AMA: AlertMedia VP, Customer Success, Trevor Flegenheimer on Customer Success KPIs

I think the single worst KPI is 'customer touchpoints.' Customers don't want to be bothered unless you have information that is valuable to them that commands them to stop what they're doing and spend time with you. It's not enough to go about talking to every customer every month in a 'check-in.' It's much better to hold off for 3 months until you can have a value-driven conversation. Additionally, I find certain CS SLAs to be sub-optimal KPIs. If CSMs are supposed to be proactive, that means t ...Read More

This is a great question! As the first Customer Success hire, I would start by getting a lay of the land of the business -- what is the customer sentiment, how are renewal rates, how often do customers expand their usage with new products, etc. You don't want to immediately tie yourself to KPIs that are major problems because it's unlikely that you can, singlehandedly, change them in your first few months. Instead, find the areas where you can deliver a quick impact -- are cross-sells being left ...Read More

The Customer Success and Account Management relationship is critical to the overall health of the business, especially if Net Revenue Retention is a key metric. Often times, for this relationship, Customer Success can help identify sales opportunities in the form of CSQLs for the Account Management team to close and Account Management can spot potential risk for Customer Success to get in front of to prevent churn. Ensuring the team's scorecards are aligned to a common goal is necessary to foste ...Read More

The important thing is to start measuring items. Your initial 'goal' may be off, but you won't know that until you start measuring it and having your team work towards a KPI. Be open with them that this is a trial period that nobody's performance will be managed based on if they hit the number out of the gate. And then adjust from there -- if people are overachieving, up the target; if people are consistently struggling to hit, lower the bar. Once you've found the sweet spot, then you can add co ...Read More

There was another question similar to this, so including my answer here: I think the single worst KPI is 'customer touchpoints.' Customers don't want to be bothered unless you have information that is valuable to them that commands them to stop what they're doing and spend time with you. It's not enough to go about talking to every customer every month in a 'check-in.' It's much better to hold off for 3 months until you can have a value-driven conversation. Additionally, I find certain CS SLAs t ...Read More

You have to look at what the business cares about and then work backwards to how Customer Success fits into those overall targets. For example, if the business has a retention problem, it's probably important to have a Gross Revenue Retention KPI. If, however, the business is more interested in price increases and cross-sell and upsell, then tie CSMs to Net Revenue Retention. At AlertMedia, there was a business-wide push to build out our Advocacy program so we incentivized CSMs to source advocat ...Read More

KPIs are the ultimate indicator of where you want your team to spend their time. The old adage that people do what they're get paid to do holds true. If you're paying people to do QBRs, they'll do them. If you're not, it will be harder for them to do so. So as you're developing your KPIs, think about where you want your team to spend their time. If that's where they're spending their time today, great. Write some KPIs that will add motivation to their already busy days. If, however, they're spen ...Read More