In the last two years, I've been seeing a lot of those conversations shift to data analytics, not just practical, but more predictive. How can we leverage the data that we have, and aggregate it to come up with an insight that will help us make our customers more successful?

Customer Success is a fairly new industry, but it has already developed tremendously. This rapid growth will only continue, though it might be continuing in a different direction. 

Georges has been in this industry through its many stages of development and shares his opinions of the new direction CS might be heading in.

1. Customer Success creates incredible internal AND external impact

Customer Success, for me, is defined internally and externally. 

Internally, the goal is to make it a company-wide mindset. It's not just a team that is trying to save customers from churning. It's a team that is accountable for elevating the customer IQ within the whole company: from Finance, to Engineering, to Product, to Marketing, to Sales, to everyone. How we do that is by being the voice of the customer, and making sure we're educating everyone. 

Externally, I think there's broad agreement on this definition of Customer Experience and customer outcomes: achieving the desired outcome for the customers, and wowing them with the experience while doing that.

2. The maturity of Customer Success is starting to show in its evolution to become more data-driven

I still recall going to the CS Conferences in their early days, where most of the presentations were around Customer Success identity; we really did not have a clear identity. It was about how to have a seat at the table, how to get budget for it, how to show that it matters. 

If you fast forward to the last two years, no one talks about that anymore. Now it's all about how to [develop] product-led growth, how to leverage data analytics to drive the right outcome. It really, really has scaled and evolved quite rapidly. 

In the last two years, I've been seeing a lot of those conversations shift to data analytics, not just practical, but more predictive.

How can we leverage the data that we have, and aggregate it to come up with an insight that will help us make our customers more successful? 

3. The future of Customer Success is in marrying human touch with predictive automation

There's definitely going to be a lot of consolidation in [the CS] space from the software perspective. I just see it becoming more predictive. It's no longer about relying on humans to just do what's right. 

We are always going to need to use CS, but a lot more automation will be involved.

B2C companies will do really well in that space, by leveraging automation. For the B2B and enterprise segment, in particular, you'll always, always need a high-touch element to it. But again, even those folks will leverage predictive data analytics and the predictive side of things to do a better job there. 

I can really see a lot of consolidation with tools, and having a few players that are providing the whole lifecycle of the customer, leveraging data analytics, leveraging insights from that to really provide the CSMs with the right tools to become really predictive.

Thanks to Georges for giving us a peek into his crystal ball!

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