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32 Weeks of Customer Success
32 issues. 9 months. One guiding philosophy.
Featured Article
For the last 33 weeks, we’ve been on a journey.
It started with a simple mission: to build the most valuable 10 minutes you'll spend all week on your work in customer success. We set out to move beyond the fluff and provide actionable, strategic insights for CS professionals.
33 issues later (including this one) it’s time to pause, take a breath, and look back at the ground we’ve covered.
It’s a chance to connect the dots, see the bigger picture, and for our newer community members, a way to get caught up on the foundational ideas that define a true Customer Champion.
Here are the core pillars we've built, week by week.
1. We Moved from Fire-Fighting to Future-Proofing
From the very first issue, we challenged the old, reactive model of customer success. The "fire-fighting" approach is a relic. It’s draining, inefficient, and ultimately, a losing game. Our focus has always been on "future-proofing"—a proactive stance that anticipates needs, solves problems before they start, and cements you as a strategic partner, not just a support desk.
2. We Positioned Customer Success as the Growth Engine
Perhaps the biggest shift we’ve championed is moving CS out of the cost-center column and into its rightful place: the primary driver of growth. We've made the case that Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is your most powerful growth lever, and we've shown how leading companies are hitting 130% NRR by turning customer success into a revenue-generating machine. Yesterday's support desk is today's growth architect.
3. We Created the Playbook for Scaling
Growth is messy. We’ve dedicated significant time to navigating the awkward-but-critical stages of scaling a customer function. We've covered everything from winning as a small, nimble team to handling the transition when you're "not small anymore".
This culminated in our most ambitious project: the seven-part “Building Your Enterprise CS Framework” series. We laid out a complete roadmap covering everything from strategic team structure and stakeholder alignment to technical implementation and leveraging AI.
4. We Turned Data into Dollars, Not Just Dashboards
Data is useless without action. A core theme, especially in our later issues, has been the practical application of technology and AI. The goal isn't to build pretty dashboards; it's to turn data into dollars. This means using predictive analytics to get ahead of churn, identifying expansion opportunities, and automating the right tasks to free up your team for high-impact, strategic work.
Your Index to the Entire Journey
For those who have been with me since the beginning, thanks for being on this journey. The work we do is defining the future of business, and we're just getting started.
Tomas
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CS100 Summit 2025
📅 Date: September 22 – 24, 2025
📍 Location: Sundance Mountain Resort, Sundance, UT, USA
🌐 Website: http://cs100.clientsuccess.com
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📅 Date: October 9, 2025
📍 Location: Evolution, Battersea Park, London, United Kingdom
🌐 Website: https://www.engagecustomer.com