Nearly all SaaS companies are either increasing or maintaining their investment in customer success, with a notable rise in digital customer success efforts—48% of companies are currently adopting this approach. These insights come from a recent survey of 400 North American businesses, conducted by customer success platform Gainsight in collaboration with Benchmarkit, a B2B SaaS research firm.
Traditionally, the success of customer success initiatives has been measured by retention metrics, with 64% of companies using retention as their primary metric. However, there is a growing trend towards using revenue expansion as a key performance indicator.
Digital customer success (Digital CS) integrates both digital and human touchpoints to support customers. Companies aiming to achieve more with fewer resources are increasingly adopting a “digital first” strategy. Although it is still early for comprehensive data on KPIs for Digital CS, the goals remain the same as traditional customer success: acquisition, retention, and expansion.
The top three channels for Digital CS operations are digital events (such as webinars and conferences, used by 78% of companies), marketing automation (65%), and in-app messaging (56%).
Why it matters: It’s important to note that Gainsight, with its range of customer success and community offerings, is not an unbiased observer. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to compare the strong commitment to customer success among SaaS companies with the common perception that customers only hear from them when it’s time to renew their subscriptions. This perception underscores a focus on retention rather than addressing customer problems, which could also drive revenue growth.
While the combination of digital and human efforts seems like an obvious choice for efficiently managing customer success resources, it likely can’t yet match the level of support provided by a human who is familiar with the account. Requests that go beyond digital capabilities will need to be promptly directed to the appropriate person.