Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending December 24, 2021

I'm making this last newsletter of the year (taking a break next week) a customer-focused edition - happy holidays and happy new year y'all, thanks for all of your eye-balls and clicks this year.​

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: CLV (or sometimes LTV): The C stands for CUSTOMER, and this metric represents the average revenue that a customer generates (LifeTime Value) before they churn. ChartMogul has a great online calculator here. Go to advanced mode, though, as this calculator references the traditional formula and the David Skok version (the advanced one is viewed as more realistic).
2. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: Customer loyalty drives the success of a business, and the customer experience (CX) drives loyalty. Zen Desk has published its CX Trends Report for 2021. It's full of great nuggets: support requests are up 20% on average since the start of the pandemic, 75% of customers feel loyal to a particular brand or company (that delivers good CX), and 65% of customers want to buy from companies that offer quick and easy online transactions.
3. CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS: People trust people over brands when it comes to trust. Chart Mogul has posted an 'Ultimate' Guide to Using Customer Testimonials to Boost Sales, noting that a generic and insincere endorsement is just as helpful as not using anything. It's also possible to take it a step further by leveraging those frothiest customers into a referral channel. Here is a playbook from SaaStr on how to make that happen.
4. CUSTOMER CASE STUDIES: Latching onto #3 above. Going beyond testimonials, case studies are super valuable at the early stages as a company needs to demonstrate its credibility, the business value, and the technical context of the product. Heavy Bit has a great guide on crafting that first customer case study, and Uplift provides six best practices to be used in your story.
5. CUSTOMER SERVICE: In this current age of the customer, enhanced by COVID, SaaSx makes the profound argument that Customer Success IS the product. Want to start building out that product? Check the HubSpot guide on getting started with your customer team.
6. CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION: To calculate the cost of a Customer Service Manager, it's best to segment customers out to understand the efforts required. Chartmogul has this tremendous visual, and once again, Gainsight takes a look at how to Benchmark efforts over-segmentation. Here is what they found. The median amount of ARR that an Enterprise CSM can manage is between $2M and $5M, and The median amount of customers an Enterprise CSM manages is 10-50 - these revenue figures drop with mid and SMB customer segments and increase fairly dramatically with the number of customers per CSM.
7. CUSTOMER PERSONAS: SaaS B2B Marketing is a pretty unique beast - and getting into the minds of an idealized customer often requires going through the practice of creating personas - you should try it - it will def make you a better SaaS marketer. For most SaaS companies creating multiple personas is often a strategic necessity. So here is an additional differentiator (and what the difference is compared to a persona) of an ideal customer profile and how to (with templates!)
8. CUSTOMER DATA: Customer data management is a practice, not a technology. I love that simple message. Gluconic gives the crib notes/5-steps in this article about developing a strategy to optimize and improve customer experience using good data management practices.
9. CUSTOMER ONBOARDING: Onboarding success is often de-prioritized with scrappy fast-growing business but giving customers all the tools they need to succeed with your product is the best way to ensure that they stick around. Profitwell reviews the importance of good SaaS onboarding and discusses steps to create an awesome program. Userpilot also has a great tactical complimentary post on SaaS companies' best customer onboarding software options.
10. CUSTOMER DELIGHT AUDIT. It's the Age of the Customer, you know, so this needs to be a thing - here is an in-depth post from CopyHackers on how to make this kind of Audit happen, and here is a case study on how three big Tech companies (GitLab, HubSpot, and Zoom) make delight happen. Also, here is a Case Study on building a customer-centric B2B organization from McKinsey.

POD OF THE WEEK: WFH life for Customer Success teams - the CEO of ChurnZero has a perspective on how to build this function remotely.