{"id":2646,"date":"2023-02-28T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/138.197.200.24\/resources\/blog\/evolution-of-customer-success\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T10:21:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T10:21:58","slug":"evolution-of-customer-success","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.smartkarrot.com\/resources\/blog\/evolution-of-customer-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Evolution of Customer Success: Past, Present, and Future"},"content":{"rendered":"
Today, customer success has become an inevitable part of the corporate culture. But, back in 1996, when the CRM company Vantive founded the idea, things weren\u2019t quite the same. So, in this blog, we\u2019ll cover how CS started, its evolution to what it is today, and the great future that lies ahead.<\/p>\n
During the SaaS industry\u2019s initial years, all enterprise software companies followed a similar organizational structure for post-sale customer relationship maintenance. Each had different roles and missions. Unfortunately, there was a lack of consideration of the value customers actually received.<\/p>\n
In 1996, the senior management at Vantive realized that retaining customers was vital to sustaining business, and the only problem was that it was challenging to do so. Vantive concluded that the industry-wide enterprise CRM systems had a remarkably high failure rate. Most of the vendors\u2019 profits from the perpetual licenses\u2019 sales were during the contract signing.<\/p>\n
Failed implementations were a considerable risk for future sales, and it could also potentially lead to irrecoverable losses in expected support and maintenance fees. This situation posed a problem for them since their goal was to have all of their customers as brand ambassadors<\/a>, so they couldn\u2019t afford anything short of satisfied customers. But the real motivator was to grow the relationship with the customers and generate revenue post-sales.<\/p>\n And to get the results they wanted; the traditional organizational structure wouldn\u2019t be enough\u2014they needed to take a different approach.<\/p>\n John Luongo, the CEO of Vantive, found out a very ingenious use of his company\u2019s application by the customer and wanted to use it for its growth. He hired Marie Alexander, who was the one who created the new department known as Customer Success<\/a>. She then began introducing the team to prospects before they signed a contract.<\/p>\n Not every Vantive customer was assigned a Customer Success Manager, but the customers were asked: What\u2019s success for you? What do you expect from us? Once their responses were documented, customers were introduced to a Customer Success Manager (CSM), who would help them reach their goal. Every six months, CSMs would send a list of expectations to the customer and schedule a review meeting. During this meeting, the Customer Success team would ask the customer if they\u2019ve been successful and reset expectations for the next six months based on their response.<\/p>\n In 2004, Bruce Cleveland became the General Manager of the on-demand subsidiary of another CRM company \u2013 Siebel.<\/p>\n After investigating, he concluded that although the sales team could bring in business, there was no specific role designated for retaining and expanding the customer relationship post-sales. Bruce understood that the customers who got the most value from the company\u2019s application would remain their loyal ambassadors. So, he created a designation specifically responsible for enhancing feature adoption and providing maximum value to the customers.<\/p>\n He named it the Customer Success Management team.<\/p>\n 2005 was an eventful year for Salesforce. They acquired significant customers at an astronomical rate, but customers were churning dramatically. The executive team realized that bringing in new customers was not enough, so they needed to make the existing ones stay.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Although Salesforce was not the one to invent customer success, they were the ones to build the most extensive CS department in the industry\u2014Customers For Life. Its objective was not to look after renewals, up-sells, or cross-sells; but to improve customer retention through enhanced user adoption<\/a>.<\/p>\n1996-1997<\/h3>\n
The induction of the first customer success department in an organization<\/h4>\n
2004<\/h3>\n
The emergence of the CSM team in an organization<\/h4>\n
2005<\/h3>\n
Creation of customers for life group to address customer retention through enhanced user adoption<\/h4>\n
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