The Internet of Customers | Dreamforce 2013 Recap

Well in case you missed it last week, a small company called Salesforce.com hosted their annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.  The destination event managed to drive over 100,000 people to the city by the bay, resulting in a whole lot of traffic, but even more excitement over the future of the enterprise cloud computing ecosystem.

At the conference, Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff outlined the company’s vision by announcing the arrival of the “Internet of Customers” era.  The premise is simple—that behind all the technology and every online connection is the customer, the single most important element in any business equation. Although the moniker may be new, the spirit has been here all along.  Salesforce has put the stake in the ground, validating the CSM movement on a grandiose scale and ensuring that 2014 will certainly be the year of Customer Success.

We were incredibly excited to officially debut Customer Success on cloud computing’s biggest stage this year and support the Salesforce team as they unveil their new customer-centric messaging.  For those who did not attend the conference, we filmed a recap (below) that captures all of the highlights, including the first Customer Success session in the Dreamforce agenda, a flash mob of dancing churnbots, a Mini Cooper giveaway, and much more!

 We also spent time with a few familiar faces, Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta, Chief Customer Officer Dan Steinman, and Entrepreneur and Founder of EchoSign Jason Lemkin.  Don’t let the mustaches fool you, these gentlemen had a ton of wisdom to share on the ROI of Customer Success and how the movement is gaining velocity in the subscription economy.

Jason Lemkin, Entrepreneur and Founder of EchoSign
“For every dollar that Sales brings in, you get about 6x on the backend on average out of Customer Success.”

 Nick Mehta, Chief Executive Officer at Gainsight
“Customer Success isn’t a technology, it’s a movement.  Fundamentally, it’s a whole philosophy which comes down to the fact that businesses now have to focus on making their customers successful, otherwise they’ll leave you.”

Dan Steinman, Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight
“Every company, when they start, they think first about a CRM system, but it doesn’t take very long before they’re also thinking about whose going to be their marketing automation vendor, and we think the third leg of the stool is whose going to be your Customer Success application vendor.”

As the curtains close on Dreamforce 2013, our mission at Gainsight remains just as passionately aligned as ever:  to lead the world in Customer Success and help customer-driven businesses across the globe make their clients truly successful in this new era.  The fun part is — we’re only getting started.

 

 

Anthony Kennada (@akennada) is the Head of Marketing at Gainsight, the leading Customer Success Management platform. Anthony started his career as an early employee at Box, and worked with Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta at his previous company, LiveOffice, which sold to Symantec in January 2012 for $115M.