UserIQ’s Customer Success Trends for 2017 Infographic

In UserIQ’s first annual State of Customer Success and Trends for 2017 survey, we uncovered a wealth of valuable information and feedback from customer success leaders across small and large B2B SaaS organizations in a variety of industries.

The Customer Success approach emphasizes user sentiment and engagement after the initial sale which poses as a unique addition to standard sales and marketing functions. This gives rise to a variety of important new company objectives and related obstacles to accomplishing those objectives. There are four stages of the customer journey that Customer Success teams primarily focus on: initial adoption, retention over time, expansion of current accounts, and turning customers into advocates to drive new leads.

Check out the highlights in the Customer Success Trends for 2017 infographic below. For more, download the full Customer Success 2017 Trend Report.

Click the infographic to enlarge it.

We highlighted some of our findings:

1. Product adoption requires better alignment

Four out of five respondents agreed that “increasing product adoption” and “improving onboarding” were their most significant priorities in the coming year.

2. Customer retention requires greater visibility

Customer Success teams’ second highest priority is more directly revenue related: reduce customer churn. Nearly 40% of Customer Success teams today say that gaining visibility into customer health metrics and user behaviors is their number one challenge.

3. Account expansion requires smoother scalability

Respondents say that scaling is their second biggest challenge and one that is essential to helping them “win the mid-market” and “support multiple products.”

4. Client advocacy requires more proactivity

Qualitative reports frequently bring up the fact that CS teams are too reactive when they should be more proactive. One respondent put it simply: “As we’re able to become more proactive and less reactive,” the Customer Success role will start “going after more advocates, renewals, and referrals.”