Photo by Lance Grandahl – Two become one. (or one becomes two?)

On this episode of CELab we continue both our CEO Series and Customer Success Series as Michael Harnum, CEO of ESG Success, walks us through his journey to Customer Success as a Service. Typically, Education Services used to be standalone activities where customers would consume training credits, but that approach often left customers without access to proper training and providers with revenue recognition issues. In a world of SaaS software where training is a constant activity, that doesn’t cut it for most businesses anymore. 

Meanwhile, Customer Success emerged as a way to grow and cultivate customer outcomes in a world of constant renewals. So how do Customer Education and Customer Success work together to reflect the subscription economy and generate better outcomes together?

In this episode, Michael suggests that the two disciplines might be more related than you think! 

“I have been preaching exhaustively for three to four years that the Training and Edu business and the customer success business have way more in common than they do differences. And there is a natural fit between those organizations,” Michael says.

But the path to a mature, subscription-driven, revenue-generating program can be a long one. ESG has developed an Education Services maturity model to pave the path toward having valuable content that will earn a renewal, multiple modalities, ability to track consumption, and health monitoring. You’ll need all of these to run a successful Education Services business. The model has three phases: Build, Operationalize, and Transform. Michael walks through all of these on the episode and what’s contained in each. You can also see the model for yourself

Michael also walks us through a similar model for Customer Success maturity using the same framework. This model details how you build up structure for your Customer Success team, monitor benchmarks and measure progress, and mature over time toward proactive and robust programs.
For more information on ESG Success, go to esgsuccess.com

Leave a Reply