How to Build Customer Success at an Early Stage Startup

How to Build Customer Success at an Early Stage Startup

Henry Schuck, DiscoverOrg Stefano Migliorisi, VeaMea

Doug Camplejohn, Fliptop Mike Smalls, Hoopla

Michael SmallsHoopla

Hoopla is the new way to win for high-velocity

sales, marketing and customer success teams.

Hoopla’s Sales Motivation Platform combines

modern game mechanics, data analytics and

broadcast-quality video in a powerfully simple

cloud application that make it easy for managers

to motivate team performance and score more

wins.

Founder & CEO

Customer Success Team & Strategy

• 300 CUSTOMERS• TEAM:

• 1 Head of Customer Success

• 2 CSMs

STRATEGY:• Successful onboarding for each

customer within 2 weeks of signing• Regular group communication (emails,

webinars, tips and tricks)• Bi-Weekly training (for key contact

changes)• ID flags that trigger potential churn

issues

2014 Customer Success Goals

• 92% retention rate or better• Churn plus upsell of over 100%• Tools

• Gainsight for Customer Success• Influitive for Advocacy Community

• MVP.Hoopla.Net• Improve process for product feedback 

• Never too early to invest, churn is a killer• Need tooling and analytics to track customer

health• Great people make all the difference 

Key Learnings

Henry SchuckDiscoverOrg

DiscoverOrg, a three-time INC 500 company and 2014 CODiE Award winner for Best Sales and Marketing Intelligence Solution, provides the country’s top technology marketers and sales professionals access to the most up-to-date and accurate data, Information Technology organizational charts, and Real Time projects on their target accounts. From small start-ups to technology giants, DiscoverOrg moves the needle for sales and marketing groups of all sizes for over seven years

Co-Founder & CEO

DiscoverOrg

Client Success Team

Andrew BrewerVice President of Client Success

Ian Seniff Krystan Resch Allison PhillipsSenior CSM Senior CSM CS Administrator

Alyssa Todd Benjamin Croll Bradford DeLuca Gabe Davis Jared EllisKelsey Varce Luke Denby Nova Ahmed Finnigan Ricky Kalmbach Steven Mitchell

Client Success Strategy

• Being more efficient with a large customer base.

• Educate on Sales, Marketing, and Staffing best practices.

• Identifying Customer behavior to create valuable reach outs.

• Holding our clients accountable,

along with the CSM’s to make sure

our product is used correctly. We’re

selling success, but the client has

to do things to see that success.

• Communicating new products and

identifying upsell opportunities

through constant customer

engagement.

CS Goals for 2014

• Using analytics to identify customers that are at risk of churn

• Refine onboarding process

• Creating a customer roadmap and health plan

Tips - What have we learned?

• Just training our clients on our product is not enough- we have to be experts at what

THEY do. Product + Domain Expertise• CSM’s with higher call volume will have a higher renewal percentage• An engaged customer is a healthy customer- communicating needs is critical to a

customer’s satisfaction.• We will not reach our upsell goals if we haven’t identified what our clients corporate

structure is. Leveraging existing relationships to get introductions to other internal

groups is critical to account growth.

Stefano Migliorisi

Mobile secure video collaboration

CEO (aka King of Monkeys)

CSM: Listen to this cat

Principle 1 - if you do not know where you are going any

road will lead you there

• How do you identify and prove success?

• You need to know why your customers choose you (e.g., go

faster)

• You need to be ready to innovate (cars or faster horses?)

• Clients need to be willing to share info or you need to be creative

(e.g., Doximity or Linkedin in telemental health)

CSM: Bob2Bob

Principle 2 - Intelligence is often not intelligent

• Information overflow: how do we distinguish between

noise and real info? There are more common approaches

in measuring sales and marketing than CSM

• Customer success starts in sales (listening is key, a bad

sale is worse than no sale, never over promise)

Doug Camplejohn

Fliptop's applications use data science to help companies close

more sales. Our software leverages public web and internal

CRM and marketing application data in order to generate

meaningful sales lift. Our cloud applications provide high return

on investment and can be deployed quickly.

Founder and CEO

Customer Success Goals• Map your customer lifecycle• Develop seamless handoff process• Define what success looks like for every

customer• Deliver happiness and success

Learning and Tips

• Customers want to be seen and heard• Give them a channel to communicate with you

• Listen when they provide feedback• Invaluable for product and improved delivery

• Build the case for renewal from the moment you sign

• Create growth strategy for each and every account

Q & A