2013 STATE OF THE PROFESSION: CUSTOMER SUCCESS

PRESENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. The Average Customer Success Profile………………………..............................................................4

2. Our Customer Success participants...............................................................................................

2.1 Participant title breakdown………......................................................................................6

2.2 Where does their Customer Success function report to?..............................................7

2.3 How long has the Customer Success function been around?.......................................8

3. Top 10 Customer Success challenges............................................................................................9

3.1 Where else are Customer Success professionals facing challenges?...........................10

3.2 Analysis of Customer Success Challenges.......................................................................11

4. Looking into the Customer Success Toolbox................................................................................12

5. Anatomy of Customer Success Compensation.............................................................................14

5.1 Customer Success Annual Salary Distribution………………………..……………………………….15

5.2 Average compensation by title..........................................................................................16

5.3 Customer Success compensation structure....................................................................17

5.4 Customer Success compensation trends.........................................................................18

5.5 Things to negotiate for compensation..............................................................................19

5.6 Who earns the most/least on each end of the salary spectrum?..................................20

5.7 Is there a correlation between experience and compensation?....................................21

5.8 What about education and compensation? .....................................................................22

6. Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................23

7. Infographic.........................................................................................................................................24

8. About Totango...................................................................................................................................25

WHO ARE YOU, CUSTOMER SUCCESS PROFESSIONAL? 3

THE AVERAGE CUSTOMER SUCCESS PROFESSIONAL PROFILE Title: Customer Success Manager Experience: 6.5 years in Customer Success or working directly with customers Background in: Sales/Customer Support Compensation Structure: Base salary + commission/bonus Annual Salary Range: $100-125k Reports to: VP Customer Success Team Size: 14 people We’ve had Customer Success for: 1-3 years Biggest challenges:

1. Lack of direction 2. Lack of tools/info to manage customer info

Vertical: Computer software Education: Graduated with bachelor’s degree

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MEET OUR SURVEY PARTICIPANTS 5

Our survey base spanned across multiple industry verticals such as: SaaS, analytics, broadcast, technology, email marketing services, call centers, project management, building systems, finance, automotive, and much more. We had a nice mix of participants from all levels ranging from Associate to Director to VPs of Customer Success.

BREAKDOWN OF PARTICIPANT BY TITLES

19% 1%

9%

71%

Director

Associate

VP

Manager

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True to its infiltrating nature, the Customer Success function has touched every department of an organization. This also makes it difficult to pinpoint who would be responsible for such a function. Many companies (47.1%) have dedicated a new organization to Customer Success, with 15.7% reporting directly to the CEO. It’s important that Customer Success professionals are able to represent the customers at the executive level. For some companies, Customer Success is a fairly new introduction to their business processes; but there is a growing need for benchmarks and best practices to help instill this growth.

Customer Success 47%

CEO 16%

COO 3%

Sales 10%

Marketing 3%

CTO 1%

Chief Customer Officer 6%

Client Services 3%

Other 11%

WHERE DOES THEIR CUSTOMER SUCCESS FUNCTION REPORT TO?

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HOW LONG HAS THEIR CUSTOMER SUCCESS FUNCTION BEEN AROUND?

37%

36%

26%

1%

More than 3 years

Between 1-3 years

Under 1 year

Just started

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TOP 10 COMMON CUSTOMER SUCCESS CHALLENGES Most of the Customer Success professionals share similar issues - here the most 10 frequent ones (in order of urgency):

1.  Need direction/Lack of information/tools to manage customer info 2.  External communication (with customers) 3.  Adoption 4.  Onboarding 5.  Unclear definition or understanding of CSM role/customer culture 6.  Internal communication (sales and other departments) 7.  Product training 8.  Measuring and acting on engagement 9.  Lack of personnel in team 10.  Identifying at-risk customers

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•  Balancing time between selling/retention/relationships •  Retention/Renewals •  Customer employee turnover •  Accurate measurement/Analytics •  Technical Support issues •  Prioritize leads Budget •  Predict customer behavior •  Measurement usage/adoption •  Customer software usage

WHERE ELSE ARE CUSTOMER SUCCESS PROFESSIONALS FACING CHALLENGES?

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37% of our survey population shared that Customer Success has been in their organization for more than 3 years, but still, as seen in the top 10 challenges, 13% complain that there is unclear definition/understanding of the CSM role. In general, the Customer Success function is pretty new. Most of the Customer Success professionals have only been in this field between 0-2 years. (41%).

About a quarter (24%) of Customer Success professionals come from a Sales background and therefore may need direction or new tools on how to approach the customer from a different point of view, which is not pushing for a deal but understanding customer needs and leveraging their success.

Most frequently, these professionals ask: •  When does my role between firefighter and

customer advocate begin or end? •  My team is overwhelmed. The customer to CSM

ratio is too high, how can I manage this effectively? •  What can I do when I feel like I have no authority

or influence on product decision or priorities? •  How can I convince our executives of the value of

our work and not just another extra department? •  How can I improve communication with other

departments like sales or support to solidify our customer understanding?

Even though these professionals ultimately want to help the customer be successful, it helps to empower them with the right training and tools. It’s important to help these professionals achieve the goal of being the customer’s advisor and advocate. A good place to start is to create a company-wide understanding of customer success: what does it mean? What is considered a successful customer? How can we bring the customer’s voice into the boardroom? It would be a good idea to introduce structured training for their customer success teams.

ANALYSIS OF CUSTOMER SUCCESS CHALLENGES

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LOOKING INTO THE CUSTOMER SUCCESS TOOLBOX

5.2%

5.5%

6.2%

7.7%

11.9%

21.1%

21.7%

26.3%

Office Suite

Customer Engagement Management

Helpdesk

Proprietary (homegrown)

Analytics Tools

Communications

Other (social media, soft skills, etc)

CRM

TOP TOOLS USED DAILY IN CUSTOMER SUCCESS

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Salesforce was the big winner among our participants as CRM of choice, followed by social media and communications tools. Following close behind was the need for customer analytics. In order to better manage the customer journey, key data for Customer Success professionals comes from these customer intelligence tools to identify growth opportunities and at-risk accounts.

One repeated comment from the surveyed participants who had to manually analyze their customer data was the need to have amazing Excel kung fu. Our Customer Success professionals made it a point to touch base with their accounts while also providing added value via video conferencing, personal emails, and monitoring usage.

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ANATOMY OF CUSTOMER SUCCESS COMPENSATION Factor in experience and how established the customer success function is, and you’ll find there’s a great range of how Customer Success professionals are being compensated. The average Customer Success professional makes between $100,001-125,000 annually.

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$0-50,000 10%

$50,001-75,000 14%

$75,001-100,000 22%

$100,001-125,000 24%

$125,001-150,000 17%

$150,001-175,000 4%

$175,001-200,000 2%

$200,000+ 7%

CUSTOMER SUCCESS ANNUAL SALARY DISTRIBUTION

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AVERAGE COMPENSATION BY TITLE Below is the average annual compensation of Customer Success professionals at VP, Director, and Manager level respectively.

$90,750

$130,769

$181,250

Customer Success Manager

Director of Customer Success

VP of Customer Success

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CUSTOMER SUCCESS COMPENSATION STRUCTURE An interesting find was that a majority of customer success professionals are compensated first with a base salary then with added perks like commission and bonuses from the success of their accounts.

76%

17%

7%

Base+Commission/Bonus

Base Only

Commission Only

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CUSTOMER SUCCESS COMPENSATION TRENDS Altogether, 91% of our survey participants received a base salary. From that number, 64% also received a bonus in addition to the base salary, while 33% received commission for upsells/renewals in addition to their base salary.

64%  

33%  

Base  Salary   Receive  bonus  in  addi7on  to  base  salary  

Receive  commission  in  addi7on  to  base  salary  

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THINGS TO NEGOTIATE FOR COMPENSATION

Here’s the breakdown on how Customer Success executives are being compensated for commission and/or bonuses: q  % of sales q  % of renewal revenue, quarterly q  % of upsell revenue q  % of project value q  % of target met in relation to available bonus

q  Reverse % of churn q  Team performance q  Personal performance q  Company performance q  Set percentage

In some cases, a certain threshold must be met before commissions/bonuses are activated.

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WHO EARNS THE MOST/LEAST ON EACH END OF THE SALARY SPECTRUM?

Those on the higher end of the salary spectrum ($175k+) make up only 5.7% of the survey population. •  Sr. Managers 20% •  Directors 20% •  SVPs 60%

Those who are on the lower end of the salary spectrum ($0-50k) make up 10% of the survey population. •  Managers 58% •  Leader 14% •  Specialist 14% •  Associate 14%

Those in the middle of the salary spectrum ($100-125k) account for 24% of our survey population. •  Managers 80% •  Directors 10% •  Head of Customer Success 10%

LOW   HIGH  

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IS THERE A CORRELATION BETWEEN EXPERIENCE AND COMPENSATION? Those who earn the most ($175k+) are NOT the most experienced workers, but the majority have worked 3-10 years: •  0-1 year: 20% •  1-2 years: 0% •  3-10 years: 80% •  10+ years: 0%

Those who earn the least ($0-50k) are the less experienced workers - most of them have only worked 1-2 years: •  0-1 year: 14% •  1-2 years: 72% •  3-10 years: 14% •  10+ years: 0

Most of those who earn the median salary ($100-125k) have only 1-2 years experience. However, here is where the most experienced workers are too - 24% of the survey population in the median salary range have worked for 10+ years! •  0-1 year: 0% •  1-2 years: 47% •  3-10 years: 29% •  10+ years: 24%

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WHAT ABOUT EDUCATION AND COMPENSATION?

Interestingly, those who earn the most ($175k+) are not the most educated. Only 20% graduated with an MBA.

Those who fall in the median salary range ($100-125k) have mostly graduated with a bachelor’s degree (41%) and also 29% have MBA and we can see even 6% with PhD, therefore we can assume that this market invests time in higher education, however, educated as they might be, the big sharks show us that education might not be the key for high salary!

Graduated with MBA/Masters: 20% Graduated with Bachelor’s Degree: 40% Graduated with Associate’s Degree: 40%

Graduated with PhD: 6% Graduated with MBA/Masters: 29% Graduated with Bachelor’s Degree: 41% Graduated with Associate’s Degree: 18% Incomplete Degree: 6%

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CONCLUSION The Customer Success function is starting to emerge at all organization levels, including executive ones. Customer success professionals come from varying experience and backgrounds, but their goals are the same: reduce churn and earn customer loyalty. Here is the 2013 State of the Customer Success Profession: 1. Customer Success is still emerging (and growing). Businesses are in the process of trying to understand how to organize customer success and manage compensation. 2. Businesses are missing the Customer Success Playbook. They are figuring out how to define the role of Customer Success. What are their goals? How is their performance measured? How can this role be more integrated in other aspects of the business? More importantly, they need internal buy-in by upper management for more successful adoption. 3. There is a need for the right technologies and tools. Being able to narrow down the wide array of homegrown or scattered tools will help streamline customer success processes. Customer Success professionals are looking for better ways to prioritize accounts, monitor and analyze, as well as improve communications both internally and externally.

Learn more about being a Pro-Customer Company at www.totango.com

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ABOUT TOTANGO

We’re a full-service Customer Engagement Management platform for online businesses.

Totango’s Customer Engagement platform helps online services create an active and engaged user base. Totango combines big data analytics with powerful segmentation and engagement tools to allow online services to take the right actions with each customer, in real time. End-users become happier and more successful – driving usage and adoption, increasing conversions, sales and lifetime value while reducing churn.

In the Customer Era, the whole dynamic and interaction model between vendors and users have changed. Whether it’s for Customer Success or any function in your business, Totango was built from the ground up to help businesses deliver more value and drive more active and engaged users – the foundation for business success.

Find out more or start your free trial at www.totango.com. 25