In December, myself and John Gleeson, Vice President of Customer Success at Motive, co-hosted a dinner discussion with top customer success executives. We focused on how their teams are handling the current economic climate and the challenges that have come along with that. Here are the things that stood out.

Do more with less

If there’s one thing that came up over and over again during dinner, it was this. CS’s book of business is increasing significantly, but their teams are not growing. This has leadership focused on figuring out how to increase NRR with the teams they have today, which means optimizing processes, working smarter, and doing more with less.

Scaling programmatically

One of the answers to doing more with less seems to be scaling programmatically. Especially as companies shift to the rule of 40, the efficiency of the CS org is at play, and throwing bodies at a problem is not an option. CS is now being incorporated into the cost of sales, so scaling outreach to accounts and helping drive adoption across a wider swatch of customers increases the value of the CS team.

Getting CS a seat at the product table

Even though CS has always had a front row seat to customers and their pain points, it hasn’t always followed that they are a significant influencer of product decisions. However, CS teams are subject matter experts and advisors that show customers new and better ways of getting things done. With this in mind, their alignment with product has become more imperative.

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Thank you to all of the customer success leaders who attended and shared your invaluable perspectives!