Automate Customer Success Metrics with MetaCX

Using Customer Success Metrics to Drive Growth

Customer success metrics are used to gauge the overall health of a customer base for a company. They are helpful indicators of how well customer success teams, and companies as a whole, are meeting the needs of customers and contributing to wider organizational growth.

Customer success metrics play an important role in various industries but are commonly used in SaaS because it can be difficult to measure satisfaction otherwise. SaaS customers aren’t always visible; businesses can’t always interact with them the way that they could if they were selling physical products, which is why it’s important for SaaS companies to purposely track customer success metrics for SaaS to determine how well their software is meeting customers’ needs.

Because SaaS companies don’t always get to speak with customers face-to-face, it’s important that they create online spaces in which customers can submit feedback and share the pain points they’re experiencing.

Getting involved in a customer success community is a great way to learn more about tracking SaaS success metrics and how to deliver value to customers, even if you aren’t selling them a physical product in person. Ensuring SaaS customer success can be trickier than promoting success in other industries, but it can be done with the right tools and resources.

Comparing Different Types of Customer Success Metrics

There are many different types of customer success metrics, each of which monitors a different aspect of the customer experience. For example, marketing metrics are used to determine how well businesses are using marketing to meet customer needs. Success metrics for a product measure the extent to which customers are attaining results with a product and are satisfied with a certain product. Software product metrics are a type of metrics that measure product adoption and satisfaction with the software. You can also monitor a KPI for product development to ensure quality production. KPIs and metrics can be extremely useful when determining how to measure success of a product launch.

Companies track success metrics for a project to determine project success, and success metrics for business to measure business success overall—especially in relation to customer satisfaction. SaaS companies that want to obtain more detailed insights into their platforms might look at success metrics for a feature, which measures the adoption and effectiveness of specific features within the software, like automation or scalability. These are just some of the metrics involved in customer success management, but every organization is unique, and so you should consider your specific business goals and objectives to determine the most useful metrics to track over time.

Creating a Customer Success Metrics Dashboard

A customer success metrics dashboard displays customer-related metrics, allowing users to easily view their progress in real-time. Your dashboard might include KPIs for success, NRR customer success, and everything in between. Rather than having to pull different data from disparate systems, you can access the information you need in a single, centralized location. Dashboards provide convenience and ease of use so that companies can focus on growth rather than trying to gather and make sense of disconnected information.

You can use a customer success dashboard template to construct your own dashboard. Before doing so, however, it’s recommended that you have a product management metrics framework in place so that you know exactly what to include on your dashboard.  For example, if there is a specific customer metrics KPI that you want to pay particular attention to, you should account for that in your product and customer management framework—this can be a good way to organize your dashboard. You might also view a success matrix example to see how others have structured their dashboards and what metrics they have included in these systems.

With a customer success KPI dashboard, you can more easily view the KPIs you’re monitoring at any given time. A customer success scorecard or client success scorecard can also be helpful for tracking metrics and scoring your performance in different areas. MetaCX allows users to view metrics in a similarly effective way, helping them to capture and analyze multidimensional data to ensure the delivery of expected value. With MetaCX, you can also see metric snapshots detailing your company’s progress towards desired outcomes. Keeping track of your progress through an interactive dashboard or software like that offered by MetaCX is crucial to staying on top of things and delivering maximum value to your customers.

Arming CSMs With Real-Time Insights

Customer success metrics help CSMs perform better in their jobs. They also allow them to self-assess and reflect on what they might do better going forward. There are many different types of customer success manager performance metrics, including those that evaluate customer lifetime value, product adoption, outcome achievement, and retention rate. Because these metrics are directly tied to the performance of management, it behooves managers to regularly monitor them, whether manually or automatically through software. Customer success manager performance metrics provide detailed insight into what’s working well, allowing managers to either keep doing what they’re doing or revise their strategies.

A customer success manager performance review might also be conducted to get a big-picture look at manager performance, taking various aspects of customer success into account. Unlike other types of metrics, which gauge performance across the entire customer success team, a CSM review focuses specifically on management and equips them with the tools and information they need to guide teams in the right direction. Self-assessment customer success manager tools can be used to simplify this process and automatically generate reports based on certain criteria.

Success Metrics Examples

Studying different success metrics examples can give you a better idea of what to look for in terms of customer success. They are useful for evaluating customer satisfaction from a holistic angle so that you can revise your business strategies as needed. The following are some of the most common metrics for success examples:

• Customer’s business impact KPIs
• Customer health score
• Net promoter score
• Monthly recurring revenue
• Churn rate
• Renewal rate
• Customer lifetime value
• Retention cost

Understanding key objectives and success metrics examples is crucial to implementing successful monitoring and analysis measures in your organization. For instance, a marketing automation software provider might look at customer churn rate to determine whether or not their software is meeting customers’ needs. Higher churn rates indicate lower satisfaction, so the provider can then take that information and use it to make changes to their product to boost customer retention rates. You can also use a success metrics template for help formatting your metrics monitoring process—this can help ensure that you hit on all critical points when conducting a review or evaluation.

Salesforce’s Approach to Customer Success

Salesforce offers customer relationship management software and is one of the most widely-used CRM systems on the market today. When it comes to customer success metrics, Salesforce covers a number of bases, helping users to get a holistic view of their CRM process. For example, if you’re looking to better understand your customer satisfaction (CSAT) score, you can access a Salesforce CSAT report. These are typically generated based on the findings of Salesforce surveys. By deploying a Salesforce customer satisfaction survey you can not only get a CSAT report, but demonstrate to your customers that you value their feedback.

Utilizing a Salesforce success metrics survey isn’t the only way to gauge customer satisfaction within the Salesforce platform, however. Salesforce AOV, or the average value of all customer orders over a certain period of time, can be useful for determining sales success and how well your products are meeting the needs of your customers. Annual contract value (ACV) measures annual subscription value and can likewise be helpful for measuring a customer’s value to your organization. Tracking Salesforce ACV, AOV, and other customer-related metrics is a great way to get a big-picture view of customer success. It’s important to regularly stay on top of these metrics in order to deliver greater value to customers over time.

MetaCX provides an alternative platform to more easily track the delivery of value, scaling across entire business ecosystems and enabling companies to come together to manage value related to suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders. To establish greater trust with everyone involved, MetaCX has adopted a neutral, third-party approach in which all participating companies are put on equal footing in terms of privacy and transparency. In this way, MetaCX is not owned by any single company, but rather serves as a trusted partner that facilitates collaboration and enables the tracking and delivery of value. MetaCX’s Business Value Network is a unique network in which companies can come together to manage expected value and stay on top of all items related to customer success.

Catalyst’s Approach to Customer Success

Catalyst customer success metrics are crucial for Catalyst users. Gaining access to Catalyst analytics can give you a better idea of where you stand in terms of customer success and satisfaction. The Catalyst Customer 360 software can be a great option for those wanting to track success metrics on a deeper level. Catalyst accounting software can also be helpful for understanding your finances and seeing how customer success impacts your accounting items overall.

When used alongside each other, the Catalyst Customer 360 and accounting software can provide a helpful overview of customer success and what effect it’s having on your finances. Staying updated with the latest Catalyst tech is crucial to getting the most out of the platform, and for additional guidance, you might consult with the Catalyst IO help center.

MetaCX takes customer success a step further, allowing businesses to collaborate with each other to manage expected value. The platform makes it easy for users to maintain greater control over their customer success management processes. MetaCX offers multiple features and capabilities, including initiative groups, metric groups, benchmarking, and action plans. This gives users a broader overview of the value, allowing them to see how customers, vendors, and additional stakeholders are impacted from every angle.