Report: Customer Success Teams Remain Small and Overwhelmed with Obstacles

Although many marketing teams have developed smaller divisions that are now focused on customer success, new research shows that they are still small in size and face a number of demand generation challenges.

Totango recently published the “State of the Customer Success Industry and Salary Report,” and statistics showed that most organizations (45%) have between 0-9 people on their customer success teams. Just 24% have between 10-19 people, while 18% have 40 or more people involved.

Furthermore, these teams still have several challenges to overcome. Churn reduction remains the biggest obstacle, with 75% of customer success teams citing this as an issue. Renewals (70%), product adoption (54%) and onboarding (59%) are still problems for customer success teams as well.

That being said, these individuals have several tools at their disposal. About 82% said they now use CRM, while 69% utilize Microsoft excel. Nearly 40% have a customer success platform in place.

Customer Experience as an Obstacle for Marketers

Despite having teams dedicated to enhancing the customer experience, previous research suggests that this is still an area of struggle for many marketers.

Ascend2 conducted the “Strategies, Tactics and Trends for Customer Experience” survey and found that 47% of marketers are only “somewhat successful” at achieving their primary objectives through their customer experience strategy.

Improving customer retention/satisfaction (61%), increasing value/reliability to the user (54%) and improving interactive design/ease of use (30%) are the top obstacles for marketers looking to achieve their goals with a customer experience plan.