SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2021

If a sales rep closed a deal, A customer success manager should take it over. An open question around smaller customers is how do you staff up Customer Success for them — if at all. Many founders wrestle with the question of if they can really afford customer success professionals for their smaller customers.

Customer Success 353

Customer Success Scale SMB Sales 353

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 9, 2022

A decade ago, Gainsight championed the creation of the customer success category. People curious and passionate about customer success convened at the Pulse conference to debate customer success. Ten years hence, customer success continues to evolve.

Customer Success 336

Customer Success Outsourced Development Technical Support Startup 336

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2024

So G2 put out a survey and report on customer success recently that was an eye-opener: 67% of CS execs report having a sales quota 53% of CS execs now view their job as primarily a sales role Now some of this may be semantics. Just a few bits of advice here: Focus as much on New Net Customer Growth and Logo Retention / GRR as NRR.

Customer Success 324

Customer Success Sales Trends Retention 324

SaaStr

AUGUST 5, 2024

How do you leverage your customer success team to drive revenue growth? Hook’s Head of Customer, Natasha Evans, took the stage at SaaStr Europa to discuss the three things leaders should focus on to fuel revenue growth. Historically, customer success teams have been pretty data-poor.

Scale 284

Scale Customer Success Scaling Revenue 284

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2020

119% net revenue retention. Asana, 130% net revenue retention. Fastly, 130% net revenue retention. PagerDuty, 139% net revenue retention. Zoom, 140% net revenue retention. Slack, 143% net revenue retention. 146% net revenue retention at IPO. Twilio, 155% net revenue retention. As It IPOs.

Retention 349

Retention SMB SaaS Enterprise 349

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2020

The good news today, is there are tons of customer success veterans out there. Even just a few years ago, there weren’t enough folks when enough experience to be your first “head of customer success.” You’ll learn if they focus most on account growth vs. retention vs NPS growth, and in what order.

Customer Success 325

Customer Success Sales Hiring Leadership Interviewing 325

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2025

Workato’s SVP of Embedded Sales and Director of Solutions Marketing joined us at SaaStr Annual to talk about how to nurture customers — a great topic in general, but especially for embedded sales and APIs that can take a while to scale. Customer Success. The Second Most Important SaaS Hire? But the results?

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Churn 246

SaaStr

OCTOBER 18, 2024

On going multi-product Henry adds, “I think the foundational point is if you want high net retention, you get high net retention in two ways. Either a high net renewal rate or a high upsell into the customer base. Even if your net retention is a hundred, itt’s much more difficult to sell $40 million of net new logos.

Sales Recruiting 305

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AI 305

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

Let’s review everything your customer success team has to do in the absence of any customer success tools. Collect customer data to calculate complex formulas for tracking metrics, monitor customer health scores, and resolve support tickets while continuously trying to improve retention and expansion.

Customer Success 105

Customer Success Enterprise Software Review Startup 105

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2025

Having said that, if you have a steady stream of leads and customers, you really can’t hire a great VP of Demand Gen / Growth too early. Customer Success and Support : You can hire 1-2 individual contributors to handle onboarding and support, but its still very hands-on. More on that here. AI can’t do it all.

Sales Hiring 241

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Scale 241

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

Is it the end of an era for customer success in SaaS? We just wrote up how some of the biggest changes of SaaS are now coming, specifically in Customer Success and Sales. We still want to drive retention and growth and make money. With the number of layoffs, customer success was the highest.

Sales Hiring 320

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 320

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Ah, who should Customer Success report to? So usually, she can easily also manage Customer Success as well as all her reps. And Sales and Customer Success are of course connected. If you ask your VP of Sales to own the year-end ARR number, doesn’t it make sense to have them also own retention?

Customer Success 284

Customer Success Scale Churn Finance 284

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

The landscape of customer success has been evolving rapidly. So much so that we seem to be releasing new content on customer success just about every week. Today we’re focusing on actionable insights you can use to drive down churn with customer success in today’s new era of SaaS efficiency.

Customer Success 299

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Headcount 299

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2025

Naturally, their first customer was DoorDash and the quickly captured 95% of the gig economy market in their early days. When Lindsey joined, she inherited an already built-out self-serve/PLG model for small businesses and a mid-market and enterprise sales, customer success, and post-sales team.

Revenue 293

Revenue Scale Sales Hiring Compensation 293

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2024

But with everyone discussing PLG, there just isn’t enough discussion in B2B of Product-Led Retention. and so deeply embedded in the fabric of our customers’ businesses that they’d never churn. But our B2C friends obsess about Product-Led Retention. And then sort of throw Customer Success at it.

Retention 317

Retention B2C B2B Churn 317

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

The definition of success will vary from business to business, from customer to customer. That said, customer success is evolving, and the importance of customer success continues to grow. Embed customer success into the core of your business. Offer enhanced value.

Customer Success 274

Customer Success Retention Company Culture Metrics 274

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2020

Q: What is more important, getting new customers or customer retention? It’s a trick question, of course — the crazy high net negative churn of top SaaS companies means that of course retention matters more than new customers. 73% of Salesforce’s new bookings coming from its existing customers, for example.

Retention 313

Retention Scaling Churn Engineering 313

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2022

Especially after interviewing 50+ customer success managers over the past few years. The thing is in SaaS, if your product is pretty good and it has a strong market position, you’ll end up with decent NRR even with a mediocre Customer Success team. And it doesn’t put retention as goal #1. The Customer.

Customer Success 260

Customer Success Metrics Scale Retention 260

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2025

Key points about SaaStr Annual : Focus on SaaS: Primarily focused on all aspects of SaaS business including sales, marketing, product development, and customer success. Large Audience: Considered the biggest SaaS conference with a large number of attendees from leading SaaS companies, startups, and venture capital firms.

Software 242

Software Scale Venture Capital SaaS 242

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

8: 3x Net Dollar Retention Thanks to This Pricing Model Over time, the dominant pricing structure in B2C and B2B applications is like the cell phone plan. If you look at the net dollar retention change, the top quartile used to be 130% pre-2020. You get a base number of minutes for a particular price. Now, it’s about 120%.

Venture Capital 331

Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 331

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2022

Customer Success isn’t just for established leaders; it also helps growth-stage companies compound their growth through retention, upsell and expansion. ChurnZero Chief Customer Officer Alli Tiscornia explains why earlier is better, and how to build a CS team that scales for the future. Scaling your customer success team.

Customer Success 246

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Leadership 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2025

Just look at the numbers: Enterprise customers bring 95%+ best-in-class retention vs. 85% in mid-market. Build the Right Team for Enterprise Success Enterprise selling requires a fundamentally different skillset. That compounds dramatically over time.

Enterprise 244

Enterprise Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 244

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

Tim Kopp, Terminus CEO and Executive Chairman, recently shared with the SaaStr community how they’ve fueled sustainable business by prioritizing Net Revenue Retention. Why Net Retention? Hint: It’s your customer base.) Tim swears by the power of net retention. Happy Customers = Your Best Advocates.

Retention 201

Retention Acquisition Customer Success Scale 201

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Customer Success team. If you hire a great, experienced Client Success leader as your first hire here, and you like him/her, and the experience is on point — my guess is you’ll be fine. If not, are you sure your have this right?

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Customer Success team. If you hire a great, experienced Client Success leader as your first hire here, and you like him/her, and the experience is on point — my guess is you’ll be fine. If not, are you sure your have this right?

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 245

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2025

Churn and Expansion : For existing customers, analyze churn rates, upsell/cross-sell performance, and NRR (Net Revenue Retention). Alignment Across Teams : Ensure alignment between sales, marketing, and customer success. Are customer success teams equipped to drive renewals and expansions?

Technical Review 180

Technical Review Sales Forecasting AI 180

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 17, 2023

While the allure of customer acquisition can pull a founder’s attention, it’s equally important to dedicate resources to fighting churn and expanding revenue from existing customers. At first, this relationship management team not only worked on customer success but also worked on upselling and cross-selling.

Retention 246

Retention Startup Revenue Sales Hiring 246

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2023

“Retention is the new acquisition,” says Co-Founder and CEO of Insider, Hande Cilingir. Given the fact that customer acquisition costs are increasing sharply, the most efficient way to increase revenue base is getting it out of existing ones.” Customer retention means building relationships with people. That’s huge!

Retention 242

Retention Software Review Revenue Systems Review 242

SaaStr

APRIL 15, 2025

This approach ensures reps dont just chase signatures but also care about customer success. If customers dont go live, they churn silently, and you lose revenue before it even starts. Incentivizing go-lives ensures sales leads work closely with customer success teams to drive activation and avoid this issue.

Scale 144

Scale Compensation Retention Churn 144

ChurnZero

MAY 23, 2025

But if you havent looked closely at how customer success revenue metrics plug into that story, youre probably leaving revenue on the table – and missing a critical opportunity to drive valuation, margin efficiency, and predictable growth. Its easy to think of CS as a retention function. It shows your pure retention rate.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Metrics Revenue Scale 52

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

” The company grew from $15M in ARR to more than $1B with this model, consistently achieving better than 130% net dollar retention. The Strategic Advantages of UBP Aligns vendor success with customer success : When a customer like Uber grows, their usage naturally expands, benefiting both parties.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

SaaStr

MAY 30, 2022

Having high net revenue / dollar retention is the magic of SaaS. If you have 120% NRR, you double in 5 years, even with no new customers! High NRR can hide mediocre growth in new logos and customers. But your losing your future if you lose more customers than you need to. But … high NRR can also mask issues.

Retention 328

Retention Customer Success Churn Trends 328

FastSpring

JANUARY 26, 2024

With years of experience at managing customer success (CS), Jake Dipple knows how important it is to foster collaboration between businesses and their customers. In this episode of Growth Stage, host and CMO of FastSpring David Vogelpohl interviews Jake about his thoughts on: What Customer Success is at a high level.

Customer Success 158

Customer Success VP of Engineering Payments Payment Methods 158

ChurnZero

MAY 16, 2025

It’s the ultimate technology dilemma for customer teams and the execs who control budgets: should you buy or build your customer success platform? It’s harder to do on your own, and you’ll be less successful ultimately. The resourcing drawbacks of a custom CRM build.

Payments 52

Payments Customer Success Payment Solutions Payment Services 52

Chart Mogul

OCTOBER 30, 2024

As we all know, the SaaS ecosystem has changed dramatically over the last few years, and customer retention and expansion are becoming increasingly important for SaaS … Account Management is a delightfully intricate balance of art and science. Satisfaction > Adoption when it comes to determining a good success metric.

Management 105

Management B2B SaaS Scale 105

Valuize Consulting

FEBRUARY 8, 2025

Partners are no longer just sales and implementation allies; they are a critical force in ensuring customer retention and expansion through value realization. Partners cannot be expected to drive retention and expansion without first having a clear framework, resources, and support from your company.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Scale Technical Review Government 52