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Customer Success is the function at a company responsible for managing the technical and business relationships between a vendor and its customers with the intent of: (1) maximizing the value that customers derive from the solutions they acquired from the vendor by making them as profitable and productive as possible, and (2) maximizing the value the vendor can in turn create from the customers resulting in sustainable corporate good profits〔Fred Reichheld)〕 and growth.〔Definition: Customer Success Management. The Customer Success Association. www.customersuccessassociation.com/csa/definition-customer-success-management/〕 Customer Success is an emerging, but critical role in a company's success.〔Forrester Research, Inc. An Executive Primer to Customer Success Management. April 2014 pg.1〕 The function is most commonly used in the software world and most prevalent among Software as a Service (SaaS) companies. Because Customer Success is a nascent, fast emerging field of business, its organizational alignment and activities are still evolving.〔Forrester Research, Inc. An Executive Primer to Customer Success Management. April 2014 pg.1〕 There is still a large amount of variance with respect to its scope of responsibilities, reporting structure, terminology used for describing its activities, metrics used for measuring its performance and more. While deviations exist in the specifics of the function, it always refers to the management of the relations between the vendor and the customers after the initial sale. However, successful companies do not only reorganize their teams between the pre and post sale, and re-name the post-sale team Customer Success, but also instill a culture of customer centricity in decision making and goals.〔Gulati, Ranjay, Silo Busting: How to Execute on the Promise of Customer Focus, Harvard Business Review, May 2007〕 == Key Sub-Functions == As customer success is a nascent and fast emerging field, variance is still high with respect to its scope, reporting structure, terminology used for describing its activities, metrics used for measuring its performance and more. However, the key functions the CS team is often responsible for include: # Technical Enablement: While the scope and Level of Effort (LOE) can vary drastically from a few hours to many men-years, almost every software solution, and generally any innovation, requires some level of initial setting and enablement.〔Rogers, Everett M.. Diffusion of Innovations, Fifth Edition. Free Press, 2003 Chapter 9〕 This activity, which can also be referred to as Initial Implementation or the Customer On-boarding and Initial Engagement,〔http://sixteenventures.com/customer-success-definition, Lincoln Murphy, "Customer Success: the Definitive Guide", sixteenventures.com, 2015-08-11〕 is normally the first that follows the initial sale of the solution and any add-on component of it and is normally governed by a Statement of work (SOW) that defined the deliverables the software provider commits to provide, the timeframe for it and the commercial structure for the engagement. In many organizations, the team responsible for this function is referred to as Professional Services. # On-Going Support: once a solution is enabled for a customer, the provider is responsible for certain guarantees of on-going maintenance and support (also referred to as Technical Support〔http://sixteenventures.com/customer-success-definition, Lincoln Murphy, "Customer Success: the Definitive Guide", sixteenventures.com, 2015-08-11〕) and in the case of SaaS, also "Operations", "Application Monitoring" and Application performance management. While overlap in skill-set normally exists between technical enablement and on-going support, there are significant differences between the two in terms of the operational and commercial engagement and therefore they are almost always conducted by two adjunct by separate teams or sub-teams. #Knowledge Enablement: arming the customer with the knowledge needed to make best use of the solution is a function that can sometimes be independent from the two functions noted above or sometimes provided by one of them. Formal and informal training are part of this function as well as customer-to-customer relations (like community sites) and self-service knowledge systems. #Business Relations: rounding up the CS function is the team that manages the business relations between the customer and the provider. This function operates in parallel with the technical teams and is working with the customer to ensure they best utilize the provider’s capabilities, expand and improve them. They will work to increase adoption of the solution, ensure renewal and expansion of contracts and manage executive relations. This includes being an advocate for the customer to various groups within an organization. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Customer Success」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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