The Customer Success Journey - One Year on

It has been a long time since I last blogged. However, a lot has happened since then...Exactly this time last year, I moved away from my 8 years experience in Sales to join Oracle Dyn Customer Success team. 

Background on Oracle + Dyn: Historically Dyn, have always been famous for being an Internet performance service which consisted in providing Managed DNS, Traffic steering, Dynamic DNS and providing bulk and transactional email services. Then more recently we became, in my eyes, a much more strategic partner to our clients by providing Security services. This consists of Web Application Security, where we are able to offer products to monitor, control, secure and optimize online infrastructure. 

What is Customer Success?

Let’s start with this…It costs 5x more to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one. Therefore, it’s very important to make sales, but just as important, to make true lifelong clients. The development of having a loyal customer requires more than just the involvement of Account managers, it requires a commitment from the ‘Top down’ from the CEO, Directors, Sales leadership, Account Managers and every other department within your company.  Ensuring your clients have a positive experience with your company services should be at the heart of organisations. 

Across the high technology industry and beyond, Customer Success departments have been gaining momentum. Amongst many things, Customer Success’s main role is to surround itself around Customer relationship, retention and optizimation. It’s easy to figure out that the best way to keep your client base is to make them successful in using your product offering. 

Stepping away slightly, as said, I spent 8 years in the thriving Cyber Security sector selling solutions, Security awareness, consultancy services etc to a wide range of diverse companies. Having sold appliances and SaaS based solutions, one thing that the market was missing was looking under the ‘hood’ to see if the end users were really adopting the services and truly working with the end client. Especially with having a department that was devoted to concentrating on this area. I wanted a change, this is where I came across 'Customer Success'. This for me was exactly what the Industry needed and relatively new concept to the EMEA and APAC market. 

After one year in Customer Success, what have I learnt? Firstly, I have come to the realisation that Customer Success is different depending on what sector/organisation you are in, however Oracle Dyn are a SaaS based company, where the power (as it should) is with the clients. However, it’s relatively new to the EMEA region so at the beginning I spent more time with clients, explaining what the role is...

I once heard that Customer Success is like a personal trainer in a gym. Stay with me on this...You enrol yourself into a gym and pay a monthly fee. Now if you’re like most people you don’t actually attend. Despite the expense, it is thought that around 80% of Americans who have a gym membership do not use it…That is money unnecessarily going down the drain. Now this maybe down to circumstances but most people need motivation, drive or simply know how to use the tools that are at the gym...To get the best results you need to understand what tools you can utilise to reach your goals. As a starter, you need to understand; what are the goals you are going to set yourself? is it a short term or long term fix? What areas are you concentrating on? How do you even get started? Now that’s where a Personal trainer comes into play. Listening, long-term guidance, reducing the risk of you packing it all in, learning effective and efficient techniques in using the tools. 
That’s exactly what I do as a Customer Success Manager. Working with a sub-set of strategic accounts to make sure we are driving adoption, utilization, engagement and retention. Focusing on retention, growth where possible, and support our clients.