Why Services Organizations Must Put Customer Success at Their Core
For services businesses operating in today’s market, customer expectations are at an all-time high, and renewal rates alone can determine the success or failure of their plans. In such a competitive business landscape, delivering outstanding customer outcomes isn’t just a goal—it’s a necessity.
As a result, customer success has emerged as a critical driver of sustainable growth and profitability. But what exactly does customer success mean, and is there a framework that companies can use to ensure effective implementation?
Here’s everything you need to know about customer success, and how you can start transforming it into a profit powerhouse.
What is Customer Success?
At its very core, customer success is a framework focused on helping customers achieve their desired outcomes through the use of your product or service. It’s about more than just resolving issues—it’s about building long-term partnerships, understanding customer goals, and proactively delivering value at every stage of the relationship.
For services businesses, customer success is particularly vital. These businesses often rely on recurring revenue models and long-term client relationships, making it essential to build the kind of loyalty that consistently brings customers back for more.
Customer Success vs. Customer Support
While customer success and customer support teams often share a customer-focused mission, they operate in fundamentally different ways. The key distinction lies in their approach: customer support is reactive, addressing issues after they arise, whereas customer success is proactive, anticipating and addressing needs before customers even reach out.
For example, imagine a customer contacts the support team because they’re having trouble integrating your software with their existing tools. The support team would troubleshoot the issue, provide step-by-step instructions, and ensure the integration works.
In contrast, the customer success team would take a broader view, asking questions like “What are you trying to achieve with this integration? Let’s explore how we can optimize your workflow to meet your business goals.” This approach ensures the solution aligns with the customer’s long-term objectives.
Is your organization truly customer-centric?
Why Customer Success Matters
Services organizations that invest into effective customer success initiatives understand that it goes beyond “thank you” emails and seasonal greetings—it is a framework that involves every function and level of the organization. While the initial investment might seem daunting, a Forrester report highlights that companies are able to deliver an incredible 107% ROI within three years.
These market leaders that prioritize customer success see higher retention rates, increased customer lifetime value, and stronger brand loyalty. Critically, they understand that investing in the customer results in:
Lower Costs and Higher Returns
Acquiring new customers can be costly—studies show it’s 5x more expensive than retaining existing ones. By focusing on customer success, you ensure your clients stay satisfied, loyal, and engaged, reducing churn and protecting your revenue stream.
Happier Customers that Drive Growth
Happy customers don’t just stay—they grow with you. When customers see the value in your product or service, they’re more likely to expand their usage, creating opportunities for upsells and cross-sells. A strong customer success strategy identifies these opportunities by tracking customer health and aligning your solutions with their evolving needs.
Increased Trust with Customers
Trust is the foundation of any successful business relationship. By delivering outstanding customer outcomes, you build trust by demonstrating your commitment to your customers’ success. In a competitive market, this trust can differentiate your business and lead to long-term partnerships, referrals, and a top-of-mind presence.
How mature is your customer success strategy?
6 Tips to Deliver Customer Success Effectively
For leaders looking for ways to get started, implementing a successful customer success strategy requires a combination of the right mindset, tools, and processes. Here are six tips to keep in mind when building your customer success framework:
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Build a customer-centric culture
A strong customer success strategy starts with a customer-centric culture that involves every employee. While the customer success team manages relationships, everyone must contribute to driving outstanding customer outcomes. This shared mindset fosters collaboration and aligns the organization around client satisfaction.
Digital tools such as Certinia Professional Services Cloud also play a key role by breaking down silos, enabling cross-departmental collaboration, and ensuring the right resources are engaged. This cultural shift turns customer success into a team effort, driving better results for both customers and the business. -
Engage as one team
Customer success isn’t one-size-fits-all—it varies by company and customer. However, one consistent factor is the importance of working as one cohesive team. This starts with sales involving customer success early in the engagement to set clear expectations and ensure a seamless transition to ongoing relationship management.
By collaborating with customers to define what success looks like, teams can establish clear, measurable goals. A structured engagement plan then guides customers through their lifecycle, from initial expectations to measurable outcomes. This unified approach optimizes resources, improves efficiency, resolves issues faster, and delivers exceptional value. -
Leverage the right technology
The right technology eliminates manual processes, reduces data silos, and fosters collaboration across teams. A unified system that connects sales, services, success, and support ensures seamless transitions throughout the customer lifecycle.
To achieve this, organizations must move beyond spreadsheets and adopt automated tools integrated with their CRM. Ideal solutions include digital dashboards that track customer journeys, enabling teams to build success plans, develop event-triggered playbooks, monitor engagement and activities, and evaluate customer health scores. These tools also help identify risks early, allowing proactive responses and avoiding the need for “heroic acts of account management”.
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4. Achieve a 360-degree customer view
A 360-degree customer view ensures all teams—from sales and finance to delivery and support—have real-time visibility into the entire customer lifecycle. This transparency prevents misaligned objectives, like sales pursuing an upsell while finance issues a credit stop for unpaid invoices.
By connecting front- and back-office functions, organizations create a single source of truth that accelerates decision-making and provides insights into revenue streams, resource demand, and customer lifetime value. This unified view empowers teams to deliver consistent value and build stronger customer relationships.
5. Balance customer experience and profitability
While renewals and expansions are lucrative, many organizations rely on disjointed, manual processes that hinder efficiency. Forward-thinking companies achieve profitability by gaining visibility into customer activities, optimizing resource deployment, and maintaining connectivity throughout the customer lifecycle. By transforming customer success from a cost center to a profit center, organizations can drive both customer satisfaction and business growth.
To achieve this, adopting the right customer success solution is critical. A system that eliminates silos and operationalizes best practices enables teams to create outcomes-based success plans, develop dynamic playbooks, and automate triggers based on customer health. This ensures resources align with customer needs and turns insights into actionable strategies, driving long-term value.
6. Foster a partnership mentality
A customer-centric organization views engagements as long-term partnerships, not transactional relationships. This requires a collaborative mindset, encouraging open, honest conversations where success teams provide constructive feedback and suggest improvements. While these discussions can be challenging, they are vital for guiding customers toward their goals and adding value.
Customer success doesn’t mean always saying “yes”—it means steering customers away from ineffective practices and toward better solutions. Services companies bring industry best practices and insights from working with other organizations, offering valuable guidance. They can also facilitate networking and knowledge-sharing between customers for mutual benefit. A mature customer success function is seen as a proactive, insightful partnership that delivers value and justifies the investment of time and resources.
A Modern Approach to Deliver Outstanding Customer Outcomes
Delivering customer success is more than just a buzzword—it’s a strategic imperative for services businesses looking to thrive in today’s competitive landscape. By understanding your customers’ goals, engaging proactively, and leveraging the right tools, you can build a customer success strategy that drives mutual growth and loyalty.
If you’re ready to take the next step in your customer success journey, Certinia is here to help. Learn more about our customer success cloud solution and how it can support your journey toward delivering outstanding customer outcomes.
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