We’ve officially kicked off our European leg of the Customer E.R.A.S. Tour here in London.
What’s E.R.A.S., you ask? (Hint: It’s so much more than a Taylor Swift homage.)
E.R.A.S. stands for Expansion, Adoption, Retention, Scale, and we’ve designed the E.R.A.S. framework to help you align your teams around tangible business outcomes that lead to higher NRR and greater product adoption. These four elements create a durable business that withstands the market—and in this economy, it’s more important than ever.
The Customer E.R.A.S. Tour brings together the best and brightest voices in Customer, Product, and Community across North America and Europe. This 14-stop tour spans from Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Austin to New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, Raleigh, and Toronto—and now, London and Berlin.
Last week, on March 14, we hosted 52 attendees at 1 Lombard Street. Many thanks to our panelists James Scott, Sr. CS Advisor and Fractional CCO at Growth Molecules, Sonia Leighton, CCO at Arbor Education, and Adam Joseph, RVP of CS EMEA at Gainsight for leading an insightful and engaging conversation.
If you missed it, fear not—here are my key takeaways from this incredible event.
1. Meaningful Metrics = Tangible Outcomes
One theme that came up again and again, is this: No matter what your goals are, it’s critical that you’re driving tangible outcomes that are defined by meaningful, measurable metrics—especially when it comes to your digital strategy.
For example, scale and efficiency were key objectives for all attendees. But it’s important to break down what efficiency means to your individual business (and where it is most lacking) and how it’s going to be effectively measured. The more specific, the better— think account ratios, number of hours save on a given activity, increased TTV, and more.
The only way to measure success is to have a clear metric for success. It’s the best way to demonstrate that you’re hitting goals and prove the ROI of your efforts to your customers, internal stakeholders, and across the organization.
2. The Rise of CSQLs
More and more, we’re hearing about the growing prevalence of Customer Success Qualified Leads (CSQLs). A CSQL is similar to a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) or Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), yet it is considerably higher in value because the lead is sourced from an existing customer.
The consensus is, CSMs should take an active role in revenue expansion, and CSQLs are a part of creating a more formalized process to ensure CSMs are involved in driving NRR.
At Gainsight, our CS team establishes CSQLs targets every quarter because, as the most customer-facing team, they are in the best position to identify new opportunities. They know the customer’s health and the indicators of portfolio growth. The relationship between Sales and CS is so valuable, and we expect to see it grow in 2023 to maximize efficiency.
3. The Power of Product-Led Growth
Businesses are increasingly recognizing the power of Product-Led Growth (PLG) to build efficiency and scale. PLG needs to be incorporated into Digital CS strategy in order to improve CS efficiencies as a whole. For instance, we heard how in-app onboarding engagements helped to increase the volume of customer onboarding.
As a whole, the importance of a tight-knit Product and CS collaboration was another recurring theme. This helps with creating a unified goal instead of separate objectives across Product and CS, and building out a customer engagement roadmap that is cohesive across internal teams.
Reassessing Your CS Priorities
In this economy, we’re all re-assessing how current market conditions are impacting Customer Success and what efforts to focus on.
Dive in deeper with Adam Joseph’s upcoming webinar, Being “Nice to Have” is no longer. enough: The importance of proving ROI to your customers to understand how to demonstrate the value of CS in today’s market.
