During a dinner discussion with customer success executives in Q1 2023, we learned more about how customer success leaders are shifting their teams’ processes and discovering new strategies for making CS work in the current economic climate. Here are some of the top takeaways.

Do more with less

Again, the most common (and seemingly most important) theme across our conversations with customer success executives is that their teams are in a place where doing more with less is absolutely vital. As business increases, CS team sizes are not increasing — which means CS executives are needing to discover strategies for how to drive NRR with fewer resources. 

Increase account coverage

It seems that every CS leader we spoke with is focused on making their team more efficient so that they can increase account coverage without increasing headcount, even at companies with tens of thousands of accounts. With so many accounts to manage, these leaders say it’s becoming more and more essential for CS teams to rely on tech and automation for repeatable processes. 

Scale programmatically

As our CS leaders work to do more with less and increase account coverage with fewer resources, they reiterated that another main focus is to scale programmatically. With the rule of 40 in play and CS incorporated into the cost of sales, CS orgs must be efficient while driving adoption and scaling outreach to more accounts in order to increase the value of the CS team.

Better incentivization

Another topic of conversation that came up was about compensation for CS teams. Many CS leaders we spoke with are focused on finding ways to better compensate and incentivize their teams in today’s environment. They’re exploring methods of tying compensation and incentives to NRR or GRR for the book of business that each CSM or account manager is responsible for.

Simplify touchpoints

Lastly, the CS leaders we spoke with mentioned a need to simplify touchpoints with customers. While customer success activities differ based on the complexity or industry of the product, larger enterprises are making an effort to trim who touches accounts on a regular basis. Rather than having multiple team members (AE, CS, value engineer, and more) meeting with the customer at different times, they’re working to simplify the points of contact for each account. To help with this, they’re making an effort to clarify who to reach out to and when.

Learn more perspectives from CS leaders who are doing more with less in this webinar.