The SaaS world is rife with literature on the importance of “customer success.” The whole premise of SaaS, after all, is that because you are selling a service, successful customers will deliver increased revenue as they expand their use of your service. This creates the flywheel that generates billions of dollars a year for successful SaaS companies like Datadog, Snowflake, Atlassian, and more. These businesses have invested heavily in customer success, and see the function as a key contributor to their net-dollar retention as they scale out their customer base.
Nudge Security does not have a Customer Success team. That’s not to say we don’t care about customer success, but that we prioritize it above all else, and across all functions. To create a team focused on customer success would create an opportunity for organizational disconnect. The reality is that customer success is the sum total of every interaction the customer has with the company—it’s not a responsibility that you can saddle a small group of people with. I have personally had great product experiences that were then completely invalidated by negative interactions with the sales, support, or legal teams. You probably don’t have to reach far into your memory for a similar example from your own life, whether it’s an incredible product experience followed by an agonizing sales cycle, or the delight of a snazzy new cell phone followed by a painful activation process. Every interaction you have with a brand impacts your perception of the value it provides. The sum total of those interactions is what determines your level of “success.”
At Nudge, we recognize that customer success starts from the moment you land on our website. We’ve tried to provide (and hopefully, constantly improve) an experience that helps our future customers to educate themselves on the security landscape in which we operate and how our product works, even letting them try it out for themselves. When they do need help, our Product Success team is available to work with them. This is the same team that handles everything from pre-sale questions to support and ongoing product use, and whose primary focus is to help people get value out of our product.
This leaves the responsibility of “customer success” on the shoulders of everyone at the organization. From our sales team to our engineers, our marketing team, and our legal and finance teams, we all share the responsibility for providing a positive experience.
If you ever feel we’re not living up to that responsibility, please let us know and we will work to improve.
