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Is Customer Success embedded in your revenue process?

  • November 7, 2022
  • 6 replies
  • 147 views

NicoleA
Engaged Member
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What’s one thing all CS leaders know to be true?

That Customer Success is critical to revenue.

 

But with so many different org structures and tools, are we effectively integrating customer health and retention into the revenue process? It’s a hot topic– especially in this economic climate.

 

Here are five ways I’ve seen Clari and our customers improving collaboration and governance in the recurring revenue base:
 

  1. Pull customer health into Clari and look at Renewal ARR in your Green, Yellow, and Red Accounts. Keep a widget on your favorite dashboard to monitor the health of renewals in the current and future quarters, or layer health directly into your forecasting views.
     

  2. Tighten up churn reasons and constantly evaluate where the churn is coming from.  Use those same reasons to track future risks (and require your team to populate them) to adapt to evolving pressures. I have those right on my customer health dashboard. We also run churn reviews after every quarter to review risks and churned accounts so we can adapt our tactics cross-functionally.
     

  3. Use Account Engagement to monitor where CSMs spend their time (Are the accounts with significant upcoming renewals getting enough attention?) and real-time coaching with Wingman to help them make the most of customer interactions. 
     

  4. Ensure the customer base health and churn are a regular conversation at QBRs and executive meetings (hint: we pull up a Clari dashboard to drive the discussion instead of making slides).
     

  5. Run a tight process to manage key renewals and build Mutual Action Plans in Clari Align to ensure your renewals close on time.  

 

I want to hear from you! What are ways that you are improving precision in revenue retention? 

6 replies

These are great NicoleA! I currently work on a team that does a number of these but we also do the three I listed below to help forecast and retain our revenue:
 

  1. Cross Functional Renewal Reviews – Or heal desk as we call it. CS organizes meetings with individuals from multiple functions (Support, Sales, CS, PS, Renewals) to discuss risks and help identify ways to resolve any issues a customer may have. Ideally decisions makers are present and able to make changes that can directly support the customer.
     
  2. NPS Survey – What is impacting one customer may be impacting many. An annual or rolling NPS survey will allow the CS org to get ahead of any issues that might be bubbling up across the customer base. This ultimately allows for earlier identification of risk and a reduction in churn across the board.
     
  3. Churn Forecasting – Clari makes it easy for an individual contributor to flag and forecast risks on renewal opportunities. These forecasts are then seamlessly rolled up to a total customer success team number while easily providing the ability to drill down into a bottoms up view.

NicoleA
Engaged Member
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  • Author
  • Engaged Member
  • November 9, 2022

Love this @Michael Stebbins !  Churn forecasting is a great way to elevate the conversation and bring real value to your CRO and CFO. 


Parin Lad
Clari
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  • Clari
  • November 9, 2022

@mspanik @Liz Dwan - check out this thread and if there is anyone that we need to connect with in your Customer Success org to help instrument these ideas in Clari, would love to have that conversation. 


mspanik
Engaged Member
  • Engaged Member
  • November 10, 2022

Very relevant topic, but I think #6 is missing from your list @NicoleA. One of the low hanging fruits is making sure that the CSM leadership is invited to global forecast calls and regional CSMs are invited to regional forecast calls. Renewals are often used as a compelling event to review the strategy and explore further use cases and live upsell opps often impact renewals.


Parin Lad
Clari
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  • Clari
  • November 10, 2022

100% agree @mspanik! Having CS fully involved in a collaborative forecasting process is great advice. 


jparawan
Clari
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  • Clari
  • December 1, 2022

@Kiona Padilla - thought you may be interested in this post as it includes additional areas to consider that factor into net retention.