Customer Success Manager or an Account Manager: Whom do you need?

The SaaS business model relies laboriously on recurring payments and high retention rates. With that being said, a remarkable product and effective customer service stand out as essential roots for the growth and success of a business. Well, amusingly, Customer Success Managers has a larger chunk in that contribution!

Surprises knock the way, pretty much by churn and downgrades in the SaaS businesses. It’s unlikely if you haven’t experienced it by now. Having a look at metrics like retention rate that optimize the risk, the businesses may fall into.

Undeterred by your efforts, your customers are long gone before you can act upon their reasons for disappointment. Of course, it devours the ultimate factor of the business called “Revenue.”.

There comes customer success managers who dedicatedly help the customers to achieve the business outcomes using your product in the least possible time. And with this assistance, no wonder the customers would love to continue using the product.

And when the technology came to pitch in, there couldn’t be anything better than Custom Success Platforms that track every action taken by the users of your product to let you know at what stage of the customer journey the customer needs proactive intervention.

Customer Success Manager (CSM): What is it?

Customer Success Managers come into play with the sole objective of guiding the customers to attain the desired business objectives.

A bird can’t have an impeccable flight without two wings, right? Similarly, acquisition and retention are two such things that drive a SaaS company.

The acquisition is the means of increasing the customer base while the retention closely relates to growing the Customer Life Time Value throughout their product usage.

Statistics reveal that acquisition is far more expensive than retention for a fact that you need to begin from scratch to get the customers acquainted with the product they know nothing about.

Retention indeed brings in ROI and requires fewer efforts compared to the acquisition. If there is a 5% increase in retention, a profit of 95% is usually observed.

Now when you think about it, there is no way a SaaS business can consider losing a customer lightly. Customer success manager helps in driving value through proactive support that eventually helps to retain them.

The role of a customer success manager is different from customer support as the former is more of a proactive outreach compared to the reactive approach that support has.

If it weren’t for a customer, there wouldn’t be any CSMs!

It's long gone the days when closing deals was all that mattered. It is the era where you are repeatedly delivering value to the customers, and that’s where customer success managers come into the picture.

As soon as the sign-up upfronts the product, it is they who handle the customers! You might often mistake this with Account Managers, but there is a key difference between Account Managers and Customer Success Managers.

What is the difference between an account manager and a customer success manager?

The SaaS industry may need both of them. But let’s figure out the key distinctions first.

1. Perspectives

The Account Manager works in favor of an organization's responsibilities while still serving the customers to multiply renewals.

Customer Success Managers are bound to be centric to customers’ needs priorly, as well contribute to the growth of the company with a notion that renewals shall follow up with great customer service.

2. Approach

Account Managers come with a reactive approach where they show up when the customer seeks them. be it with dilemmas about the features of the product or if they need upgrades.

In contrast, customer success managers are working to give the best customer experience before the customer even needs them. From onboarding to adoption, usage to value realization, and finally in the advocacy stage as well. That’s what you call a proactive approach!

3. Interactions

You witness AMs, interact with the customers when the subscription is about to end and get involved in making sales to ensure they upgrade or renew the subscription.

Customer Success Managers captivate the user with their consistent efforts to aid the customer. They are actively upscaling and tracking the growth of the customers right from the beginning, to ensure they achieve their business goals with the best use of the product.

4. Skill Sets

A closer view of the skill sets brings out the drastic differences in how they operate, and you need both of them!

Account managers have the answers to all the logical questions of the customers as they are aware of every minute detail of the product.

When it’s about customer success managers, have to be knowledgeable about knowing the specifics of the customer’s business goals and outcomes while being aware of how the product can help them achieve them at all stages.

What are the major responsibilities of a customer success manager?

Onboarding Customers

The acquisition is not disregarded when compared to retention! Of course, we need customers to use our products. And ultimately, the experience and value of the product are only known to customers when well introduced.

CSM’s role is to make things easier for customers by introducing them to the shortest path to success and not to overwhelm them with unnecessary details.

The ultimate goal is to make them feel the effectiveness of the product, and that is achievable by allowing them to see the ROI as quickly as possible.

This all works perfectly fine when the Customer Success Managers ensure that they train the customers to use the product efficiently. While this practice assures renewal to your product from the customer's end.

That’s how customer onboarding works!

Proactive Resolutions

Fixing issues when the account is at risk, for example, looking into alerts, monitoring the health of the account, or engaging in solving critical queries are the kinds of things Customer Success Managers must work on.

The ideology is, deal with things before they get out of hand! This gives customers a sense of engagement and responsiveness.

Customers, when in vain, happen to feel that they are one call away from resolving their problems. When CSM’s are helping them to achieve necessary goals, it is also an opportunity to upsell and to get them to renew their subscriptions.

Thus, increasing retention while lowering the churn rate and upselling at the same time.

Subscription Renewal

“Statistics show that retaining customers is 9x cheaper than acquiring new ones and also increases revenue more than new acquisitions.”

They can make customers renew their subscriptions by delivering the value they need to achieve their business outcomes in the shortest period possible. With all the support they need throughout their journey and the building of customer relationships, CSMs can arrive at this point.

As long as the SaaS industry relies on recurring revenue, there is no other way but to follow up consciously! That’s a huge responsibility on the shoulders of the CSMs.

Upselling campaigns

The SaaS product doesn’t rely on only one subscription-based plan, right? Customers see the potential of upgrading when the customer success managers pitch in the value proposition at the right time!

While they are aware of the "what" and "how" of the customer’s business, it’s certain that they should also understand when to introduce them to the upgrades to enjoy the benefits of the advanced features.

When the CSMs have helped them on their journey, it becomes easier to approach them to upgrade. Remember, it’s not a forced task, it only adds value when they approach customers from the perspective of knowing the A-Z’s of the business!

Account Checks:

The focus is on enhancing the customer experience, especially for the unsatisfied customers, while also taking into account the satisfied customers. Studying the account health score is quite important for a CSM.

Understanding the account's health gives insights about,

Product health: - how well is the product used.
Relationship health: - how well they are interacting with the CSMs.
Support health - how many support tickets were raised?
Financial health -tells about downgrades, upgrades, and invoices overdue.

These insights from the indicators allow you to assess the risk factor of the customer account well ahead in time to take proactive intervention and help your customers in the journey.

This task can get a lot easier with Customer Success Platforms where account health monitoring is a piece of cake for the software that allows CSM’s to do better at their job. Otherwise, they are prone to see their unsatisfied customers leaving.
6. Advocacy:

It takes a lot to grab customers’ loyalty. Customer Success Managers get the opportunity to earn or break it! Well, this is more like a cherry on top of the cake! It’s because happy customers can bring in referrals more than you’d think to be a one-man army!

It all comes down to building a relationship with the customers. Just imagine what you’d do without it.

Wrapping up!

Customer Success Managers are no longer limited to what the customer support used to act upon. With the proactive approach, CSMs take their special role in the SaaS industry. Who especially aims at winning the hearts of the customers by understanding their pain points to arrive at the best solutions, that may astonish the customers.

While that ability outstands them from others in the industry playing similar roles, it becomes quintessential for the SaaS industry to pick them over Account Managers. Although it’s unfair to come to that conclusion directly because Account managers play a vital role along with CSMs when the matter is about the bigger firms.

A Customer Success Manager together with a Customer Success Platform can bring miraculous solutions as it can serve as an interface in achieving the desired outcomes of the customers.

What’s more heartbreaking than seeing a high churn rate? And to avoid that, extensive research was conducted to develop an easier solution to increase retention. That was none other than the “Customer Success Platform”.

And that’s the platform Customer Success Managers need to handle their responsibilities!