Innovation in Customer Success

Overview: What You Did

Provide an overview of your innovation at a high level. Details might include, among others:

• Business challenges or climate that lead to the innovation, (i.e., lack of funding, high churn rates, low customer adoption, and low customer satisfaction)
• Possible innovations that are examples of minority practices in the industry include reshaping the company go to market responsibilities between sales and success, partner strategies for customer success, predictive health scores
• Roadblocks or challenges faced, and how you overcame them
• Lessons learned. What would you do differently next time? What can others learn from your journey?

Business Impact: How This Innovation Has Helped Your Company

Describe how your innovative use of analytics has impacted business outcomes for your company. Provide supporting evidence*, such as:

• Customer loyalty
• Improved win rates
• Impact on productivity
• Cost savings
• Additional revenue recognized

Describe how your innovation has impacted business outcomes for your company. Provide supporting metrics*, such as:

• Improved renewal rates
• Lower churn rates
• Increase in expansion opportunities including cross-sell, upsell, and lead generation
• Positive effects on customer loyalty measurements (NPS, CES, etc.)
• Predictive power of analytics or health scores
• Lower Sales and Marketing costs
• Increase in customer references and advocacy
• Measurable improvements in the way customer feedback made their way into the delivery of new products and/or product enhancements
• Cost savings based on ability to scale organization
• Revenue growth based on monetized customer success portfolios
• Measures of employee performance (productivity, satisfaction, etc.)

Customer Impact: How This Innovation Has Helped Your Customers

Detail how your innovation has positively impacted your customers. Provide supporting evidence*, such as:

• Metrics related to your customers’ achievement of stated business goals through optimal use of your solutions (e.g., if your technology is HR software, how has it lowered your customers’ attrition or helped hire new talent?)
• Customer testimonials that articulate the positive business impact of your Customer Success organization’s proactive guidance and engagement
• Examples of increasing customer revenue or lowering customer costs or achieving their specific business outcome with your technology

Judging Criteria

Your application will be judged on the following criteria:

• The Pacesetter Factor of Your Application: Is your application based on a compelling “best practice” and/or is it truly “innovative” in today’s technology industry?
• Business Impact: How has this helped your company?
• Customer Impact: How has this helped your customers?
• The Cohesiveness of Your Application: Is there a single, end-to-end narrative that is easy to follow and supported by good examples and/or data? (i.e., business challenges, inception, creation, implementation, adoption, measurement, expansion, process, results, lessons learned, future projections)
• The Effectiveness of Your Metrics: Do the metrics that you included adequately support the story that you are telling and are they organized and presented well?