Customer Success Trends and Predictions You Need to Know in 2024
Customer success teams have become more important revenue drivers for SaaS companies. With their skills and expertise, combined with advanced CS tools and well-crafted strategies, they can ensure a business’s sustainable and steady growth.
However, in these difficult economic times, customer retention and acquisition budgets and resources are more limited than ever, and the pressure on the CS team to deliver outstanding results grows by day. To adapt to customer expectations and meet them at every step of their journey, CS teams must apply the best strategies but also develop new ones as they go.
In the following article, we will cover the latest customer success trends and predictions that can help you improve your customer success efforts and achieve sustained success.
Top 12 Customer Success Trends and Predictions
Customer success growth relies on the ability of customer success managers to continually nurture customer relationships and identify opportunities for revenue growth. Still, staying ahead of industry trends and constantly innovating and adapting to changing customer demands remains one of their main and most challenging roles.
1. Proactive Customer Engagement
Reacting proactively instead of reacting only when the issue arises is one of the major changes in customer success. Thanks to the advanced CS tools and technologies that enable predictive analytics, SaaS companies can now (and will do so even more in the future) identify potential issues and opportunities for engagement.
2. Customized Customer Journeys
Personalization is imperative in the customer success industry. Creating a customized customer journey where each customer’s goals and needs are addressed has become one of the most effective customer success strategies in 2024. The future of customer success will rely heavily on advanced customer segmentation tools that can enhance the customer experience and drive positive outcomes.
3. Focusing on customer success metrics
As the customer-centric approach has been put in the spotlight for customer success, the focus from product usage metrics has shifted to those related to customer success outcomes. It is predicted that customer success metrics will increasingly reflect the outcomes and benefits customers achieve, like business impact and ROI.
4. Digital Customer Success and Automation
The future of customer success depends on leveraging automation and digital channels to scale CS efforts. Customer success software will become even more sophisticated and refined thanks to artificial intelligence learning, which will ensure more personalized and proactive customer service and support.
5. Development on CS Ops Teams
Customer success operations (CS Ops) teams operate behind the scenes and help customer success managers perform their jobs more efficiently. They are responsible for collecting, managing, and analyzing customer data, streamlining customer success activities, implementing adequate CS technologies that are used by customer success teams, reporting, and much more. Their role will be even more vital in the future, as they can effectively improve all customer success efforts.
6. Collaboration with Product Teams
Customer feedback is a valuable source of insights that can help SaaS companies improve their customer service, support, and even products. This is why integration with product teams is one of the most prevalent trends in customer success nowadays. Regular cross-departmental meetings between customer success teams and product development teams have already increased, and in the future, they will be a part of the regular agenda.
7. Increased Artificial Intelligence Utilization
Using advanced predictive analytics and AI tools for measuring and optimizing customer success has become an integrated part of customer success teams’ workflows. In the future, the usage of AI-powered chatbots, intelligent systems and automated workflows will become even more prevalent in SaaS customer success operations.
8. Improving Customer Training and Education
Having powerful customer educational and training programs can speed up product adoption and improve the overall customer experience. Still, creating interactive and on-demand learning programs is yet to come, and exciting times are ahead of us!
9. Developing Customer Advocacy Programs
Customer success managers are responsible for identifying customers who are willing to become brand advocates. In the future, creating attractive advocacy programs will become one of the top priorities for customer success plans, as positive word-of-mouth will always remain a powerful marketing tool. As customer success has always been focused on preventing customer churn, which will remain a top priority, it is expected that in the future, customer expansion and advocacy will become vital.
10. Nurturing Customer Success Culture
Personalization and a customer-centric approach go hand in hand with customer success in 2024. Although customer-centric culture has already been incorporated in many SaaS companies, it is expected that in the future, every team member will somehow contribute to customer success. This is why including cross-functional training is and will remain imperative.
11. Customer Success Going Global
As your customer base expands, so does your reach. This is why multilingual support, region-specific programs and culturally customized approaches will become more prevalent in SaaS companies as they expand globally.
12. Customer Health Scoring
Customer health scoring is a methodology that CS teams use to assess the overall satisfaction and health of their customers and their accounts. Thanks to health scoring, CS teams can identify at-risk customers and those who have the potential for upselling and cross-selling. When you evaluate customer health scores adequately and carefully, you can get valuable insights that can help you create powerful customer success and engagement strategies. With Akita’s powerful customer health scoring tools, you can create and customize your own health scoring models based on the unique metrics that matter to your business the most. You can also monitor customer health scores at all times, track the changes and trendsˇ.
Conclusion
Customer success teams have become one of the most valuable assets of any SaaS company, thanks to their abilities to transform new customers into brand advocates and successfully identify opportunities for revenue growth and expansion. By following the given customer success trends, you can empower your CS strategies and stay inspired to constantly learn and find new ways to answer ever-growing customer demands.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a future for customer success?
YES! The future of customer success is full of potential. Businesses will continue to prioritize customer retention, satisfaction, and growth, and the role of CS will become even more vital for the survival of SaaS businesses.
Is customer success a growing field?
Another big yes! Customer success is growing rapidly thanks to the shift to subscription-based models, the growing focus on customer retention and the increased importance of customer-centric culture.
What are the three goals of customer success?
The three goals of customer success include customer retention, customer satisfaction and advocacy, and customer growth and expansion.