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Kentico on Customer Success

We at Kentico really care about our customers. That sounds like a cliché that millions of companies say, right? Well, two years ago, in addition to Product Development, Marketing, and Sales, we had separate teams dedicated to Training, Consulting Services, and Technical Support. These teams were operating in silos with different goals and KPIs, not helping each other much. Even though their team performance was good, customer hand-offs were everything but smooth, and internal communication between those teams was a mess. Overall, we were doing fine, but we were not growing as fast as we had in previous years, and the Customer Experience was far from great. It was time for a change. 

We realized that in order to be successful in the long term, we needed to help our customers succeed first. We believe that when we help customers get the most out of our products and services, they will achieve their business goals, grow their business with us, and recommend us to others. Customers first—that’s it.

So we formed a new department called Customer Success that would unify those customer-facing teams taking care of customers in the post-sale phase. We needed to give them a shared vision, to shift the mindset from being reactive to being proactive, and to be involved in the pre-sale phase, as well. Then we added two new parts to our CS team: Community and Customer Success Management. Customer Success Managers now proactively help customers with onboarding and their projects. They recommend the right services at the right time. They listen to our customers and act on their feedback. Together, we create better Customer Experience, and the Net Promoter Score is one of the two main company-wide KPIs.

And we are not alone in this Customer Success movement! In fact, there are conferences on Customer Success with thousands of attendees with job titles such as “CSM”, “VP Customer Success”, or “Chief Customer Officer”. It’s all focused on how the CS team improves the renewal process, reduces churn, and drives revenues. As J. Lemkin says, Customer Success is where 90% of the revenue is. For SaaS companies, Customer Success is a must. For others, Customer Success could be a great competitive advantage.