An essential customer success dictionary
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the total revenue a customer generates over their relationship with a business. It informs strategies like prioritizing high-CLV customers for support and renewals or targeting similar prospects with tailored marketing.
Customer Marketing focuses on strategies to build loyalty, drive product adoption, and boost upselling or cross-selling. It includes personalized communication, educational content, and campaigns highlighting new features or services, such as webinars on advanced functionalities or referral programs.
The systematic management of a customer's journey from initial engagement to renewal. It emphasizes understanding customer needs and behaviors to enhance satisfaction, drive retention, and increase customer lifetime value.
A software platform managing customer interactions and relationships, tracking data, communication history, and support requests. It facilitates engagement, personalized experiences, and drives customer satisfaction and retention.
The process of users regularly utilizing a software product after onboarding. In SaaS, adoption ensures full engagement, satisfaction, value realization, and long-term retention.
Quantifiable measures assessing customer success performance. Metrics like satisfaction scores, churn rates, NPS, and product usage statistics help identify improvement areas and drive engagement and retention.
KPIs track the effectiveness of customer success initiatives by measuring engagement, satisfaction, retention, and overall customer health. They help make data-driven decisions to optimize strategies and drive business growth.
Customer engagement refers to user interaction with a SaaS product. High engagement, indicated by active usage, support seeking, and training participation, leads to increased satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.
C-suite refers to top executives like CEOs, CFOs, and COOs. Engaging them is crucial for aligning strategic goals and prioritizing customer success efforts.
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) is the predictable, recurring income from SaaS subscriptions. It's a key metric measuring growth, forecasting revenue, and assessing customer health.
Direct costs associated with producing and delivering a product or service. Understanding these costs is crucial for evaluating profitability, pricing strategies, and resource allocation in SaaS customer success programs.
A Customer Success Manager ensures customer success by managing relationships, providing onboarding, training, and support, driving product adoption, and minimizing churn.
A document outlining services, deliverables, and timelines, clarifying expectations and responsibilities to ensure successful implementation and ongoing support.
A system managing customer interactions, tracking data, and facilitating personalized experiences to drive satisfaction and retention.
Cloud-based software delivery model offering scalable, flexible, and continuously updated applications accessed via the internet. Users subscribe, not purchase, while SaaS companies provide ongoing support and updates.
A Learning Management System (LMS) is a software application that delivers, tracks, and manages training programs. In SaaS customer success, it streamlines user onboarding and skill development, improving customer engagement, satisfaction, and retention.
The Case Studies program captures and shares customer success stories to showcase the product's value and drive sales.
The ROI Calculator helps potential customers evaluate the financial impact of the product by providing a clear calculation of expected return on investment.
Mutual Action Plans (MAPs) create a shared roadmap between vendor and customer, aligning goals and responsibilities to drive sales success.
The Deal Room provides a centralized space for potential customers to access sales information and resources, streamlining the deal closure process.
The POC Management program guides potential customers through a structured proof-of-concept process to assess product value.
The Upsell Trigger Program identifies Customer Success Qualified Leads (CSQLs) and automatically flags upsell opportunities based on customer behavior and usage patterns.
The Renewal Management program ensures smooth renewals by providing clear visibility and proactive communication.
The Feature Adoption Program helps customers discover and effectively use new or underutilized features to maximize product value.
The Customer Feedback Loop Program actively gathers customer insights and feedback to continuously improve the product and customer experience.
The BAU program empowers champions with ongoing resources and insights to optimize product value and drive business success.
The Migration & Upgrades program ensures a smooth transition to new product lines with minimal disruption and maximum benefit.
The Account Dashboard provides champions and decision makers with a centralized view of product usage, performance metrics, and actionable insights to drive informed decisions.
Business Reviews are strategic meetings to evaluate customer progress, usage, and alignment with business objectives, ensuring ongoing value.
Success Plans align customer and vendor goals, providing a structured roadmap to maximize product value.
User Onboarding provides a self-service experience that empowers end-users to quickly get started with tailored guidance and resources.
Ever Boarding accelerates new user onboarding, ensuring rapid proficiency in product capabilities, configurations, and business impact.
The Academy provides structured training programs that empower customers to independently learn and master the product, improving their proficiency and enabling self-sufficiency.
The Implementation Plan ensures customers have a clear and structured roadmap to successfully implement the solution, leading to a faster and smoother go-live process.
Voice of the Customer (VoC) refers to the process of capturing, analyzing, and leveraging customer feedback and insights to understand their preferences, needs, and expectations. It helps businesses make data-driven decisions to enhance products, services, and overall customer experience.
The End of Year Wrapped (EOY Wrapped) program offers customers a personalized, engaging year-end summary of their achievements, usage metrics, and milestones.
The Referrals Program incentivizes existing customers to refer new potential customers to the company.
The Product Updates program keeps customers informed about new features, enhancements, and improvements to the product.
The Customer Advocacy program is designed to nurture and empower customers who are enthusiastic about the product to become brand advocates.
Customer Segmentation Analysis is a strategic approach businesses use to divide their customer base into individual groups with similar characteristics.
Scaled Customer Success is a strategic approach businesses employ to ensure their customers achieve their desired outcomes while using their product or service.
Product Usage Rate, a term frequently used in the field of Customer Success, refers to the frequency and extent to which a customer utilizes a product or service.
Customer accountability is the practice of customers taking ownership of their roles and responsibilities in achieving success with your product or service.
A B2B Customer Interface serves as a collaborative and actionable space, providing a unified home for everything customers need to navigate and enhance their experience with a product across their organization.
Voice of the Customer (VoC) refers to the process of capturing, analyzing, and leveraging customer feedback and insights to understand their preferences, needs, and expectations. It helps businesses make data-driven decisions to enhance products, services, and overall customer experience.
Digital customer success is absolutely crucial in today's online world. It's all about using digital tools, technologies, and smart strategies to not only make sure customers like a product, but also to ensure they have a smooth and happy experience using it.
Customer satisfaction insights are the valuable information, feedback, and data that a company gathers from its customers to understand their levels of satisfaction with its products or services.
Expansion revenue refers to the additional recurring income generated from existing customers beyond their initial contract or subscription.
A powerful tool employed by B2B SaaS companies to dissect their customer base into smaller, more understandable groups, or "cohorts"
The Customer Loyalty Index (CLI) is a crucial metric that provides insights into customer retention, future purchase behavior, and the overall strength of the customer relationship.
Think of the adoption rate as the lifeblood coursing through your product's veins, mirroring the vitality of your SaaS enterprise.
Key performance indicator (KPI) used by SaaS (Software as a Service) companies to measure their growth and profitability
Refers to an existing customer who is recognized as having the potential for expansion or renewal. These are customers who have already experienced success with a product or service and are likely to benefit from additional offerings or continued usage.
An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a description of the characteristics, attributes, and qualities of the ideal customer for a product or service.
Metric used to measure the level of effort a customer has to put forth when interacting with a company or using its products or services.
The Customer Loyalty Index (CLI) is a crucial metric that provides insights into customer retention, future purchase behavior, and the overall strength of the customer relationship.
Also known as Customer Retention Rate, is a vital metric that measures the percentage of customers who continue to utilize a product or service over a specific period.
The process of dividing a company's customer base into distinct groups, or segments, based on shared characteristics or behaviors.
A client onboarding portal is a digital platform specifically designed to streamline scale and auto-personalize the process of onboarding new clients.
lso referred to as a customer hub, acts as the single source of truth throughout the entire customer journey. Embedded within the product, it enables seamless access to tasks, timelines, meetings, readable resources, training materials, data dashboards, and more.
Low-touch customer success is a customer experience strategy that aims to minimize interactions between the customer and the customer success team.
A software solution that helps businesses understand and optimize their customers' experiences across all touchpoints and interactions with the brand like EverAfter customer portal
A customer POC (Proof of Concept) is a process of evaluating a product or service to determine its feasibility, usability, and suitability for a specific customer's needs. It is a crucial step in the sales cycle, allowing customers to test and validate the product before committing to a purchase.
The process of dividing a company's customer base into distinct groups, or segments, based on shared characteristics or behaviors.
Scalable and proactive approach that leverages technology and automation to deliver a personalized experience without requiring extensive direct human interaction
A one to many approach refers to a method of communication, where a single interaction or message is intended to reach and benefit multiple customers
Customer growth rate refers to the speed with which you acquire new customers for your product or company.
A Quarterly Business Review (QBR) is a periodic assessment of a company's performance and progress over the previous quarter.
Client engagement models are essential for B2B SaaS companies to achieve long-term success. By using these models, B2B SaaS companies can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Whenever you sign a customer, they have expectations from your product regarding the value it will generate for them. The time taken for your customers to realize this value is called time to value or TTV.
In SaaS high-touch onboarding the CSM is highly involved in the process and the main goal of such onboarding is not only to onboard the customer and train them how to use the product, but also to customize it to the customer’s needs.
Can be defined as the different stages your customers will go through with your product (and company) and what will be the touchpoints that happen within those stages.
The number of customers that have discontinued using your product/service (aka stopped paying) out of the total customers you have acquired over a certain period of time (monthly/quarterly/annually).
A partnership relationship management portal supports better collaboration and customer service and can significantly increase sales.
Customer success automation helps businesses lower costs, reduce customer waiting times, eliminate human error, and shift agents’ focus to more complex tasks.
A SaaS customer success plan is a work frame or roadmap that the CSM builds together with the customer.
When technology companies sell software to other companies, a new relationship forms - that of the Customer Success Manager and the Customer. Customer hubs are the new way to communicate.
Once a SaaS company closes a sale, the next step in the customer journey is to begin with the customer onboarding process.
When businesses fail to create a satisfying onboarding customer journey, they risk losing customers to companies that offer better processes. Doing customer onboarding well brings is highly important for your customers retention.
Net promoter scores can vary based on distinct customer segments such as age group, gender, and customer history. NPS analysis helps you determine how to adapt your approach to different types of customers.
By retaining customers, your business gains more value from a product or service and improves the chances of customers engaging in word-of-mouth marketing or becoming brand ambassadors.
If CSMs are the pilots driving the car, then customer success operations are the team in charge of making sure the car is in its best form so the pilot (CSM) has the highest chance of succeeding.
RevOps, or a revenue operations model, is designed to bring your revenue-generating teams together to drive predictable growth.
Developing solid partnerships can have a tremendous impact on your business. Good ones can scale it to new levels, while subpar ones can cost you valuable time and money.
A SaaS customer success plan is a work frame or roadmap that the CSM builds together with the customer.