Luke Owen’s Post

I've seen a healthy amount of chatter about Customer Success being questioned about whether it's needed to drive growth. This is a healthy discussion and could be a defining moment for post-sales leadership to think more strategically about how they/we are running teams. I've always found it wild that most Success teams don't have weekly funnel reviews like their counterparts in pre-sales or don't build forecasts on what they expect to renew, expand, contract, etc. But I think it's now very clear why the above is not a common practice; Customer data after the sale is VERY VERY MESSY! Until you can solve this problem, every post-sales leader will struggle to keep their teams a central part of the conversation, especially in this market. I know, I know, this isn't necessarily a CS-specific issue to resolve messy customer data, however, they should take the lead given those in CS often have the best foundational understanding of who their customers are and where their data lives. Start small. First, ask everyone in leadership how many active customers you had at the end of last month and the total recurring revenue, and stop there. If you get back multiple answers or, in some cases, blank stares, you know where to start. Quick Tip: Make sure to establish a unique ID for your customers. This could be from your product, CRM, or billing system, but make sure it is consistent and doesn't change for the entirety that the customer is a customer (both before and after and potentially when they return!).