Your guide to supercharging a Start Up through Customer Success

In the early days of a startup, achieving growth is the top priority! While the need for a Sales and Marketing team might be imminent, many founders tend to overlook the importance of establishing a customer success (CS) function early on. But especially for a business-to-business (B2B) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup, CS is a must! A successful CS team is a powerful asset for any startup, as it helps to drive customer satisfaction, revenue retention, and expansion.

By setting the foundation for growth with CS, startups can build a solid customer base and establish a brand reputation for delivering excellent customer service. So let’s explore why CS is crucial for startup success and provide practical tips on how to establish a strong CS function from the outset. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to take your startup to the next level, this guide will help you build a solid foundation for growth with CS.

When?

Let’s have a chronological look at it and start with the right timing to begin. In an ideal world, your startup should establish a customer success function as early as possible, ideally from the beginning. Customer success is essential for building a loyal customer base, reducing churn, and driving revenue growth. But in the individual case restricted by limited resources, recognizing the right time to start building a customer success team is determined by a few factors. Those include your company’s growth rate, customer needs and feedback, and the availability of financial and human resources.

Who?

Once the decision is made to invest in your customer success team, it is important to hire the right people to establish the function and foster a customer-centric culture. Those first team members are the foundation to everything your new CS will achieve, so make sure they are goal-getters with a service mentality at heart. Forbes compiled a deep dive into other important factors to be considered when Hiring Your Startup’s First Customer Success Lead.

How?

Setting your CS function up for success is a combination of establishing the right processes, backed by a powerful tech stack. Starting with the technical foundations, whatever your budget and company wide infrastructure looks like, we saw tools like Gainsight and Vitally transform the efficiency and effectiveness of even small CS teams. This however requires having an internal resource capable of ensuring a smooth implementation or alternatively finding a strong partner to do so. This is also the time to establish clear goals, metrics, and processes to enable your customer’s success. Along your customer journey map, clearly define the roles and responsibilities in your post-sales teams, create playbooks and ensure a smooth journey for your customers.

Long story short…

Build your company on Customer Centricity from the get go

A strong customer success function is essential for long-term success and growth of a startup, and requires ongoing attention and refinement. We are your sparring partner to supercharge your team with best-practices and know-how from the get go.