One of the biggest changes we have experienced as Headhunters for Customer Success over the last 2 years, has been the increased demand from SaaS firms, to help them source top quality Customer Success Executives across the UK, DACH, Nordics and other parts of Europe. Demand has been so great that often over 50% of the active roles we have, are Customer Success related.
Did you know that in the UK alone, there are currently over 2,000 Customer Success related roles being advertised on Glassdoor!?
Due to the massive trend in the market away from traditional the Software Perpetual Model approach towards SaaS, this should be no real surprise. The SaaS model brings a whole set of different challenges for vendors such as customer churn.
So how does one define Customer Success in SaaS exactly?
Certainly it is not Customer Support or Experience, but more about retaining, extending and ensuring the long term success of Customer engagements. Create real value for customer, using insights and data that will make the vendor stand out from the crowd and make the customer vendor relationship even stronger. On-boarding, Retention, Customer Health, Upsell, Cross sell are all areas of the customer that should be constantly monitored by the Customer Success Executive, whilst working with closely with their Sales team.
The Customer Success Executive should not be a Sales person or closed deals otherwise the customer may lose their trust as a trusted Customer Advisor.
Here is an amazing article written by Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight
As Customer Success is a relatively new job function, we need to consider what backgrounds the strongest candidates will have? Professional Services, Senior Sales, Customer Services, Account Management, the list goes on? How important is it that the candidate comes from the same technology area so they act in a more consultative way towards the clients? A strong knowledge and interest of the Software Products is important along with strong Account Management skills. Too strong off a sales-focus may scare the customer away.
The good news is that as a result of running multiple Customer Success Executive hiring campaigns, Intrinsic as leading Headhunters for Customer Success roles have an exceptionally strong and up-to-date list of some of the top Customer Executives and Managers across the UK, Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden and other parts of Europe.
Sponsorship of Gainsight Pulse
Intrinsic has been more active than most Recruiters for Customer Success, featuring as a Silver Sponsor at the World’s largest Customer Success Conference, Gainsight Pulse. Intrinsic has also participated at Pulse Europe and been a Speaker at the Chief Customer Officer Summit in the UK.
Intrinsic will be running a London Customer Success Seminar with Gainsight on April 5th 2019, click here for more info.
Ben Watkins is a Director of Intrinsic Executive Search, and possesses nearly 20 years experience of Headhunting senior commercial Executives across the UK and Europe on behalf of emerging Enterprise Software and SaaS companies.
Feel free to share your views by dropping Ben an email: bew@intrinsicsearch.com