Hello,
Within the space of one week, the UK has seemingly gone from summer to autumn, and this is always an interesting time of year. For many, it’s back-to-school or the start of a new sports season, and for Customer Success, it brings year-end into full view. Even if your financial year is based on the calendar year, many customers will want to get a number of projects completed before we lose focus over the holiday season. I worked with a very large CPG company where my main point of contact would always tell me that the business effectively shut-up-shop on December 17. So any outstanding projects either needed to be completed by then, or wait to have them picked up in the second week of the year, losing nearly a whole month of traction. Not great.
And for CSMs, you will no doubt start thinking about performance metrics and targets, but there’s one thing that still amazes me today, and it’s the amount of attention that leaders still give to vanity metrics and activity tracking. Pushing teams to increase their NPS score, or drive up the number of QBR calls, really isn't the right thing to focus on, as highlighted by my good friend Jason Noble:
In today’s climate, Customer Success teams are having to work hard to justify their role, and switching the conversation to revenue generation is one of the best ways to do that. In my latest blog article, Why Your CFO Doesn't Care About NPS (And What They Want to See Instead), I discuss how changing the conversation from NPS surveys to NRR is one of the best ways to demonstrate to leadership teams the true value that CS delivers.
As an example, which do you think really matters more to your C-Suite?
A: "We received an NPS of 80 last quarter."
B: "Our customer reduced their supply chain costs by 12%.”
I’ll guarantee that you all said answer B. And you’d be right. Being able to demonstrate to not only our customers, but also our own leadership teams, the value we are generating is what keeps a crucial part of the business.
I also explain a lot more of this in my systematic approach to capturing customer goals and demonstrating value in my masterclass, “The Success Alignment Model”.
A Couple of Other Things on My Mind
NotebookLM is becoming one of my favorite AI tools for customer research. Being able to upload a wide range of source material and then use a chat prompt to ask questions like “Act as a leading business analyst, can you highlight the top three corporate goals for [customer name] for 2026 and highlight where [product] is well placed to solve them?” is really, really impressive. If you haven't tried it already, I suggest creating a notebook for a key customer and starting to add sources today.
That's all from me for this month. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the NPS vs. NRR debate, do feel free to hit reply and let me know.
All the best,
Simon
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