Latest news with #CustomerSuccess
Forbes
30-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How Labor Challenges And Robotics Are Reshaping Service Operations
Robotic solutions have advanced rapidly and reached a tipping point—they're no longer just prototypes, but practical, cost-effective tools capable of handling repetitive and even complex tasks in real-world environments. Two powerful forces are transforming the way businesses approach service operations—especially when it comes to managing entry-level, hourly labor. First, there's the shifting labor landscape. With tighter immigration policies and an unpredictable labor market, companies are struggling to find reliable, affordable workers for critical frontline roles. Hiring has become more competitive, and the cost of labor continues to rise. Second, we're witnessing a robotics revolution. What once felt like science fiction is now becoming everyday reality. Robotic solutions have advanced rapidly and reached a tipping point—they're no longer just prototypes, but practical, cost-effective tools capable of handling repetitive and even complex tasks in real-world environments. Commercial cleaning 'Organizations that depend heavily on entry-level hourly labor are now facing growing pressure to rethink their operations,' said Karen Wood-Maris, VP / Head of Revenue Operations, Customer Success and Growth Marketing at SoftBank Robotics America. She was speaking on a leadership series podcast on robotic automation. 'The new mantra is finding the right resource to do the right task at the right cost. That resource might be a human, a robot, or a combination of technology-driven solutions. In this evolving landscape, the future of service operations lies in blending human strengths with the efficiency of automation—and making smart choices about who, or what, does the job best. According to Wood-Maris, one area of service operations that's especially ripe for innovation is commercial cleaning. Tasks like mopping, scrubbing, and vacuuming are physically demanding, repetitive, and have long depended on large pools of hourly workers. Across industries, however, from hospitals and schools to hotels and airports, businesses are finding it harder to fill these essential roles. Labor pools are shrinking, wages are rising, and attrition rates are climbing. On top of that, the nature of the work often leads to injuries, limited career advancement, and high turnover—all of which make it difficult to attract and retain workers. These challenges are pushing organizations to explore smarter, more strategic ways to deploy labor. By blending human labor with robotic support, companies can boost productivity, reduce strain on workers, and create more sustainable operational models. Still, while the rise of robotics offers real promise, it's not a plug-and-play fix. Companies must make a clear business case for investing in automation—and align their expectations around what optimized operations can realistically achieve. This is where financial leadership becomes critical. CFOs and other economic decision-makers need to understand not just the cost of robotic solutions, but their true value—including long-term savings, risk mitigation, and the ability to scale without being constrained by labor shortages. Wood-Maris believes that unlocking that potential requires a thoughtful approach to implementation, grounded in real-world operational needs and measurable outcomes. Robots to the rescue 'We are seeing amazing growth in the commercial cleaning sector, where robots are moving beyond the pilot stage and becoming an integral part of the workforce,' said Wood-Maris. She cited Flagship Facility Services where over 100 robots from SoftBank Robotics America have been deployed at over 15 customer locations resulting in a 30% increase in labor efficiency. However, while cleaning robots and similar technologies are gaining traction, they haven't yet eliminated the need for human labor. Many organizations still rely heavily on workers for a range of tasks. In industrial settings like manufacturing and warehousing, robotics has long been embraced for its clear impact on productivity, quality, and cost savings. But in customer-facing service industries, the equation is more nuanced. Here, the value of automation is about improving consistency, reliability, safety, and service quality. Wood-Maris explained that to fully unlock the potential of robotics in service operations, companies need to take a more strategic view of automation—one that goes beyond immediate cost-cutting and instead focuses on long-term efficiency, workforce augmentation, and enhanced customer experiences. The business case for robotics in the service industry has multiple value drivers including Reaping the benefits Leading companies adopting AI-driven autonomous robots are seeing significant benefits. Automation delivers new services, improves environmental quality, and raises customer satisfaction. SoftBank Robotics America is a pioneer in this area. Whiz, the company's AI-driven autonomous vacuum robot, is used in carpeted and hard-floor environments. It operates via "teach & repeat" workflows and is used for route programming and data analytics. 'Companies that adopt robotics today can realize near-term benefits and create a new muscle in the organization, raising the bar on operational excellence,' Wood-Maris concluded. 'These organizations will have an advantage as new robots are introduced, and their ability to optimize resources increases.' As service operations evolve, those who embrace robotics with a clear strategy and long-term vision won't just keep pace—they'll lead the way toward a more resilient, efficient, and future-ready workforce.
Forbes
24-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Myths And Realities Of Being A RevOps Leader
Vivek Vishal is Senior Director of Sales Excellence at Honeywell Safety Products. Revenue operations (RevOps) leadership has emerged as a highly sought-after role, driven by the growing need for alignment between sales, marketing and customer success teams. Social media influencers and industry experts often highlight the strategic impact and career potential of RevOps, painting an aspirational picture of the role. However, their advice can sometimes oversimplify the complexities of the job, gloss over day-to-day challenges and promote strategies that may not align with real-world demands. The reality of being a RevOps Leader involves strategic vision, cross-functional collaboration and hands-on problem-solving, far beyond the glamorized image portrayed online. Having spent over a decade in this role at leading organizations, I've experienced the realities and complexities of RevOps. Let's debunk some common myths and uncover the truths about being a RevOps leader. Common Myths About Being A RevOps Leader Reality: Direct customer engagement is often essential for RevOps leaders to understand customer pain points, validate strategies and ensure alignment between organizational efforts and customer needs. Reality: RevOps extends beyond sales to encompass the entire revenue lifecycle, including marketing, customer success and finance, ensuring seamless integration and holistic growth. RevOps leaders balance high-level strategic vision with detailed tactical execution, ensuring strategies translate into effective daily operations. Reality: RevOps leaders strategically use data to identify bottlenecks, optimize processes and align teams, ultimately driving improved revenue outcomes, not merely reporting them. Data accuracy, accessibility and actionability are foundational to informed decision making, and RevOps leaders ensure high-quality data management across the organization. Reality: Technical proficiency with CRM systems, marketing automation tools and analytics platforms is essential for integrating systems and ensuring data flows smoothly. Technical capabilities are at the heart of a RevOps leader's responsibilities—continually streamlining workflows, automating repetitive tasks and enhancing the customer journey, focusing on operational efficiency. Reality: Companies of all sizes benefit from RevOps. Alignment between revenue teams is crucial even for small and mid-sized businesses to efficiently scale and prevent silos. Reality: RevOps leaders are problem solvers who rely heavily on collaboration and input from cross-functional teams. Their role involves facilitating alignment rather than dictating unilateral solutions. That said, effective communication and managing resistance to change are critical. RevOps leaders must be able to navigate organizational shifts and clearly articulate benefits to gain team buy-in. Key Skills For A Successful RevOps Leader • Analytical Thinking: Interpreting data to derive actionable insights. • Communication: Strong interpersonal skills for cross-functional collaboration. • Technical Proficiency: Familiarity with CRM, ERP and analytics tools. • Strategic Vision: Aligning operations with broader business objectives. • Problem Solving: Identifying and resolving bottlenecks effectively. • Customer-Centric Mindset: Understanding and prioritizing customer needs. The RevOps leader role is challenging yet highly rewarding. By debunking common myths and embracing these realities, my hope is that organizations can appreciate the true value of RevOps, and aspiring professionals can better prepare for its demands. Forbes Business Development Council is an invitation-only community for sales and biz dev executives. Do I qualify?
Forbes
21-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why Your Customer Success Team Might Be Measuring The Wrong KPI
Andrew Neal, PMP, is the Chief Operating Officer of Endpoint Automation Solutions. Customer success teams across software companies monitor key metrics religiously—reviewing dashboards, logging customer interactions and celebrating progress. But here's the uncomfortable truth: Tracking KPIs doesn't guarantee you're measuring the right ones. I've seen it firsthand. A team can hit its targets—like reducing average response time or boosting satisfaction scores—yet churn quietly rises, upsell opportunities stall and executive teams are left scratching their heads. Why? Because we often confuse activity with impact. And that gap can be the difference between a customer who renews and expands, and one who walks. The Danger Of Vanity Metrics Customer success managers are typically measured on metrics like net promoter score (NPS), customer satisfaction (CSAT) and ticket resolution time. These numbers can make us feel good, but they often lack depth. They tend to measure perception rather than outcomes, as well as lagging indicators that don't address early warning signs. For example, a customer might rate a support interaction highly but still leave a month later because they never fully adopted the product. NPS may rise while product usage falls. A customer may be "happy," but that doesn't mean they're successful. Vanity metrics give a snapshot but don't tell the full story. They measure engagement rather than outcomes. And they're dangerous because they create a false sense of momentum. The Metrics That Often Get Overlooked If your KPIs aren't tied to customer outcomes or revenue impact, it's time to recalibrate. Here are five metrics I've seen make a real difference: 1. Customer Health Score: A composite metric that includes usage, engagement, ticket volume and sentiment, customized to your business model. A good health score is predictive, not reactive. 2. Time To First Value (TTFV): This measures how quickly a customer receives meaningful value from your product after onboarding. Faster value = stickier customer. 3. Feature Adoption/Usage Depth: Are customers using the core features that drive ROI? Are they exploring new ones? Usage is a leading indicator of expansion potential. 4. Net Revenue Retention (NRR): NRR combines renewals, upsells and downsells. It's a powerful measure of whether you're growing your value within the existing customer base. I have found this metric to have the most impact within my businesses. It is frequently the most evident connection between customer success and business performance. Some companies, such as Hubspot, reinforced the importance of this metric by linking it to customer usage and executive bonus calculations. 5. Churn By Cohort Or Segment: Looking at churn by customer segment, use case or lifecycle stage often uncovers more than raw churn percentages alone. The best metrics aren't just easy to track; they tell a story about the customer's experience, align teams around value delivery and help you act on it. Aligning KPIs To The Customer Journey Another misstep I often see is applying the same KPIs across the entire customer lifecycle. But onboarding is not the same as renewal. Product adoption is not the same as expansion. Each phase deserves its own success markers. For example: • Onboarding: Track TTFV, implementation time and early feature usage. • Adoption: Look at engagement scores, support interaction frequency and usage trends. • Renewal: Monitor NRR, contract value trends and support history. • Expansion: Focus on upsell activity, executive sponsor engagement and ROI realization. When KPIs are matched to the stage the customer is in, CSMs can be more proactive, and your leadership team gains clearer visibility. Cross-Functional Alignment Is Critical Customer success doesn't live in a silo. If your customer success team is tracking one set of KPIs while sales, product and finance are tracking others, you're likely flying blind in at least one direction. At our company, we've made it a point to connect CS metrics to broader business goals. For example: • Customer success tracks feature adoption, which results in the product gaining insight into roadmap priorities. • Customer success identifies common churn reasons, which helps sales adapt to ideal customer profiles. • Customer success surfaces ROI use cases, which allows marketing to build stronger case studies. Shared dashboards and recurring cross-departmental reviews have been game changers. When customer success is embedded into the broader revenue engine, the value becomes exponential. Audit And Redesign Your Success Metrics If you haven't audited your KPIs recently, now's the time. Here's a simple checklist I recommend to other executives I meet with on this topic: 1. Are your customer success metrics aligned with long-term customer outcomes? If not, you're optimizing for short-term wins that may not drive retention or expansion. 2. Are they predictive, not just reflective? Metrics like health score and time to first value (TTFV) help you intervene early. 3. Are you segmenting insights? One-size-fits-all metrics may be hiding important trends across verticals or customer types. 4. Do your KPIs inform other departments? Metrics should create alignment, not just accountability. 5. Are they actionable? A good KPI should lead to a decision or behavior change. 6. And most importantly: Do you review them regularly? Your business evolves. Your metrics should, too. Meet monthly with your customer success leadership team to monitor key indicators like NRR, Churn risk and usage trends. This helps flag early signs of change before they escalate. In addition to meeting with your customer success leadership team monthly, you should also host a comprehensive KPI review that includes stakeholders from product, sales, marketing and finance to align on business goals, adjust targets based on customer behavior and monitor market feedback. Companies like Slack identified that siloed KPI's across departments hindered a cohesive approach to customer success. Using cross-departmental reviews, they were able to foster a unified strategy, enhancing customer experience and contributing to net revenue retention. The job of a customer success team is not just to support—it's to drive growth. But if you're measuring the wrong things, you're likely missing what matters most. The right KPIs will tell you where the friction points are, where the opportunities lie and how to evolve your customer journey to drive value. They won't just help you track success—they'll help you create it. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
National Post
11-06-2025
- Business
- National Post
Wigmore IT Leverages Cinchy's Data Collaboration Platform to Accelerate Gainsight Deployment
Article content TORONTO & LONDON — Wigmore IT, a leader in digital transformation solutions, is using Cinchy's Data Collaboration Platform to establish a universal data model that enables the rapid deployment of Customer Success applications within one week. By leveraging Cinchy's innovative approach to data connectivity and collaboration, Wigmore IT is eliminating data silos and accelerating time to value for its customers. Article content Traditional enterprise software deployments often require extensive data integration efforts, leading to costly delays and operational bottlenecks. By utilizing Cinchy's zero-copy integration and data collaboration capabilities, Wigmore IT is streamlining the process, ensuring seamless access to the data needed for Gainsight's customer success platform. Article content Article content 'With Cinchy, we can unify disparate data sources into a universal model without the need for complex ETL processes or middleware,' said Mark Deegn, CTO at Wigmore IT. 'This allows us to easily ingest critical data into powerful platforms such as Gainsight in just days rather than weeks or months, empowering our customers' teams with real-time insights and a single source of truth.' Article content 'Customer Success teams have always struggled to get the data they need into their system of record,' said Paul Patterson, CEO of Cinchy. 'Traditional methods take a lot of time, and limit the access to data needed to optimize success. Wigmore IT is leveraging Cinchy to give Customer Success organizations the data they need… fast.' Article content The collaboration between Wigmore IT and Cinchy underscores the power of data-centric architecture in transforming enterprise software adoption. By removing integration barriers, the companies are setting a new standard for agility in deploying customer success platforms. Article content Article content Article content
Forbes
23-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Convergence Of Customer Success, Experience, And Service
Five Keys to Aligning Customer Engagement Teams, Systems and Processes to Create More Value It is common knowledge that delivering superior digital customer experience and maximizing customer lifetime value of customers' needs to be the primary goal for any business that wants to grow in a digital age. Today, the vast majority (90%) of business leaders are making CX a primary focus. There are almost three million customer service representatives working in the US according to the Department of Labor, and almost every (95%) technology and Software as a Service (SaaS) firm has a Customer Success function according to Gainsight research. Over the last decade, the lines have blurred between the roles of Customer Success (CS), Customer Service, and Customer Experience (CX) management to the degree that they even all sound the same. In a modern commercial model, all three of these previously siloed functions have aligned their goals, processes, metrics, and systems on the same three things: For example, organizations increasingly recognize that Customer Success influences the entire customer lifecycle. This has led to the emergence of more unified Customer Success strategies that are forcing growth leaders to think holistically about the customer journey—from marketing and sales to post-purchase engagement. "Customer success is no longer just about retention or support; it has evolved into a proactive, revenue-generating force that touches every part of the business," says Michael Marchand, who has managed customer success and experience operations over the past twenty years with WP Engine, Dell Technologies, and Deloitte Consulting. "What we're seeing now is a more integrated approach where marketing, product, sales, and customer success teams collaborate to drive business growth." This integration is particularly evident at Oracle, where Mohamed Alqaq leads customer success efforts. With decades of experience in the field, Alqaq stresses that customer success should be regarded as a company-wide philosophy rather than a department. "Customer success isn't about reactive support, it's about being a maestro, orchestrating the relationship between teams and ensuring that every department is working toward a unified goal," Alqaq explains. "Sales, marketing, product, and support each contribute a piece to the puzzle, but customer success is the thread that connects them all." With the broader adoption of Revenue Operations we are seeing customer success, service, and experience functions are taking on more strategic importance across the revenue cycle. This has led to a new generation of growth leaders with titles like Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) and Chief Customer Officer (CCO), who now have authority to better coordinate the teams that support customer health with the teams that support sales, account management, and marketing. This new growth leadership structure makes it possible to integrate Customer Success with service and experience teams beyond their traditional roles to radically transform business growth - enterprises that deploy a CRO-like role show 1.8-times higher revenue growth than their peers according to research by McKinsey. So as customer success, service, and experience converge around the customer what is the difference between these three customers facing functions? Increasingly the answer is 'not much.' I recently posed that question to executives and experts in these respective fields in a webinar, and I learned five keys to successfully managing the convergence of these functions in a B2B organization at every stage of the revenue cycle. 1. Investing in customer success, service, and experience as a revenue driver rather than a back-office capability. One factor that is blurring the lines between the operations managing customer experience, customer service, and customer success is their growing role in revenue and profit growth. In a modern commercial model revenues are increasingly tied to sustained loyalty, cross-selling, usage, referrals, penetration, and expansion revenues. As such, the lines between CX and CS have become less clear. While the top goals of Customer Success teams remain gross revenue retention (95%) and scale and efficiency (89%), more and more businesses are asking their CS teams to generate growth through renewals (41%), revenue expansion (28%) and new business in the form of customer success sales qualified leads (41%) according to a survey of 250 companies conducted by Gainsight. "Customer success managers must increasingly act as advocates—helping customers navigate their business challenges while driving strategic growth for their own organizations,' says Michael Marchand. 2. Building trust through a coordinated set of proactive education, engagement, and problem-solving actions versus acting in separate silos. 'Once a prospect becomes a customer and post-sales implementation begins, Customer Success is increasingly playing the role of the 'maestro' who proactively engages the client across all their needs – training, onboarding, education, product updates, and support,' according to Mohammed Alqaq, a Strategic Customer Success Manager with Oracle, with over 20 years of client facing experience and supporting key account teams which serve large, complex accounts in engineering and design industries. 'What is changing is the growing role CS now plays proactively orchestrating internal interactions with sales, service, product, and marketing teams to get feedback, share signals, answer questions, manage risks, and ensure value is delivered and the conditions exist for cross-sell, referrals, and success,' says Alqaq in a recent webinar entitled The Intersection of Customer Experience and Success. Operationally CS has always involved coordinating people, processes, data, and technologies to enable a series of post-sales workflows to onboard, train, support, and retain customer relationships. But increasingly Customer Success involves account management, relationship development, and expansion activities that span the front of the revenue cycle. 'Customer Success was once a siloed department – but now it is a company-wide growth strategy,' says Brent Krempges, Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight. 'Organizations across industries increasingly recognize CS as central to the customer lifecycle, driving collaboration across departments. This has made CS indispensable for recurring revenue models and extended its influence beyond traditional B2B enterprise tech boundaries.' Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight and author of Digital Customer Success, adds 'CS has progressed from call‐center personnel responding to help requests and trouble tickets into CSMs [Customer Success Managers] who proactively collaborate with customers, as well as with Sales, Marketing, Product, IT, and more to design, execute, measure, and monitor customer journeys that deliver the greatest possible value to the customer.' Today, a third of customer service professionals are shifting their focus to proactively solving customer problems, according to a survey of 2,000 customer service professionals by Intercom. "Clients don't care about internal politics, job titles, or company silos', says Michael Marchand, who also leads operations and strategy at Advantage Solutions, a $3B tech-enabled business services organization. 'What they care about is whether their provider is easy to work with and has their back." Marchand, whose role spans the service, support, and product teams operations which span the entire customer lifecycle, has in-depth experience in connecting the dots across each of these functions. "Customer success managers must act as advocates—helping customers navigate their business challenges while driving strategic growth for their own organizations. If a client is experiencing repeated issues, waiting for them to reach out isn't the answer. You must get ahead of the problem, communicate solutions, and ensure they feel supported.' 3. How and where to deploy contactless, digital, and AI driven tools to deliver scale and speed at lower cost. Another factor transforming customer experience, service, and success is the rapid adoption of digital self-service channels and AI in customer facing interactions. Over two thirds (72%) of Customer Service professionals are actively using AI to automatically respond to inbound inquiries according to the Gainsight study. More than half (52%) of Customer Success teams are incorporating AI into their workflows, using tools that strengthen early indicator systems, automate processes, and provide richer customer insights. And 59% of traditional CX teams want to become more AI-driven in the next year according to a survey of 5,504 CX and CS teams by ZenDesk. These tools deliver fast responses and scale at lower costs. For example, most business leaders (57%) feel their investment in conversational chatbots are delivering a large ROI on minimal investment according to research by Accenture. By automating tasks like data entry and churn detection, AI saves CS teams more than 10 hours per week, but they come with risks and downsides as well. Many customers don't want to engage with a robot. Mohammed Alqaq suggests that businesses which add digital engagement models must ensure they are adaptable to changing customer preferences. "Some customers prefer human interaction; others want automated solutions. It's not just about generational differences, it's about the complexity of the solution and the customer's level of maturity with the product," he explains. "Flexible communication channels are key to ensuring customers feel supported regardless of their engagement style." 4. Finding the right balance between the human touch with algorithmic and AI engagement. Pivoting too hard to AI and digital CS can pose big problems. Why? It turns out that the more we adopt AI and digital technology to enhance customer experience, the more customers value human engagement. Most customers (82%) will want to interact with humans more as technology improves in the future according to a global survey by PwC. That makes the art of balancing the human touch with digital and AI engagement critical to maximize customer lifetime value and differentiate the experience. There is an unintended side effect of all this focus on automation - it can diminish trust, commoditize the customer experience, and diminish long term customer relationship equity. That's important because trust is at the core of customer success and a key to sustainable growth. 'Technology is supposed to be a force multiplier that augments the impact, effectiveness, and scale of customer service and success teams - but in some ways, it has overwhelmed and marginalized the role of human engagement and empathy,' says Brendan Kamm, CEO of Thnks, and the coauthor of The Power of Gratitude in Sales, Marketing and Customer Success. This has many experts saying the pendulum needs to swing in the other direction towards a more human approach to selling. 'As AI becomes a bigger factor in the customer engagement model, people will increasingly notice the 'human touch.' So, to a large degree, our customer-facing processes need to become more human, not less,' says Kamm. 'You don't want to over-digitize things, because if everyone's getting an AI-powered email or interaction, is that authentic anymore?' writes Nick Mehta in his book Digital Customer Success. 'Maintaining a balance between human creativity and machine capabilities is the challenge.' A good start is by incorporating authentic expressions of emotion and empathy, such as gratitude, into the revenue cycle. For example, something as simple as expressing appreciation of customer milestones, or a minor gesture of gratitude for their business, can make a big impact given that one of our most compelling needs as humans is the feeling of significance or importance. Making experiences memorable matters: according to McKinsey & Company, 70% of buying experiences are based on how customers feel they're being treated, 5. Developing data-driven insights, metrics, and incentives to keep up with a changing set of business objectives. Another issue managers face is adapting their measurement systems to keep up with the changing focus and goals of customer-facing teams in service, success, and support. For example, the metrics most organizations use to measure the performance of these digital CX and CS channels are leading people to focus on the wrong objectives. The vast majority of Customer Success leaders (89%) are making scale and efficiency a primary goal of their efforts, according to a survey of research conducted by Gainsight. By comparison, only half of firms emphasize metrics focused on customer health, and less than a third on measures of onboarding satisfaction or account expansion. This means the metrics most organizations use to measure the performance of these digital CX and CS channels are leading people to focus on the wrong objectives. Both Marchand and Alqaq agree that data-driven insights are reshaping customer success strategies. Instead of relying on historical trends alone, companies are leveraging analytics, AI, and customer feedback to identify risks and opportunities in real-time. "A unified health scoring system shouldn't just come from customer success—it needs input from sales, marketing, and support," Alqaq explains. "If a customer suddenly stops responding to surveys, attends fewer webinars, or raises an increasing number of support tickets, those signals matter. Combining data from multiple departments allows us to see the full picture." Marchand builds on this idea, noting that successful organizations use data to create personalized customer experiences. 'It's not just about revenue—it's about understanding individual customer needs,' says Marchand, referencing his speech on aligning CX to create value. When clients give feedback, whether directly or through their behavior, we have an opportunity to act on it and demonstrate value in ways they didn't expect. AI opens up the opportunity to provide more human coverage for both large and mid-sized accounts, while automating routine activities that clients will find fast and convenient.'
