Answering your questions about early-stage customer success
Common questions about setting up an early-stage customer success function
Intense competition in every business category has made it easier than ever for customers to switch vendors, turning every renewal into a reselling of the solution. Early-stage startups are particularly vulnerable during renewals as they tend to enter the market with point solutions that are harder to defend against more mature competitors with more mature product offerings who are pitching a consolidation play.
Customer success is a critical function for ensuring renewals go as planned and is becoming a critical function for generating upsell opportunities, which if successful often lead to improved retention. So it follows that startups are hiring customer success reps (or account managers) earlier and earlier and in some cases even before even hiring sales reps if the founder is good at selling.
In this issue I answer the most popular questions readers ask about early-stage customer success:
When should I make my first customer success hire?
What should my first customer success hire focus on?
What should I measure in early-stage customer success?
Should I track Net Promoter Score? [Spoiler: no]
How should I engage with a customer who I think is at risk of churning?