The Startup CEO’s Guide to Customer Success and Onboarding

The Startup CEO’s Guide to Customer Success and Onboarding(arrows.to)

108 points by swanson 4 years ago | 21 comments

(FYI - I’m the co-founder of Arrows, which created this guide)

In our time building and working at startups, we came to realize customer success was a secret weapon that’s massively overlooked and underfunded. If you use customer success properly, it’s the core tool that helps you get to the SaaS holy grail of negative churn.

The first employee we hired after raising money this year was our customer success advisor, Shareil Nariman. And he’s who wrote this guide which is fully published on the site. Just a small way we hoped to use the benefit of having funding to give back to the community.

Let us know if there’s stuff you think we missed!

codingdave 4 years ago | |

> customer success was a secret weapon that’s massively overlooked and underfunded.

You are right about its importance, of course, but why do you say it is overlooked and underfunded? Almost everyone I know acknowledges that it is critical to success, and it get serious focus.

danielzarick 4 years ago | | |

Because even though tons of people think customer success is important and give it focus, we talk to startups every week who are still under-resourcing it and not giving their team the right focus... even though they'd tell you they believe in the impact of customer success.

ageyfman 4 years ago | |

Completely agreed. Customer success is what gives a middling product the time and space to turn into an ATM machine.

hammock 4 years ago | |

This is a cool guide just in terms of organization and writing style. What previous examples did you take inspiration from?

danielzarick 4 years ago | | |

Thanks so much! The team is thrilled with how it turned out... and our first marketing hire doesn't start until next week, so this was a bit of a grind.

We looked at Clearbit's and Productboard's ebooks, frankly. And then we worked with a designer on the PDF itself: http://nonfik.com/studio

ryangilbert 4 years ago | |

This looks amazing! Thank you!

mikkelenzo 4 years ago | |

Looks excellent

jerrygoyal 4 years ago |

Contains just the surface level information like pick a CRM, regular updates to your superiors etc. Also this post is marketing for their own customer onboarding product (Arrow).

danielzarick 4 years ago | |

That's not a fair characterization of the guide at all. Did you even read it?

There's tons of useful information (fully available on the website, no need to download) for anybody who's building / working with a customer success team for the first time, which is much of the audience on HN.

And yes, our "marketing" is trying to be generous with our knowledge and experience. That doesn't mean it isn't useful.

clarge1120 4 years ago | | |

The parent comment wasn't flattering, but it also wasn't unfair.

I did not read the guide, but did read the titles and summary info looking for the section that outlines the solution to the problem that is presented. It was not there. If it was, none of the titles indicated that it was. Given how nicely the guide is presented, I'm confident that the answer is not there. No need to read the guide.

handrous 4 years ago |

Am I missing something, or is "customer success" one of those things where people come up with a new term for existing things, but with "... done correctly" implied? I read the "What is customer success and why does it matter" part hoping for clarity, and that's what it reads like to me.

danielzarick 4 years ago | |

It is definitely something different, and a different framing on some existing activities. But the same way that engineering roles change, non-engineering roles also change in focus and title and expectations.

Thanks for the feedback about that chapter, will dive in and see if we can try to make the answer more clear!

named-user 4 years ago | |

Customer engagement manager

temp004 4 years ago |

This is the same resource in a pdf format all collected together if you don't want to keep clicking around:

https://attachments.convertkitcdnn.com/112815/c7859eeb-b6f1-...

(ps: my apologies to the arrows co-founder who I see is in the comments)

edit: I'm curious why this was downvoted? it's a more direct link to the same source and saves the users time. instead of being linked to a marketing funnel.

dudeman13 4 years ago |

Somewhat off topic, but when I scroll down there is a position: fixed element that is always shown. The "book scrolling" animation was really distracting :|

danielzarick 4 years ago | |

Thanks for the feedback! Will think about ideas for how we can change it. Sorry you found it distracting, totally understand.

skidoo48 4 years ago |

Nice!