Customer Support and Customer Service have been around for decades. These were the necessary evils of the traditional sector – the old-model reactive break/fix cost center – to resolve problems resulting from breaks and service interruptions. The misconception with SaaS is that there is no longer a need for a team of this nature in today’s organization. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
To win in this new era, the role of support needs to be completely refined or even newly defined. Organizations need to focus around the entire experience of the customer. It’s not just about the software anymore. And to achieve this, Customer Support is now Customer Success.
Still, expectation gaps remain, Customer Success by definition is still in its infancy, processes are immature and confusion reigns. We hope that our blog helps to simplify and guide you. However, there are a number of resources on SaaS, growth, retention, and Customer Success with valuable insights that you should be tapping into as well.
Here is the list:
- Akita – Akita’s Customer Success Roundup is a list of hand-picked resources from around the web brought to your inbox.
- Alex Bakula-Davis – Alex curates The Customer Success Newsletter which is a hand curated, free-range, artisanal, and all natural newsletter on top articles cover Customer Success.
- Bain & Company – Bain’s Loyalty Insights newsletter is a bi-monthly email series that discusses how to focus your entire company on customer loyalty.
- Bluenose – Best practices for managing Customer Experience, Net Promoter and Customer Success programs.
- Catherine Blackmore – Catherine is a thought leader and innovator in the area of Customer Success, with over 20 years of experience in helping a diverse list of clients from small businesses to Fortune 100 customers.
- Chad Horenfeldt – Chad is a Customer Experience and Customer Success executive with 15+ years experience developing Customer Success teams with companies of all sizes.
- Chargify – The latest Chargify news plus tips and tricks on how to run an efficient subscription and recurring revenue business.
- ClientSuccess – Learn Customer Success best practices around customer experience and client engagement.
- CSM Practice – The CSM Corner Blog will teach you how to define and implement the customer journey, customer campaigns, Customer Success playbooks, customer maturity scoring model as well as Customer Success reports and dashboards.
- David Skok – David has a wealth of experience in running companies. He writes for entrepreneurs and startups on topics such as viral marketing, SaaS metrics, building a sales and marketing machine, techniques for lowering the cost of customer acquisition, etc.
- Gainsight – Take your Customer Success team to the next level by taking advantage of Gainsight’s industry-standard best practices and thought leadership.
- Glide Consulting – Glide helps VC-Funded startups and F100 companies optimize, leverage and accelerate their Customer Success teams.
- Groove – On a journey to $500k in monthly revenue. Every Thursday they publish a new blog post about his wins, failures and lessons learned along the way.
- Jason Lemkin – Jason is a 2x founder, 1x VC, and dedicated SaaS enthusiast. He led or sourced the first VC investments in many leading enterprise/SaaS startups. Collectively, these startups are worth in excess of one billion dollars.
- Joel York – Joel is a respected thought leader on SaaS business models and metrics. He is a well-known SaaS / Cloud business executive, entrepreneur and startup advisor.
- Mindtouch – Striving to promote the ‘Customer Experience,’ and a business’s engagement with that experience, as the foundation for all success to stand on.
- Natero – Learn about the latest trends and topics in Customer Success Management. They explore customer retention, engagement, and expansion.
- Nello Franco – Nello is an executive leader with a passion for Customer Success and the ability and desire to build a customer-centric company.
- Omid Razavi – Omid is a Customer Success and growth leader who drives user engagement, technology consumption, customer adoption and advocacy at all stages of the customer journey.
- OpenView Labs – Helping B2B software companies cross the chasm from startups to growth stage businesses by helping build-out and refining customer acquisition.
- Ptero – The Ptero Conversion Path blog provides tips, templates and tools to help you improve your ability to convert and retain users.
- Service Excellence Partners – The Excel-lens blog helps subscription-based technology companies reduce customer churn through his consulting practice. Helping clients diagnose root causes, improve quality and value of products and services, and systematically strengthen customer relationships.
- Strikedeck – Discover key KPIs for your company, your CS team, and your dashboard to keep track of your customers.
- SuccessHacker – Helping companies to understand and capitalize on a simple truth, Successful Customers = Successful Company.
- Tomasz Tunguz – Tomasz writes daily, data-driven blog posts about key questions facing startups including how to fundraise, startup benchmarks, management best practices and team building.
- Totango – Learn best practices to create a scalable Customer Success strategy.
- Tri Tuns – Specializes in Customer Success Management & maximizing IT user adoption. The Tri Tuns team has exceptional experience working on CRM projects for a variety of Fortune 500 and mid-size clients.
- Zuora – Thoughts on building and running a successful subscription business, trends, products, and industry news. Read on.
Which resources do you find informative and valuable for SaaS and customer success?
