Customer Success 101

By Anastasia Nikolaeva

Benefit from my knowledge and experience based on:

• 6+ years in customer-facing roles,
• 3+ years in SaaS business,
• 2 successfully built teams from scratch.

? Do you want to...

• Start your career in Customer Success?
• Understand better your CS colleagues and post-sales business perspective to enhance your career?
• Fill in potential gaps you might have about CS?
• Get clarity on the Customer Success role and what is it actually about?
• Understand the big picture and key principles?
• Be able to talk comfortably about CS topics during job interviews?

? Once you've read this ebook, you won't feel....

• Confused and overwhelmed by all the resources, articles, courses, and trend reports.
• Lost whenever you see all the GRR, NRR, LV, customer journey, etc. terms out there.

? In only 55 pages of content you will get access to the CS essentials, including:

• The big picture: SaaS as a business, what is Customer Success, why does it exist, why is it important, its relation to the overall business, and other roles
• Data and metrics: essential strategical and tactical CS metrics you need to know
• The core of the CS' day-to-day job alias customer journey: what is it and why is it important
• Tools to achieve success: ever heard of the kick-off, QBR, voice of customer, customer advisory board, CSAT or NPS?
• Your personal career: possible career paths in CS, skills, compensation, mindset, and job interview tips
• + as a bonus, example of some practical technical tools you should know about
• ++ on top of the above, you will get practical career tips as well as real-life scenarios you might experience.

Real, practical, understandable, and relatable information.
No overwhelming marketing-friendly buzz words with no explanation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anastasia Nikolaeva
• Release date: Dec 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223867418

Book preview

Hello and Welcome!

My 3 tips on how to benefit from this book the most are:

Print it and actively use it;  it is designed to serve you. Write down notes, highlight the information you find insightful, and use your pen and colors. It will help you absorb it more efficiently.

First, read it all at once  to get the big picture, and then come back to specific parts that you want to re-read.

Adjust your physical environment while reading it. Go somewhere outside, for example, to a coffee place, or light a candle and drink tea at home. With the proper environment surrounding you, your mind will be more open to new ideas and thoughts.

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WHAT WILL WE LEARN?

01 GENERAL

02 DATA AND METRICS

03 CUSTOMER JOURNEY

04 METHODOLOGY

05 PERSONAL CAREER

06 TECHNICAL (bonus)

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01 GENERAL - the bigger picture

SaaS as a business model

The business environment we are talking about here is called the SaaS business model (SaaS = Software as a Service). It is the model in which you deliver software solutions that are accessible through the internet, and customers (users) need to pay you a subscription fee to continue getting access to this software. There is no hardware installation required; everything is available through the internet. Because it is accessible through the internet, you might see SaaS businesses more and more often emerging.

The first ever SaaS company was launched in 1999, and it was Salesforce with its CRM (customer relationship management) solution.

B2B SaaS companies offer software to other businesses; B2B = business-to-business (note: B2C = business-to-consumer).

As you can imagine, with the ever-growing power of the internet, globalization, and new solutions emerging all the time that want to reach as many customers worldwide as possible, the SaaS business continues to grow and becomes more and more important.

Today, we can also see many new solutions emerging leveraging the power of AI.

Therefore, it is safe to assume SaaS will stay with us for some time and even grow bigger. You are in the right business industry if you want your knowledge to still be relevant in a couple of years.

Educate yourself about the newly emerging AI products. There will be many new AI-driven SaaS companies, meaning career opportunities.

*Career tip:   Understand your company and your product—to which market does it belong, why does your solution exist, and what problem do you address?

What is Customer Success?

In a nutshell, it is a proactive post-sales team within the SaaS business model, and its goal is to ensure your software adds value to your customers, meaning they