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Unlocking Success: Insights from the Customer Success Index 2025
trantorindia | Updated: November 3, 2023
Introduction
In the ever-evolving landscape of business, customer success has taken center stage. Companies are now laser-focused on maximizing customer retention and lifetime value. But how are customer success (CS) teams adapting to meet the new challenges that this era brings? The 2023 Customer Success Index from ClientSuccess provides us with data-driven insights into the current state of the industry. Let’s delve into the key highlights that shed light on the remarkable transformations in the world of customer success.
6 Key Highlights From the Customer Success Index 2023:
1. CS Budgets Rising:
- In 2022, 63% of CS leaders experienced substantial budget increases, with an average budget growth of nearly 15%.
- The largest portions of these budgets are allocated to compensation (44%), followed by technology (19%).
- High-growth companies are aggressive in their CS investments, with average budgets exceeding $8 million.
2. Expanding Mandates Beyond Renewals:
- 72% of CS teams now own renewals and customer retention, indicating an increased focus on customer success.
- Many CS teams have expanded their responsibilities beyond renewals, with 67% managing onboarding, 44% handling upsells and expansion, and 37% managing education programs.
- Surprisingly, 15% of CS teams even have profit and loss (P&L) responsibility for their book of business.
3. Swifter Adoption of Technology:
- A significant 95% of CS teams are leveraging automation to scale their operations.
- Common use cases for automation include customer segmentation, health scoring, and churn prediction.
- Approximately 57% of CS teams are implementing data analytics and machine learning to enhance their processes.
- However, data quality issues remain a challenge, with 43% citing poor data as a top obstacle.
4. Rising Need for Operational Scalability:
- 63% of CS teams report that they lack adequate scale to handle their growing customer bases.
- Top priorities for scaling include self-service adoption, tiered services, and improved service level agreements (SLAs).
- To support business growth, 67% of CS teams are expanding their headcount, while Artificial Intelligence, automation, and workflow alignment are crucial for boosting productivity.
5. Increasing Importance of Customer Health:
- A striking 94% of CS teams are tracking customer health metrics, showing a substantial increase from 81% in 2021.
- 72% are investing more in health scoring analytics and platforms to monitor customer well-being.
- Key health metrics monitored include product engagement, customer satisfaction, and retention risk.
- Implementing health scoring leads to fewer emergencies, better customer segmentation, and the development of prescriptive playbooks.
6. Mandate for More Strategic Impact:
- 61% of CS leaders aspire to evolve from mere customer support roles to becoming growth drivers for their organizations.
- Top strategies for achieving this include providing market insights, driving product enhancement, and increasing wallet share.
- However, there is a need for a cultural shift, as 54% report that customer success isn’t perceived strategically.
- Training, executive engagement, and incentives are key drivers to elevate the strategic role of CS within organizations.
In conclusion, the 2023 Customer Success Index reveals that customer success is becoming increasingly pivotal, data-driven, and proactive. To excel in this area, companies need to invest more in customer success, align it strategically, and scale their operations effectively. Evolving the function of customer success can lead to stronger customer relationships, translating into growth, loyalty, and a competitive advantage for businesses.
Let Trantor Guide Your CS Optimization
As a leader in customer success consulting, Trantor leverages the Index annually to inform our advisory services and thought leadership. Our experts can help analyze your CS organization against the Index benchmarks and industry best practices. We identify targeted opportunities to improve budget allocation, mandate expansion, technology adoption, operational scaling, and strategic elevation.
Let Trantor guide you on an optimization journey rooted in comprehensive CS benchmark data. Contact us to get started strengthening your customer success capabilities.
