Atlanta, Georgia (PRWEB) December 13, 2016 -- UserIQ, a Customer Growth Platform™ that empowers SaaS companies to foster growth beyond the funnel™, released a report with results of a survey completed by nearly 150 customer success leaders early this fall. The findings were first announced last week as part of UserIQ’s webinar which highlighted how customer success teams can capitalize on the customer journey to scale quickly and ensure a lasting seat in the C-suite.
Findings indicated that most customer success departments are still less than three years old, and roughly 75% of those teams are staffed with only a handful of people. Yet, despite having fewer resources than more established sales and marketing departments, customer success initiatives have a visible and repeatable return on investment and 73% plan to significantly grow their teams in the next 12 months. This rapid growth suggests a mindset shift in how we think about customers—how they engage and what level of commitment represents real success. Here’s a summary of the five key trends that emerged from the survey.
1. Cross-department alignment will be key to improving product adoption and the overall customer journey as 78% of respondents said their customer success teams are not ideally aligned with marketing and sales.
2. Better user intelligence is needed as teams aim to understand customer health and minimize churn, with 55% of respondents saying visibility into customer health and user behavior is their biggest challenge to retention.
3. Effective scaling through technology will determine if organizations are successful with client retention and expansion initiatives.
4. Proactive rather than reactive initiatives will need to be prioritized for client referrals and advocacy to drive net new revenue, and respondents agreed with 40% saying they struggled to identify advocates due to being over-burdened.
5. An efficient technology stack is vital to help teams scale and move towards strategies focused on growing their customers for the year to come, however only 25.6% of respondents currently use a customer success (or similar) platform.
“The results show that SaaS companies need a dedicated customer success platform to help them align with sales and marketing, gain visibility into customer health, and scale,” said Aaron Aycock, CEO and co-founder at UserIQ. “The teams that manage to simplify and use software to bear the workload, rather than contribute to it, will be best poised to set the standard for best-in-class companies in 2017.”
The full report: ‘Customer Success 2017 Trend Report: Securing the Future of Customer Success’ can be accessed here.
About UserIQ
Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, UserIQ was founded in 2014 to help SaaS companies transform the way they engage with their customers. From adoption and retention to expansion and advocacy, UserIQ combines user intelligence, targeted engagements, and customer health to deliver what each customer needs to be successful in every moment. In 2016, the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) recognized UserIQ as a ‘Top 10 Most Innovative Company.’ For more information on UserIQ, visit useriq.com and follow us on Twitter @UserIQ.
Nicole Wojno, UserIQ, http://www.useriq.com, +1 404-452-9101, [email protected]
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