Quel bonheur! It was thrilling to be able to exchange with so many passionate “SaaStrepreneurs” at SaaStr Europa in Paris last week (1300 attendees from 32 different countries including founders, CEOs, Cxx this and that, investors and of course a large number of customer success (CS) professionals ! What’s exciting about SaaS of things is that it impacts all aspects of “doing business as usual”: go-to-market, delivery, revenue generation, internal organization, valuation, customer relationship and partnership…
In such a context of the age of the customer, I’m grateful to be actively engaged in the emerging role of customer success in Europe. This strategic mindset is key in the SaaS business model and indeed in any other recurring revenue model where the customer is king or queen. When these are well served and partnered in reaching their own success, this generates win-win success for both customer and vendor alike. As quoted by Jason Lemkin:
Customer success is where 90% of the revenue is
and indeed successful customers wish to stay, invest more to generate more gains and then become raving fans of your solution. Oh, talking of which, Fraser Stark it’s always a pleasure to meet and exchange on the Influitive advocacy platform.
I was thrilled to meet my customer success peers and fabulous ladies from the other side of the pond Emilia d’Anzica and Sue Duris.
Thanks again for your customer success panel!
It’s always a pleasure to meet and share stories and experiences with my fellow customer success evangelists from this side of the pond: Dave Jackson, Jan Schlosser, Emilie Dubau, Hannah Chaplin, Nathalie Berger, Elisabeth Courland and fellow partner and customer success community builder Kate Forgione.
The speakers I heard were terrific and I thoroughly enjoyed the brain date concept where I was able to exchange tête-à-tête on the customer success of things with like-minded CS professionals. The networking was rich, each new encounter presenting a passionate “Saastrepreneur”, terrific story and incredible talent. A special mention to Peter Oosterwijk (the smiling guy in the blue shirt in the photo above), CMO of Curious Inc who has the gift of illustrating in cartoon style and in real time his key takeaways (see samples below from the customer success panel session). Dank je Peter!!
Some of my key takeaways :
- Adaptation to new ways of doing business is key to be successful in SaaS + recurring revenues + subscriptions.
- “Nail a niche” (Aaron Ross) – Identify customers who consider you as need-to-have rather than nice to have.
- To win, be a big fish in a small pond
- Customer success trends in 2018:
- Incorporation of emotional intelligence
- Introduce customer success more and more into the products
- CS will become increasingly recognised as a strategic role
- CS will involve more than retention
- Customer success professionals no matter where they are in the world find huge benefits in getting together to share and learn best practices from each other.
UN GRAND MERCI to SaaStr for coming to Paris (capital of love & innovation) to organise this first SaaStr event in Europe! La cerise sur la gateau – the stunning venue at Le Grand Hotel!
Vivement l’année prochaine!
Other useful links:
In addition and if you’re a customer success professional in Europe, you may be interested in the following links:
Customer-Success-Europe : who organise regular CS events in Europe, the next one being in Dublin on 3rd October.
Customer SuccessCon London – on 4th September
Paris customer success Meet-up – on 19th June
Lisbon Meet-up – next date TBC
Customer Success Network – where you can find an on online community which connects CSMs across Europe.
CSM Portail – A francophone community