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  • Why customer experience and success share the same roof

    There is a fundamental premise I make in the new eBook / trend report I am working on captured in the title. Yet I’ve taken part in debates on LinkedIn that show there are divisions in opinion. Separatist thinking even. Some think that customer success (CS) is the new kid on the block and muscling…

  • The Customer Success Team Maturity Model

    NOTE: The thinking behind this model applies predominantly to enterprise SaaS operations. It also applies to the maturity of your customer success team, not the customer’s maturity in relation to their use of your product or their interactions with you. I’ve already written about the phases of the model above in this post: Customer experience,…

  • The connected car vision is missing a few connections

    The connected car is the future for automotive companies. There is a lot going on in this space. I know because in my business, I have several customers in the industry. But you don’t need to be in the business to know. I recently purchased a car. It’s connected and awesome, I’m impressed. But my…

  • Role of purpose and intent in customer success

    How do you begin to assess how successful you are likely to be with your customers ahead of the customer success journey? Taking this approach, perhaps you can even determine if you should embark on the journey or not. A good place to start is probably the end point. Stephen R Covey, author of the…

  • Measuring customer success one advocate at a time

    Creating customer advocates is a measure of customer success by some. Not enough though, in my view. I have a view because I’ve helped create a fair share of advocates. Just recently three of my customers got up on stage and spoke at a large event to other customers and prospects. I’ve also had the…

  • Why bad customer experience matters and Avis does not try harder

    This is about a recent customer experience I had with Avis which has cost them my loyalty. This is not just a rant, annoyed as I am. I’m capturing this kind of story as a way of illustrating what good or bad customer experiences look like for my new eBook / trend report. Its unfortunate…

  • 5 usage and adoption heuristics for customer success

    I wanted to capture some simple rules of thumb that I could use to easily remember the top line influences on my work in customer success. I created a doodle to make it fun and memorable (for me) but also shareable. I came up with these 5. I’m sure there are more. These would only…

  • Success Hacking

    Success Hacking takes a very experimental and evidence based approach to achieving outcomes. Target. Do. Observe. Learn. Many of the activities I have pursued in my life were conducted in this spirit. I’ve tried to capture them as portfolio projects. Some were not successful per se but the learning in every case was. Which I…

  • Metrics that matter and the ideal customer success dashboard

    One chapter of my new eBook / trend report is going to cover metrics. What you track and how you track it. There is much written about the metrics themselves and I wasn’t yet ready to delve into that. I doodled what I thought was largely the ideal dashboard I could have in front of…

  • The customer’s success is crucial to yours and begins with mindset

    I’m surprised more organisations haven’t cottoned on. Focusing on making customers successful with the use of your products or services. Understanding that this success drives your success. Understanding the drivers of success and amplifying these. You’d think organisations would have armies focused on this. They talk about it enough. Think of product demo’s you have…

  • The customer success and experience iceberg

    I’ve just started working on my new eBook / trend report and I got to thinking about the cover. A little back to front but it’s often a catalyst for thinking about any other major concepts I want to cover, or ways of explaining existing concepts (sense making in other words). I have already largely…

  • The Future of Customer Success is Not Human

    It’s a pretty provocative statement, I know. To be clear, I’m not suggesting humans won’t be involved any longer or that there won’t be a need for them. If anything, humans will be liberated to carry out the high-touch, heavy lifting work we are uniquely qualified to do and should be focusing on instead, like…

  • Customer experience, the subscription economy and 10 ways success teams will make you win

    The Subscription Economy Advances in technology, economic pressures and shifting cultural norms mean new models of ownership are gaining attention in many industries. People are increasingly interested in consuming and paying for temporary or limited access to goods and services, rather than purchasing them outright. Subscription-based models in which companies offer ongoing access to a…

  • Innovation is the why, change is the how

    There is a lot of talk about being more agile, responsive, lean, etc. These are all very worthwhile approaches. They all very often take a view on different ways of dealing with change starting with the need for change. The central theme to all of the above is very often that the pace of change…