be aligned with the goals of each of the customers. For example, let’s say the company’s north star metric is to increase customer retention and the customer’s goal is to expand operations in Europe. Then the customer success team has to put plans, metrics and strategies in place to ensure that the customer goals are met. If the customer goals are met, then chances are the customer will be satisfied and will renew which will lead to an increase in customer retention numbers for your company.

Here’s an overview of my plan to build a robust customer success organization to drive this growth.

1. Establishing the Foundation

Before diving into hiring and building the team, it’s crucial to set the foundation. This involves defining the customer success strategy and goals, developing playbooks, implementing necessary tools and metrics, setting up cross-departmental collaboration and training, and segmenting the customer base.

Customer Success Strategy and Goals: Essential for aligning the team and setting clear expectations.

• Define Objectives: Clearly outline the goals for the customer success team, such as reducing churn, increasing customer satisfaction, and driving product adoption.
• KPIs: Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer health scores, churn rates, and renewal rates.
• Execution: Develop a detailed strategy document outlining these objectives and KPIs. Review and align this strategy with the executive team (OKRs) to ensure company-wide support.

Playbooks: Provides a consistent approach to managing customer interactions.

• Activation and Usage: Outline the steps for onboarding customers, including initial setup, product training, and early success milestones. Include templates for welcome emails, training schedules, and follow-up checklists.
• Escalations: Define the process for handling customer issues, including escalation paths, communication protocols, and resolution timelines. Develop templates for common issues and responses.
• Account Expansion: Create strategies for identifying upsell and cross-sell opportunities, including customer segmentation, tailored communication plans, and tracking metrics for potential growth.

These playbooks should be regularly updated based on feedback and outcomes to ensure they reflect best practices.

Tools and Systems: As a company, we should invest in tools that enable our team to track and manage customer success well. In my opinion, these are the most important tools that we should start with:

• CRM: Ensure the CRM system (ex:  Salesforce) is fully integrated with other customer success tools. Set up automated workflows for tracking customer interactions and health.
• Support Ticketing System: Implement a system like Zendesk for managing support requests. Train the team on using the system efficiently and develop a knowledge base for common issues.
• Customer Success Platform: Choose a platform like Gainsight or PlanHat for health scoring and customer journey mapping. Configure the platform to track key metrics and automate customer success processes.

These tools, as mentioned, should be integrated, and the customer success team has to have comprehensive training on how to get the most from the tools. AI and automation features within these applications should be leveraged to handle repetitive tasks, freeing up the team to focus on higher-value activities.

Metrics: Regular reviews of metrics will help identify trends and areas for improvement. Depending on your goals and objectives, the metrics you want to track will vary. However, these are a few that I’ve always tracked:

• Customer Health Score: Establish criteria for scoring customer health, including product usage, feedback (NPS), and engagement levels. Use a customer success platform to automate tracking and reporting. FYI – here is a Custom GPT that I’ve created to analyze customer health scores based on synthetic data metrics.
• Net Retention Rate: Monitor renewal rates and expansion revenue. Develop a dashboard to visualize these metrics and identify trends.
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Implement regular surveys to gauge customer satisfaction. Use the feedback to identify areas for improvement and track changes over time.

Cross-Departmental Collaboration: Setting up a framework for collaboration with other departments like sales, product, engineering, finance, professional services and marketing is crucial.

• Regular Meetings: Set up weekly or bi-weekly meetings with key departments to discuss customer feedback, share insights, and align strategies.
• Communication Channels: Use tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams to create dedicated channels for cross-departmental communication. Ensure all relevant stakeholders have access and encourage regular updates and collaboration.
• Feedback Loops: Develop a formal process for gathering and sharing customer feedback with other departments. Schedule regular reviews to discuss findings and action plans.

Customer Segmentation and Profiles: As a company, we have to decide how to segment our customers based on criteria such as size, industry, usage patterns, and growth potential. Developing detailed profiles for each segment, including their pain points, desired outcomes, and success metrics, will help tailor our customer success efforts to different customer needs (low touch vs. high touch vs. hybrid engagement). Here’s a link to my blog article for the company ZapScale that talks about Customer Journey Mapping.

Regular Training and Development: Frequent training of internal teams as well as customers ensures that everyone is aware of the latest products, features and processes to make informed decisions. Ultimately, how well versed the customer success team is with the products and services will determine how much revenue they can bring from the existing customer base.

• Training Schedule: Develop a quarterly training schedule that includes sessions on product updates, customer success strategies, and soft skills like communication and problem-solving.
• Workshops and Seminars: Organize workshops and seminars led by internal and external experts. Focus on current trends and best practices in customer success.
• Continuous Learning: Encourage team members to pursue online courses and certifications related to customer success. Provide access to learning resources and reimbursements for completed courses.

2. Building the Team

With the foundation in place, the next step is to build the team. The initial focus should be on hiring for key roles that will drive our customer success strategy, keeping in mind that the headcount will be adjusted based on our number of customers and available budget. Each role can scale up as the ARR grows.

Note: I typically create an onboarding program for new hires that includes training on the company’s products, customer success tools, and internal processes. I also provide new hires with a mentor to guide them through their first few months.

Customer Success Managers (CSMs): First, I’ll start by hiring a few CSMs. CSMs will manage customer relationships post-onboarding, drive product adoption, and ensure customer satisfaction and retention. I’ll look for candidates with experience in customer success, account management, or a related field. They should have a proven track record of managing customer relationships and driving product adoption. Key skills include data analysis, interpreting customer metrics, excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Onboarding Specialists: Second, I’ll hire Onboarding Specialists who will guide new customers through the initial setup, provide training sessions, and ensure they are comfortable using the product. They should have familiarity with SaaS products and onboarding processes and must be skilled in training, communication, and product knowledge.

Implementation & Integration Specialists: Third, depending on the complexity of the product, I might want to hire a couple of specialists to handle the technical implementation and integration of our product with customer systems. Since this is a highly specialized role, I’ll look for candidates with technical expertise, project management, and integration experience. If the product isn’t very technical, then this role can be merged with the Onboarding Specialist role above.

Technical Support Specialists: Fourth, we’ll need a small team of Technical Support Specialists to provide technical support and troubleshoot customer issues. Key skills include technical problem-solving, communication, and customer service.

Customer Success Operations: Finally, I’ll hire operations specialists to support the team with data analysis, process optimization, and tool management. This role is often overlooked in companies but is one of the most important roles. Decision-making through data can’t be strategic if you don’t have experts who can provide insights from all the data you are collecting from the customer base. I’ll look for candidates with strong data analysis and process improvement skills.

The Technical Writer role is another role that is very important as the company builds its knowledge base for both internal and external customers. Updating training materials regularly and providing ongoing education on product updates and customer success strategies is necessary. Since this role typically collaborates with other departments as well, I will not go into detail in this blog.

3. Scaling Strategy

With processes and the team in place, our scaling strategy can now be divided into three phases to manage growth effectively and ensure our team can handle increasing demands. Each phase will address specific needs and challenges as we progress towards our ARR goal.

Initial Phase (0-6 months): I’ll focus on hiring core team members (CSMs, Onboarding Specialists, Implementation & Integration Specialists, and Technical Support). Developing playbooks and implementing key metrics will be my priority.

Growth Phase (6-18 months): I’ll expand the team based on customer growth and demand. Increasing headcount for CSMs, Onboarding Specialists, and Implementation & Integration Specialists as needed. Optimizing processes and improving tool usage will also be key as well as developing low touch, high touch and hybrid processes.

Mature Phase (18-24 months): I’ll refine the organizational structure, build collaboration across departments, and continue scaling based on ARR growth. Focusing on improving customer retention and satisfaction will help us achieve the $50M ARR goal in two years.

So that’s my plan! By prioritizing these foundational elements and focusing on hiring the right team members, I am well-equipped to build a customer success organization that supports a company’s growth objectives. By getting my team the resources it needs to drive product adoption, customer engagement and customer satisfaction, I will see positive effects on my company’s ARR growth. And as the company experiences ARR growth, these strategies will be evaluated and tweaked as necessary to sustain the growth.

(p.s). Here is a Custom GPT that I put together that will allow you to visualize your success plan as well as your organizational chart based on your inputs.