customer success industry

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We predict an increasing shift in compensation structures with more Customer Success professionals receiving bonuses, stock/equity incentives, or commissions tied to revenue, which will increase average Customer Success salaries across the board. And since factors like renewals, expansion and account health were listed as top components affecting respondents bonus structures, visibility and proactivity can also play a role in a CSMs overall salary. According to Customer Success professionals surveyed, the median salary for Directors of Customer Success in 2020 was $130,000. We saw the greatest increase in our respondents of teams setting in place in the last 1-2 years emphasizing again the tremendous growth in organizations prioritizing customer success and building and growing their newly formed customer success teams. This is up from 34% over 2020. Totangos SuccessTeams feature puts digital technology to use for CS teams to improve focus and productivity. How is a Customer Success Team Structured? 16% of respondents stated that they report directly to the Chief Revenue Officer, up from 9% last year, which further demonstrates the weight companies are putting on CS teams. Totango 2022 |Terms of Use |Privacy |Cookies |Sub-Processors, oin us for Customer Success Summit: Teams in Miami Beach on September 14-16. Its a challenge to change the nature of the products and services delivered and take a much longer-term view, but the rewards are a much "stickier" relationship and a revenue pipeline extending for multiples longer than a one-and-done approach. Visibility is a critical factor in CS as the ability to monitor account health throughout the customer journey allows CSMs to gain a deep understanding of their clients in order to provide consistent value, anticipate customer needs, and improve product adoption and retention. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Others have done very well. Try it free to experience the cutting edge in automated customer success. The hallmark of a customer success model done right is to be a solution provider, consultant and advocate for a customer within your business and their business for the long term. The average salary for this role has continually increased over the past several years, and we expect this trend to endure as organizations shift their focus to providing more value to customers and expanding product adoption and customer advocacy. CRS means the customer success team must invest in the customers, continue to check in with them and help them with their approach to delivering on their business goals. With the right solution backing up the team, AI may be used at many or all steps of the customer's journey with their support teams. In the last year, with the world moving remote and virtual, we noticed a large jump in the involvement of CS teams with the rest of the organization, in particular with Marketing and Sales teams. Join us for Customer Success Summit: Teams in Miami Beach on September 14-16, Defining Customer Success Throughout the Customer Journey, Farm, Dont Hunt (the Customer Success Mantra), The Essentials of Digital-first Customer Success Strategies, How Digital-First Customer Success Can Improve Your Customer Success Management Process, Digital-First Customer Success vs. Start with a benchmark for sales activity. Totango surveyed close to 500 professionals and analyzed more than 10,000 data points for its 2019 State of the Customer Success Industry and Salary Report. CRM platforms can also help automate the menial tasks of follow-up and planning and enhance personalization. When we no longer had the option to drop by our clients offices or meet with them at industry events, we had to figure out how to form and keep connections and stay up-to-date on the health of their businesses, all while remaining socially distant. Let us give you a greater sense of security in this unpredictable time. The pandemic created a new sense of urgency around protecting and nurturing customers by highlighting the fact that customers truly are the core of every business. The range of salaries for this role, however, reached between $48,500-170,000, with CSMs in large metropolitan areas in California and New York as well as those with over 10 years of tenure in larger enterprises seeing the high-end of the salary range. Why Monolithic Applications Put Pressure On Your Personnel, Part 1, 14 Tech-Related Ethical Concerns And How They Can Be Addressed, Five Ways To Stop Developer Burnout Before It Undermines Culture And Progress, Changing The Culture In Healthcare Organizations, Thriving In The Online World: Why Digitally Empowered Agents Are The Future Of Insurance, Dont Let Video Be A Communication Pain Point For Your Organization, CRUISE Framework: A Scientific Approach To Prioritizing Analytics Projects. This is consistent with the results of our survey, in which respondents stated that their CS teams use a wide variety of tools, including, in-house built tools (40%), Excel or Google spreadsheets (55%), CRM systems (64%), help desk tools (51%), survey or customer experience tools (49%), and Customer Success platforms (42%). Pools of success managers can be called upon as required, rather than necessarily limiting support to dedicated one-to-one CS management, although this can be employed when desired as well. More than 1,500 Customer Success professionals from around the world participated in the 2021 State of the Customer Success Industry and Salary Survey. 44% (up from 10% in 2020) of respondents said that their CS team spends more than 50% of their time working with Marketing and 47% (up from 27% in 2020) reported spending more than 50% of their time working with Sales. Revenue can be tracked for each team as well as for the company as a whole. One of Zoes many features is an AI-powered chatbot that allows customer success team members to ask questions in natural language and receive answers from the teams knowledge base. During the onboarding phase, customer success depends on achieving outcomes such as: The process of achieving these outcomes can be automated by establishing best practices and setting up digital workflows and monitoring tools which implement them when customers reach appropriate milestones in their onboarding journey. These tools can be applied across every customer engagement model and tier, so team members are freed from handling repetitive work and can focus on handling tasks that are better suited to a human touch or engagement while managing more accounts. The Customer Success industry has grown and matured rapidly over the past few years, but due to the impacts of COVID-19, shelter-in-place orders and the increase in remote workers in 2020, the industrys momentum accelerated exponentially. For example, when a customer reaches out for help with a common issue, they might receive an automated email recommending a video tutorial with the solution, along with an invitation to contact a support agent if they need additional help. A digital CS solution gives time back to teams and helps them to deliver results faster. Our focus moved from business outcomes to customer outcomes, which, in turn, shifted our goals from simply minimizing churn to providing more value to our customers, so we could expand their product adoption and turn them into advocates for our brands. When a number of different, disconnected systems are used, it makes it more difficult for companies to determine the root cause of issues like customer churn or how customers are engaging with the product. As a result, the salary range is between $70K-280K. This promoted a one-to-one model of customer success management, with dedicated CS managers assigned to individual clients. Time is valuable and what teams are able to accomplish every day is important. Companies are realizing the importance of customer outcomes over traditional business outcomes and are understanding that this shift requires the best talent available. They are currently building on the growth and success of the past few months as the world has pivoted from the physical to the virtual, and the trend will be for more services to go online as in-person experiences decline. As Customer Success becomes more important to organizations, we are seeing an increase in new titles, so weve included the salaries of a few new roles this year, including Customer Success Operations. Seven Steps to Automated Customer Success Management, Click to download Totango's editable Customer Journey Map template, Conclusion: Embrace Digital-first Customer Success to Propel Your Own Success, Customer Success Metrics to Track & Improve, The 6 Key Areas of Customer Success Metrics, Defining Goals, KPIs & Your Measurement System, How to Build & Manage a Customer Success Team, The Importance of a Well-Structured Customer Success Team. When CS teams have visibility into their accounts, they are able to be more proactive, responding to both customer opportunities and issues quickly. Organizations are often forced to use rigid, function-specific software and disconnected tools that prevent them from operating productively and effortlessly, and delivering a consistent, holistic customer experience. Additionally, there was a 32% increase in respondents who stated revenue impact such as account expansions and upsells (89%) were a key component of their bonus compensation. 78% of respondents reported that their team's were held responsible for revenue targets. The study also showed that companies with data-driven CS strategies gain 40% greater year-over-year growth in their annual revenue through hyper-personalizing interactions across each stage of the customer lifecycle. Customer Success salaries are continuing to trend upward as the industry matures and businesses are placing more value on the expertise and responsibilities of these CS professionals. Here is a quick taste of what you will find in this year's report: Over the past year, while most of us have been working remotely and adjusting to life in the midst of a global pandemic, Customer Success has been quietly surging right under our noses. More than 1,500 Customer Success professionals from around the world (more than twice the number of respondents we had in 2020) participated in this years survey. Americans made up more than half of the survey respondents with 79%, followed by Europe with 8%. Digital technology is no longer just a nice-to-have or a complement to in-person experiences; it is now a necessity and is crucial to the success of CS. However, over the past 12 months and especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, that growth has been even more significant. Throughout this report, well explore the key findings we discovered during our analysis of the data, including: Totango has surveyed the CS industry for the past eight years to create this annual report, which delivers a yearly view of how Customer Success is changing and how its impact on business is perceived. Here are some examples of how automation is fueling digital-first customer success. The importance of the customer is reflected in the Customer Success bonus structure. To reach a desired outcome, the team must become more aligned and must plan and execute together. Is It Better To Lease Or Buy A Car In Summer 2022? According to this years survey data, the median salary for a Customer Success Manager in 2021 is $94,000. SaaS firms will need to adapt to this growth and properly scale their services to meet future demand. We can see this shift in the reporting structure of CS teams. Customer Success is continuing to grow and mature. Another CSM introduced himself and followed the playbook of seeking problems to help us solve. This allows customer success teams to deliver support on a much larger scale than was previously possible. Customer success teams help customers reach their goals via their product or solution and close support. Customer Success teams are continuing to grow rapidly, and due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team sizes grew even larger and faster than in previous years. We were approached by a competitor who was able to convince us to switch. To touch all of our customers and keep them happy, we had to be able to scale, and in order to scale effectively, we had to be able to automate tasks and trust in our data sources. This new digital-first paradigm permeates the way CS is handled, at every phase of the customer journey from onboarding through escalation, renewal and beyond. This role is typically responsible for tasks like implementing CS strategies, revenue forecasting, monitoring customer usage, building advocacy and more. And well look at how Totangos AI bot Zoe uses artificial intelligence to facilitate customer success management, pointing toward the future of CS. In previous years, the focus of CS teams has been mainly on retaining customers and decreasing churn. Exceeding this limit tended to overwhelm CS teams and dilute support quality. The moral of the story here is that you must strive to never drop the ball. The SaaS industry largely saw a massive surge in adoption, as customers rapidly accelerated their technology implementation to support remote and distributed working. This makes it easy for team members to quickly retrieve customer data and knowledge base information needed to provide solutions. While great strides have been made in both recognition of the industry as well as the more widespread implementation of customer success software and best practices, there is still more room for growth in the customer success space. If you don't find and solve them, your competitor will. A reactive approach to customers (75%) and visibility into customer adoption and health (74%) were also rated as major-to-moderate challenges for CS teams. As customers receive value from a companys products and services, they add more users and use cases which in turn adds more value to the customer. Where CS was once a matter of dedicated success managers fielding phone calls, now the cutting edge of CS involves AI platforms delivering automated support at scale supplemented by human help as needed. Zoe integrates with Totangos Spark customer success management platform, which combines your customer data with key performance indicators, dashboards and automatic workflows called SuccessPlays to optimize your customer experience at each stage of the customer journey. Doing that will entail changes, and one of the most interesting ways SaaS firms must do this revolves around their approach to customer success. According to this years survey respondents, 76% of Customer Success teams consist of more than 10 members, which is up 27% from 2020. This growth cycle can drive increased expansion within the customer base as well as new logo customers as advocates who promote their successes through customer testimonials, referrals and other channels that help drive awareness and new business growth. In the last few years, our annual compensation survey has seen the title of Head of Customer Success become more prevalent. Obviously, it was a big loss for the first provider. Data can be segmented so that each team sees the information relevant to the teams goals. In the customer success mindset, not only do sales and support teams put themselves in the shoes of the customer now and for five or 10 years on, but they must also consider the customers customer. When data indicates low usage rates, automated or manual workflows can be triggered to steer customers toward more active engagement. The range of salaries for this role is vast due to the various sizes of the companies surveyed. He was our proactive advocate, seeking problems to help us solve. With this approach, the bulk of customer success is handled automatically, with manual one-on-one support triggered only when human help is needed. Imagine if the pandemic had struck 10 years ago. Due, in part, to the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a shift last year to bonus structures being more focused on the health of the customer and value delivered and how those factors are driving revenue. Zoe interfaces with other collaboration tools teams are already using, such as Slack. In recent years, organizations have been trending away from trying to simply gain as many customers as possible and focusing more on how to retain and expand revenue from each individual customer. Now that CS is being recognized as a critical function for operationalizing success and driving revenue growth, we are seeing more CS teams reporting to the Chief Operating Officer (29%) and the Chief Revenue Officer (16%). To achieve this end, its critical to ensure customer success teams are collaborating closely with sales and product teams to create these personalized customer solutions. Although Customer Success is now firmly a company-wide strategy, organizations are still often handicapped with multiple tools and disconnected data that resulted in inefficient workflows, broken communications and departmental silos. As a result, we are seeing a shift in the CSM to account ratio. Artificial intelligence in customer success has radically changed CS management. This is up 34% over 2020. CS managers can organize teams into groups aligned with company organizational structure and set success goals for CS teams just as you would for customers. The completed analysis provides many valuable insights into the trends of the customer success profession, including the unique challenges and goals of the industry. This idea is for support teams to develop more meaningful customer relationships. They pivoted so their customers still received great service. When asked about the goals of their CS teams, respondents rated churn reduction (94%), renewals (87%), and product adoption (86%) as their top high and medium priority goals. According to survey participants, the amount of time CS teams spend collaborating with Marketing has increased significantly this year with 43% of respondents stating they spend more than 50% of their time working with marketing, which is up 33% over last year. This flywheel concept and the enhanced focus on customer advocacy and expansion are also reflected in the growth of collaboration efforts between CS and other teams throughout organizations. By utilizing data-driven CS technologies, teams are able to gain a holistic view of each customer account, provide hyper-personalized interactions, automate repetitive tasks, and efficiently scale their businesses without having to scale their teams. In 2020, more than half of respondents (58%) reported making more than $175,000, while only 25% reported making between $200-250K, reflecting a continuing increase in salary for this role. Compensation structures have evolved to align with the increasing importance of customer success, reflecting a shift in revenue responsibility. There was also a greater focus on protecting strategic accounts and enabling efficiency through automation in order to scale, which meant a digital-first approach to CS became a necessity. Businesses are embracing the idea that CS is a company-wide effort to ensure customers attain value from their products and services, so that those customers will continue to renew their subscriptions, expand their product adoption, and become advocates for the brand. In addition, an incredible 91% of respondents stated that their teams had grown in size over the past year, with more than 12% stating they had grown by over 50%. The expansion of these collaboration efforts further demonstrates the increasing understanding that CS is more than just one team or department, but it is an enterprise-wide strategy that is critical to revenue and customer growth. The big difference is that the salespeople who implement CRS do not believe the customer journey really ends. It can also be used to increase the efficiency of support when escalation issues arise. Technology can also help you manage your customer success teams more efficiently in order to deliver your customers better CS support. Artificial intelligence in customer success is no longer an innovation but an established best practice.

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