If you are so inclined, most things can be viewed through a lens that turns them into proof points for the importance of a focus on customer experience. It didn’t require much effort, though, to walk away from the SIIA All About the Cloud conference with a sense that success in the cloud is all about customer experience.

Fundamentally, the SaaS business model necessitates an absolute focus on ensuring customer success and delivering positive customer experiences. Without the traditional lock-in provided by on-premise software – now that it’s installed, they’re not going to switch – SaaS companies are forced to put their money where their name is by delivering on the “service” promise. Delivering value to the customer and gaining their trust is the new lock-in.

Some conference highlights from the point-of-view of a customer success-obsessed observer:

• Hearing about several “NextGen” companies who built their offerings with the customer experience in mind: Armor5’s value proposition features ease of end-user access and xTuple’s 5 minute rule to gauge whether the customer’s first five minutes using the application will be positive.
• Affirmation of the idea that whoever in the organization is responsible for customer success should have financial incentives associated with that success: Servoy compensates sales people based on the revenue generated by its clients’ applications; Totango’s Guy Nirpaz suggested that Chief Customer Officers have revenue goals driven by retention and cross/up-sell.
• Highlighting by Shlomo Weiss of SafeNet of the fact that “shelfware” – the purchased and unimplemented software either on-premise or in the cloud – is a significant opportunity for companies that drive adoption.
• Dissemination by Nick Mehta of Gainsight of the idea that investment in retention is just as important and vital as investment in customer acquisition marketing and sales.

In the political world, there’s lots of talk of the “perpetual campaign”—the unceasing cycle of fundraising, speech giving, and vote soliciting. The reality is that for SaaS companies, the state of being should likewise be understood as a perpetual campaign. This is because with SaaS, every moment using the application represents a customer touchpoint that influences customer decisions—about whether to expand utilization, about whether to upgrade to a more advanced version, about whether to invest in additional services.

For this reason, it is vital that a marketing mindset and marketing capabilities be an organic part of the CSM organization. Specifically, successful CSM needs to:

• Understand Customer Behavior. It is vital to the success of a CSM organization to understand customer behavior and attitudes. Market research into customer satisfaction, customer decision-making, propensity to recommend, and segmentation can all contribute significantly to building a CSM team that delivers measurable value to the organization.
• Influence Customer Behavior. Core to the CSM function is influencing customer behavior towards activities that result in successful utilization of the application. To execute this successfully requires customer data analytics skills and the ability to draw conclusions, make predictions, and act to compel the desired activity—all of which should already be part of the marketing function.
• Test and Learn. Because understanding and then influencing customer behavior is an iterative process, a systematic testing and learning approach to CSM activity is important to optimize efficiency and effectiveness. Whether pre-contract, during onboarding, over the course of ramp-up and utilization, or triggered by specific milestones or activities, the opportunities for communications to boost CLV (Customer Lifetime Value delivered through conversion, retention, up/cross-sell)—and therefore, the opportunities for testing and improving communications—are limited only by resource availability.

To distinguish itself from traditional customer service, the CSM team needs to take a proactive approach to customer communications, rather than being reactive to customer problems. As the organizational function most responsible for proactive customer communications, marketing (whether in the form of shared resources or in the form of dedicated CSM staff with marketing training) needs to be a part of the CSM effort.