Is Customer Success At Risk?

For over a year now, we have all had friends, colleagues, and connections in the worldwide Customer Success community suddenly appear in the job market. Open position announcements are fewer, and there are many applicants for each new posting. Both veteran Customer Success executives and those newer to the role have found themselves out of a job, often along with their entire teams. Why? Could you and your group be next?  Is Customer Success At Risk?

I’ve developed a short survey form for looking at the team leader/executive layoff scenario. It doesn’t ask for either personal or company names. What I’m after is a snapshot of risk factors that might help others to assess the possible threats to their roles and teams — and enable a plan for avoiding undesirable outcomes.

Questions include: What size of company? Stage? Business? Was the product modular? Were there multiple sources of revenue? Had the company segmented their customer portfolios? Was the CS group directly connected to revenue? What changes happened in the company organization in the preceding quarters?

The survey is completely anonymous. What matters is to identify common factors. I’ll discuss the findings in The Customer Success Forum.  Here’s the link to the survey form: