Customer Success on The Academy: More Than a Platform

Today, we’re very excited to announce the launch of The Academy, a new content publishing platform dedicated to helping companies build and manage amazing subscription-based businesses. This is a place where businesses looking for concrete, actionable insights can go to learn how others have reinvented themselves in the wake of our connected world. The Academy is a community driven, living and breathing site loaded with great advice (guides, articles, videos) all aimed at helping companies create successful recurring revenue-based  businesses.

Since we’re launching in the midst of DreamForce, the first guide we’d like to feature is about Customer Success. Myself, along with April Oman, VP Customer Success at Zuora, give a deep dive in creating a “customer success” driven business. This should be invaluable for those looking to learn how to build a customer culture, learn why there are new set of metrics your business will be measured by, and learn how staying ahead of your customer is critical to your growth strategy.

 As we’ve been hearing over and over in all the amazing keynotes and breakout sessions here at Dreamforce, today as consumers we live in a pretty amazing world. We can communicate anywhere with anyone at any time. We’re more informed. We’re hyperconnected and we’re in control. And the way we buy has changed for good. We’ve shifted from buying products to experiencing services. In more and more aspects of our lives, we’ve separated the solution (a ride) from the device (a car).

We’re not as interested in managing physical assets. We’re interested in an experiences. Experiences that are personalized. Ones that we can access anywhere and share with any one, at any time. And we’re more confident than ever to share how we feel about these experiences – good or bad. From a business perspective this can be a daunting notion. How do you stay ahead of the billions of connected consumers out there? How do you make sure that when they arrive you’re there to greet them with a tailored experience?

That’s why Salesforce is so spot on with their Customer Success Platform announcement.

This shift is turning business upside down and inside out. Pivoting from selling products to managing services and creating experiences requires huge amounts of customer engagement as well as customer knowledge. Twentieth century companies focused on product metrics like units, margins, and inventory. Today it’s about relationship metrics like renewals, upsells and churn.

Companies are less concerned about the number of units shipped than the consistent, positive interactions they have with each and every one of their customers. The new critical business objective is to capture and personalize every customer interaction, to connect with customers in a whole new way. Because, at the end of the day, from a business’ perspective there’s a relationship there that you want to monetize.

But a platform alone is not going to transform your business. To transform your business from selling products to managing relationships, it needs to be about more of a cultural shift for your entire company. How do you get your entire company connected to your customers? How do you educate your staff on a model that is centered around relationships, and how that’s entirely different?

These are questions every company is asking themselves. With the launch of The Academy, we’re taking advantage of one of the best Customer Success teams on the planet to give you the answers.

So go ahead. Learn about Customer Success from the best in the business.  Don’t be shy. Check it out.

 

 

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