Latest news with #customerSuccess
Forbes
03-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Strategic Blind Spot Holding Back Your Growth
David Goldstein is an entrepreneur and CEO of The 9% Club, a community for founders that provides tools and wisdom for business success. Companies love to celebrate when a new customer signs on. But what happens next? Too often, the answer is: not much. Once the contract is signed, attention shifts to the next lead. Meanwhile, the customer—full of potential—starts to drift. Not because they're unhappy, but because no one is making sure they're actually getting what they came for. It's not a lack of care. It's a lack of follow-through. 'Customer success' may be the title, but in many organizations, it's still just customer support with a new name—reactive, ticket-driven and disconnected from outcomes. And that's where growth quietly slips away. Success Isn't Just Solving Problems Many teams are stuck in response mode. A customer asks for help, and someone answers. A quarterly check-in appears on the calendar, and the team shows up. But by the time a problem surfaces, the damage may already be done. Proactive success is different. It's about knowing your customer's goals and helping them get there without being asked. It's about building momentum, not just removing friction. The companies that lead fix things quickly, but they also keep things on track. The Growth You're Overlooking Everyone agrees it's cheaper to retain a customer than to win a new one. Yet acquisition still gets the lion's share of attention and budget, while the post-sale experience is treated as a follow-up task. That mindset comes at a cost. When customers don't feel supported or see progress, they rarely complain. They disengage quietly. Their usage drops. They don't expand. They don't refer. Eventually, they leave. Not out of frustration, but indifference. But when customers are consistently moving forward, the story changes. Retention improves. Revenue compounds. Loyalty grows stronger, and growth becomes more predictable. What Proactive Success Actually Looks Like Being proactive doesn't mean adding more check-ins or overloading your team. It means building a smarter system—one that knows where the customer is, what matters next and when to step in. Here's what that can look like: Before onboarding begins, ask: What does success look like for this customer? What will make them say, 'This was worth it'? Lock in those answers early and align your team around them. Look beyond support tickets. Watch for signs like usage drop-offs, missed milestones or features left untouched. These are quiet red flags. You don't need sophisticated software, just a clear view of the customer journey. Success isn't just a post-sale function. Sales sets expectations. Product shapes experience. Marketing reinforces value. Everyone should understand the customer's goals and feel a sense of ownership in helping them get there. Ask Yourself: • Do we know what success means for each of our key customer segments? • Can we identify when a customer is falling off course before they raise their hand? • Are we helping customers make progress or just responding when things break? If these questions are hard to answer, that's your blind spot. Retention Isn't A Metric—It's A Strategy Customer retention isn't just about keeping churn low; it's about making sure your customers continue to see value. That requires attention, consistency and a culture that treats retention as a core growth lever, not a reactive function. Too often, retention is buried in dashboards and quarterly reports. But it should be front and center because it's one of the most powerful (and underused) growth strategies you have. And you don't need a massive team to make this shift. What you need is intent. A mindset that says: Our job doesn't end when the deal closes. That's when it begins. Final Thought You're not losing customers because something went wrong. You're losing them because nothing noticeably went right. The companies that stand out don't just deliver a product; they deliver progress. They know what their customers are trying to achieve, and they commit to helping them get there. That's how retention becomes a growth engine. Not through last-minute saves, but through consistent, proactive success by design. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Excellence Recognised: ADROSONIC Shines at Industry Awards
MUMBAI, India, June 30, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ADROSONIC is proud to have been recognised as a 'Highly Commended' company at the London Market Forums Awards 2025, a testament to its commitment to innovation, customer success and industry transformation. The awards evening brought together leaders who are shaping the future of the London Market. ADROSONIC is honoured to stand alongside Tom Downs, COO at Aventum, on his well-earned win, Elliot Arazi, Business Innovation Architect at Inigo, for his impactful nomination and Paul Richmond, Head of Customer Success at Novidea, on his richly deserved recognition. ADROSONIC extends its sincere thanks to Roger Oldham, Founder & CEO of LMF, for creating a platform that continues to champion collaboration, leadership and meaningful progress across the market. Adding to this moment of pride, ADROSONIC's Founder, MD & CEO, Mayank, has been honoured with the Times Leadership Award 2025 under the 'Visionary Entrepreneur' category by the Times of India Group. This award reflects his strategic foresight and the company's dedication to delivering measurable value to its clients. Mayank commented, "This one is for our visionary initiative on industry-academia collaboration and for setting up an innovation lab which is unique. The other factor mentioned is to recognise our organic growth without any funding and debt." Further strengthening ADROSONIC's commitment to excellence, Sonal, Co-Founder, COO, ADROSONIC has been honoured with the Pratishtha Award 2025, recognising her outstanding contributions and leadership in driving innovation and impact. These recognitions are more than accolades — they affirm ADROSONIC's mission to empower stakeholders and customers alike, drive innovation and build enduring partnerships. With every milestone, ADROSONIC strengthens its resolve to deliver transformative outcomes for its customers. Visit for more information. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn at @adrosonic. Write to: info@ About ADROSONIC: ADROSONIC is a global IT consulting firm providing professional services to power digital transformation. ADROSONIC has offices across the globe, including India, UK, USA, Brazil and Chile. ADROSONIC has completed over 400 projects and has earned 100% client retention for over a decade. View source version on Contacts Sujith Kolaprath+91
Forbes
27-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Sales Is Not A Department—It's A Mindset
Venkat Rao: VP and Country Head—Asia-Pac & Japan at Pitney Bowes | Stanford Seed Consultant. In our current hyperconnected and experience-driven economy, the boundaries of functions inside organizations are blurring—especially when it comes to customer engagement. There was an era where 'sales' belonged to a particular department. But that's not always the reality anymore. I've noticed that successful companies today treat every employee as a contributor to sales, because every interaction shapes the customer experience—and the ultimate driver of growth is the customer experience. The New Sales Reality Modern buyers are often well informed and selective, and they have more experience searching than ever before. The decision-making process to engage, buy or renew is not just shaped by a pitch or demo, but also by factors like: • Intuitiveness of the product (the responsibility of the product team) • Ease of managing billing issues (responsibility of the finance team) • How thoughtfully a support agent responds (responsibility of the customer success team) • Streamlined onboarding processes (responsibility of the operations team) And for attracting new employees, even how brand-aligned the hiring process feels (a responsibility of the HR team) makes a difference. In this reality, sales becomes everyone's job—because everyone is selling trust and not because everyone is selling product. Why It Matters Customers don't experience your company through silos. The experience is holistic, meaning a missed delivery or a delayed or inaccurate invoice can directly impact the customer perception as much as a missed sales follow-up. It is a brand promise built or broken. Alignment often improves when all functions have a common understanding of the customer journey. Product prioritizes what matters most. Finance communicates with empathy. Support feels empowered. Consistent, cohesive customer outcomes are often a result of cross-functional clarity. I've found the more agile and resilient teams are often those that embrace a customer-first, sales-minded culture. These teams anticipate customer needs, proactively solving problems and championing customer impact. They are seldom seen waiting for escalations. The Sales Mindset: How To Make It Real Across The Organization Culture cascades from the top. Executives and managers must model the mindset. The voice of clients (VOC) should be discussed in every meeting and show up in client calls. Don't limit customer insights to the sales and support teams. Client metrics like net promoter scores (NPS), customer journey maps and client testimonials should be shared across various functions and audiences. Let engineers hear the voice of the customer. Let finance understand how their timelines impact retention. Articulate the role of individuals and various functions in the bigger picture. Not everyone needs to know sales techniques—but everyone can benefit from training in active listening, clear communication and emotional intelligence. These 'soft skills' are now hard requirements in customer-driven organizations. Customer experience KPIs should be embedded across departments. Here are some examples: • Product: Percent of roadmap linked to client feedback • Finance: Billing issue resolution time • HR: Employee engagement tied to customer impact Celebrate moments when someone outside the sales team made a difference. For example, the development team can show enthusiasm for a client pitch about product features. Culture is built through recognition—and this is particularly important for the leadership team. The Outcome: Customer-Led Growth Organizations that make 'everyone is in sales' more than a slogan could see powerful results, such as increased loyalty and advocacy and more collaborative and purpose-driven teams as up-selling, cross-selling and renewal becomes the order of the day. In summary, it's trust—not transactions—that define sales. And every interaction has the power to reinforce or build the trust—whether that interaction is with a customer, prospect or partner. So, the point to ponder is: Does our organization simply have a sales department, or is sales a companywide mindset? Because in this era, every interaction counts. Every employee matters. And every employee, in one way or another, is in sales. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Oper8 Global Group Receives Frost & Sullivan's 2025 European Customer Value Leadership Recognition for Excellence in Edge Data Center Solutions
This award recognizes Oper8 Global Group's innovation in edge data center for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, and its commitment to customer success SAN ANTONIO, June 19, 2025 /CNW/ -- Frost & Sullivan is pleased to announce that Oper8 Global Group has been awarded the 2025 European Customer Value Leadership Recognition in the edge modular and prefabricated data centers solutions sector for its outstanding achievements in customer-centric innovation, strategic execution, and technology leadership. This recognition underscores Oper8 Global Group's continued commitment to delivering performance-driven infrastructure and helping clients meet the demands of modern high-compute environments. Frost & Sullivan evaluates companies through a rigorous benchmarking process across two core dimensions: strategy effectiveness and strategy execution. Oper8 Global Group excelled in both, demonstrating a clear alignment between its growth initiatives and market needs. "Oper8 Global's holistic focus on edge datacenters' design and management along with energy-efficient, server-ready facilities, strategically positions the company to meet the rapidly growing demands of the AI market. The company offers a strong value proposition of solutions and services, such as prefabricated designs that enable faster deployment and advanced cooling strategies to maximize efficiency, delivering exceptional value and driving strong global customer acquisition across industries," said Nishchal Khorana, Vice President & Global Program Leader, ICT, at Frost & Sullivan. Guided by a strategic focus on digital transformation and purpose-built innovation, Oper8 Global Group has consistently delivered high-density, high-efficiency infrastructure for compute-intensive applications such as AI and high-performance computing (HPC). Its modular, scalable data center solutions have been widely adopted across Europe's education and research sectors, further validating its strong market alignment. Innovation lies at the core of Oper8 Global Group's value proposition. The company's comprehensive portfolio—spanning edge data center design, cybersecurity, physical security, and managed services—caters to the full lifecycle of data center infrastructure. "We place customer success as our number one priority, so receiving this award from Frost & Sullivan is a true honor. It's also a testament to all the hard work and focus we have put into delivering optimized data centre solutions that are aligned to our customers' unique business and technical requirements," said Simon Gardner, Global Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer EMEA at Oper8 Global Group. Oper8 Global Group's commitment to customer experience is reflected in its agile service delivery, industry expertise, and track record of meeting tight deployment timelines. Clients consistently highlight the company's responsiveness, deep technical acumen, and quality of service, which contribute to long-term relationships and repeat business across diverse industries. Frost & Sullivan commends Oper8 Global Group for setting a benchmark in the edge modular and prefabricated data centers solutions market. The company's vision, adaptability, and customer-first culture are not only driving its success but also shaping the standards of excellence in next-generation data infrastructure. Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in implementing strategies that proactively create value for its customers with a focus on improving the return on the investment that customers make in its services or products. The award recognizes the company's unique focus on augmenting the value that its customers receive, beyond simply good customer service, leading to improved customer retention and customer base expansion. Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies across global markets for demonstrating visionary leadership, technological advancement, and customer-driven strategy. Recipients are selected based on in-depth interviews, analyses, and secondary research that benchmark performance against top competitors and industry best practices. About Frost & Sullivan For six decades, Frost & Sullivan has been world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders, and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models, and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion. Contact:Camila TinajeroE: About Oper8 Global Group With over 35 years' experience, Oper8 Global Group is a global data center industry leader. Its modular, scalable, flexible and sustainable designs redefine modern data centre infrastructure. Oper8 Global Group has a presence in EMEA, APAC and South America, supported by a robust network of renowned partners, and creates the future of data centers by designing, building and deploying innovative prefabricated, modular, micro and high-performance computing (HPC) solutions. Contact:Chew Peng HealeyE: View original content: SOURCE Frost & Sullivan View original content: Sign in to access your portfolio
Fast Company
30-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Stop flying blind: Build a data-driven revenue model with bottom-up forecasting
One of the biggest challenges early-stage startup founders face is predicting and managing revenue growth. In most organizations, this looks like top-down forecasting and starts with determining the target revenue goal for that period. This goal is often based on ambition, investor expectations, or competitive pressure. But this method is flawed; you can't set revenue goals based on a finger held to the wind. What should be an exercise rooted in science lacks real-world input, and thus prevents leaders from obtaining the performance-based insights necessary to make data-driven decisions. The solution? A reality-based assumption model, known as a 'bottom-up' go-to-market (GTM) forecast. Here's what to know: WHAT IS A BOTTOM-UP FORECAST? In short, it's a more reliable way to determine how various functions and tactics are expected to contribute to revenue. This methodology allows businesses to draw a straight line to their revenue goals based on assumptions or known variables. This is very similar to a 'revenue bridge,' a tool designed to outline how portfolio companies intend to achieve their ultimate revenue goals. HOW A BOTTOM-UP REVENUE MODEL WORKS This approach to forecasting first involves segmenting the business by its core functions, which include sales, marketing, and customer success. Then, each business unit should outline the activities it performs that contribute to revenue acquisition or expansion. This data can be pulled from historical campaigns and updated for current market conditions. However, if this historical data isn't available, a little creativity is necessary. There are a plethora of benchmark data sources available (full disclosure: We provide custom benchmarks based on industry verticals and business models to our portfolio companies). Ultimately, with a bit of legwork, organizations can develop a set of assumptions to manage, with the goal of getting more and more confident over time. Of course, budget is a major factor in this exercise, which is a common constraint. However, there is no more effective way to justify budgets than with supporting bottom-up assumptions. This differs greatly from the top-down approach, which works backward from a target and effectively tells everyone to 'run' at it. That's flying blind. WHY IS BOTTOM-UP FORECASTING IMPORTANT? Top-down revenue models tend to be more pie-in-the-sky than rooted in reality. When a company forecasts this way, it's more likely to overestimate its growth and underestimate the costs and challenges of scaling. It can also miss critical allowances for changes in the process. Markets and audiences don't remain static, organizations need to account for change that comes with penetration, competition, and market headwinds or tailwinds. On the flip side, bottom-up forces business leaders to take a good, hard look at their teams' actual performance or assumptions of performance. Even if the topline isn't sexy initially, leaders will know where they're heading if their employees continue to perform at past levels. This can potentially define what the chasm of 'go-get' revenue looks like versus the expectation. Optimistic but grounded in data is far better than optimistic and hopeful. Additionally, a bottom-up approach is not only a financial plan—it's also an operational plan. This method covers the goals, costs, and resources needed to achieve the company plan. As a result, this framework becomes a living, breathing tool to be updated and discussed on a regular basis. THE MAP TO PERFORMANCE-BASED BUDGETING A bottom-up pro forma isn't just essential for forecasting; it's also the foundation for budgeting decisions. Before you know what funds you have to allocate, you need to know where growth is expected and how each department and resource contributes to it. For example, how many sales reps do you need to hire to meet your revenue targets? If you don't have an understanding of what those resources should yield in terms of performance, your budget—and their compensation—will be a total shot in the dark. But once you have a pro forma, you can use it to inform budgets and have confidence in your decision-making as results begin to filter in. Based on the early-stage companies we evaluate and invest in, underperforming sales reps stay in a role three to six months longer on average than they should. Human nature wants to see our investments produce, but consider the opportunity cost of making key decisions too late. Time is the one variable that remains constant. ADJUSTING YOUR MODEL AFTER A FUNDING ROUND After a funding round, the pressure to scale quickly is intense. Without a reliable GTM model, businesses risk over-promising, burning out, and missing key opportunities. That's why it's critical to revisit and update your bottom-up pro forma based on current realities. Ask yourself: How many hires do we need, and how fast? Does our 'quota-in-field' align with our revenue goals? Which marketing channels are most effective, and how will increased spend impact leads? What revenue can we expect from existing customers versus new sales? This discipline helps to build internal clarity and inspire confidence with investors. KPIS AND BENCHMARKS KPIs and benchmarks are foundational to a bottom-up pro forma. While they vary by company, industry, and goals, key benchmarks include sales rep efficiency, customer acquisition cost (CAC), and revenue per employee. By consistently tracking these metrics, you can fine-tune your go-to-market model and drive better performance. Just as important are cultural KPIs. These metrics define how your team thinks and operates. The best CEOs use a select few KPIs as both their north star and operational compass, aligning strategy and execution across the business. What numbers should become the shared language of your company? THE BOTTOM LINE IN BOTTOM-UP Early-stage startups looking to scale should build reliable revenue acquisition through both top-down and bottom-up forecasting. This will help create a science of growth for your organization. By understanding your growth levers and required resources, you can avoid the trap of overpromising and underdelivering. The goal of a well-constructed forecast model isn't perfect accuracy, but to build confidence in a framework that evolves with real results. That framework becomes more accurate and predictive over time. Before you know it, you have that coveted map, and while others are flying into mountains, you're cruising safely toward performance.
