SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2025

2025 is year that AI takes over all of support and customer success that isnt sales. A lot of support is questions and problems from existing customers. The same is happening, just more slowly across customer success. Humans are still deployed in customer success for upsell. It still is today.

Customer Success 162

Customer Success Customer Support AI Trends 162

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

A rough yardstick is that most enterprise-focused SaaS companies tend to get about 8%-10% of their revenues from professional services. A few data points: At $800m ARR, Qualtrics was still getting 25% of revenue from professional services. At $500m ARR, OneStream gets about 8% of its revenue from professional services.

Investment 298

Investment SaaS SMB Enterprise 298

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2021

We’ve talked on SaaStr about leaning in on Customer Success as much as possible. We’ve walked through why Second Order Revenue (i.e., the revenue ultimately generated or supported by Customer Success) is the key to growing a SaaS business. To hire in customer success. It’s OK.

Sales Hiring 293

Sales Hiring Customer Success Headcount Churn 293

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 18, 2022

So ChurnZero put out a great new report surveying 1,037 customer success professionals. of revenue. 34% of CS Teams Have a Veto on Bad-Fit Customers. 41% of CS Teams Own Revenue Expansion — More Often Than Sales. 58% of SaaS companies surveyed have a real Customer Marketing function.

Customer Success 347

Customer Success Headcount Churn Revenue 347

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 18, 2022

Revenue, Revenue_USD, Revenue_new, rev2, customer_revenue. Imagine the customer success team asks for a revenue chart in their CRM: it’s as easy as siphoning the data from MetricsFlow via a API call. Do you recognize these? They might be the column names you might find in your BI or analytics tool.

Revenue 319

Revenue Sales Hiring Finance Metrics 319

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

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2021

We don’t include second-order revenue. Standard CLTV calculations don’t account for virality and second-order customers. So you may underinvest overall, or invest, in fact, too much in Sales and Marketing — and not enough in Customer Success. Don’t Shortchange Second-Order Revenue.

Revenue 350

Revenue Enterprise Customer Success Churn 350

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2025

Here’s what it really took for Attentive to go from $0 to $500M ARR in just 7 years, sending over 32B text messages and generating $20B+ in revenue for their 8,000+ customers. Everyone knew mobile commerce was exploding (from 15% in 2014 to 75% in 2024), but reaching customers on mobile was broken.

Technical Review 263

Technical Review Payment Solutions Scale Payment Services 263

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2023

So I think 2023 may mark The End of Customer Success as We Knew It. The Massive Push to Efficiency As almost every public SaaS company got cash-flow positive and radically more efficient, and most startups had to stretch their dollars much further — customer success took a lot of the brunt. What happened? Just This Week.

Customer Success 300

Customer Success AI Pricing Enterprise 300

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 6, 2021

Q: Who Should Our First Head of Customer Success Report To? Ah, who should Customer Success report to. So usually, she can easily also manage Customer Success as well as all her reps. A VPS wants to close more revenue. Not just retain revenue. It’s not super simple. VP of Something Else.

Customer Success 311

Customer Success Sales Hiring Finance Churn 311

SaaStr

DECEMBER 12, 2022

Customer Success has gotten worse over the past few years. The best Customer Success teams are still amazing. I’m sure this team was under pressure this quarter to find revenue. We’ve been a customer for 6 years. I don’t think we audit and listen to enough customer success calls.

Customer Success 324

Customer Success AWS Systems Review Software Review 324

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

JANUARY 25, 2023

Divvy’s CRO, Sterling Snow, created a structure aligning these two teams with others to create a formidable revenue team. In this episode, Snow shares the journey to realizing the strength of revenue alignment through sales, marketing, and customer success and the principles for implementing this structure to yield tremendous results.

Customer Success 246

Customer Success Revenue Marketing Sales 246

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2023

So we’ve been writing about the power of a strong, funded, dedicated customer success organization since the beginning of SaaStr way back in 2012. While now mainstream, our early thinking on the power of Second Order Revenue in many ways informed a generation of SaaS entrepreneurs and the whole CS space. No Thank You.

Customer Success 293

Customer Success Pricing Revenue Sales 293

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 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. Customer Success Is Vulnerable to Cuts Jason shared that he didn’t realize how vulnerable customer success was to cuts until 2023.

Sales Hiring 320

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 320

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

If you are a SaaStr reader, you’ll know how passionate I am about Customer Success, since Day 1. For one simple reason: Second Order Revenue. What it all means is that if you do it right, you’ll make 6x or more the revenue from your customers after the sale itself. Word-of-Mouth. Champion Change.

Customer Success 326

Customer Success Compensation Churn Enterprise 326

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

OCTOBER 11, 2022

Even with late stage VC capital much harder to get now, and the IPO markets still frozen, I see many folks on my LinkedIn feed saying Sales and Customer Success are underpaid. We and I are still strong proponents of paying your revenue team well. While that may not sound like a lot, it actually is a lot of all your revenue.

Scale 283

Scale Customer Success Venture Capital Sales 283

SaaStr

OCTOBER 15, 2023

This week we have Robby Allen, Chief Revenue Officer at AgentSync! #1. In his role as CRO, Robby prioritizes building a world class team, delivering value in every customer interaction, and creating a culture of gratitude across the organization. What’s your core stack of apps today?

Revenue 292

Revenue Forecasting Sales Enablement Customer Success 292

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

Predictable Revenue

AUGUST 25, 2022

Tayler Barron joins the Predictable Revenue podcast to discuss breaking down the silos between marketing, outbound sales, and customer success in your organization. The post The Financial Impact of Breaking Down Your Revenue Organization Silos appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Revenue 258

Revenue Customer Success Sales Marketing 258

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2025

Meet Wyatt Jenkins: From Construction Sites to Chief Product Officer If you want to understand how vertical SaaS companies scale to $1B+ in revenue while staying true to their customers, there’s no better person to learn from than Wyatt Jenkins, Chief Product Officer at Procore Technologies.

Construction 251

Construction Scale SaaS Travel 251

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 243

Software Scale Venture Capital SaaS 243

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2022

If you’re only investing in sales and marketing, you’re missing a huge revenue opportunity. Customer Success isn’t just for established leaders; it also helps growth-stage companies compound their growth through retention, upsell and expansion. When should you start customer success?

Customer Success 246

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Leadership 246

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2024

Today, the most efficient public SaaS company is probably Doximity, at about $700,000 in revenue per employee. or so at the very latest, youll need to start hiring dedicated customer success professionals. I know many are talking about AI fueling 1 person, $1B start-ups. I hope that happens. But maybe not so much in SaaS.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS AI 261

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2022

Navigating the CRO and CMO Relationship with G2 and SalesLoft: Mike Weir, Chief Revenue Officer, G2; Steve Goldberg, Chief Revenue Officer, SalesLoft; Amanda Malko, CMO, G2. Revenue Marketing: Build for Scale with Podium’s SVP, Revenue Marketing Jess Weimer. appeared first on SaaStr.

Sales Hiring 293

Sales Hiring Revenue Scale SMB 293

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

They prioritize revenue growth, market share and profit maximization differently. Maximization (Revenue Growth) - maximize revenue growth in the short term. Many mid-market software companies price with the goal of revenue maximization, negotiating for the highest possible price in each sale.

SaaS Payments 276

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 276

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2022

Co-founder and CEO of Insider , Hande Cilingir, talks about what it takes to write a successful revenue growth story. However, the revenue forecast accuracy and the realization of that revenue each month are more important. Or the revenue their business will generate by month-end.

Scale 283

Scale Sales Hiring Revenue Marketplace as a Service 283

SaaStr

APRIL 6, 2025

Billion in Revenue This Year. But Wont Be Profitable Until $125 Billion in Revenue, Per Bloomberg #5. The Top 10 Customer Success Metrics Investors Care About in 2025 with Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta #5. The Revenue Playbook: Ripplings Top 3 Growth Tactics at Scale with Rippling CRO Matt Plank Yes, SaaS is Back.

Scale 189

Scale Software Review Marketing Cloud 189

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2024

How can you bridge the gap between sales and tech to drive customer success? The 3 Building Blocks The three building blocks that bridge the gap between sales and Field CTOs are: Product knowledge Balance Trust Building Block #1: Product Knowledge Field CTOs must work closely with sales from a customer perspective.

CTO Coach 300

CTO Coach CTO Technical Review Customer Success 300

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. They discuss how Fox helped build a churn-fighting, upselling, and cross-selling machine that continues to generate revenue.

Retention 246

Retention Startup Revenue Sales Hiring 246

Totango

NOVEMBER 21, 2024

In a world where customer expectations are sky-high and data complexity is ever-increasing, Totango Unison is the game-changer that customer success and post-sales teams have been waiting for. Welcome to the future of customer success with Unison. Today, it’s about lighting the path to growth.

Customer Success 62

Customer Success AI Churn Data Analysis 62

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2023

So we’ve been talking about customer success at SaaStr longer than almost anyone else, going back to our very first posts in 2012, including on Second Order Revenue. Don’t Shortchange Second-Order Revenue. CLTV Isn’t The Whole Story. More in Nick Mehta’s great post here.

Customer Success 201

Customer Success Scaling Management Churn 201