Top 50 resources for customer success

These days, companies of every type are implementing customer success strategies. But eventually, customer success is rooted in the world of SaaS. That’s because the SaaS business model requires continuing customer satisfaction. With the evolution of SaaS businesses, boarding and retaining customers has become particularly harder.
But what is Customer Success?

“Customer success is simply ensuring that your customers achieve their Desired Outcome through their interactions with your company. That’s it.”, Lincoln Murphy
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Here are the top customer success resources

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1. The Success League Blog
   The Success League works with executives looking to build and develop a top performing Customer Success team. The blog provides a lot of advice on how to plan, scale and train teams.
2. The CustomerSuccessBox Blog The CustomerSuccessBox blog is the best place to get insights, processes, best practices, strategies and tech insights about customer success
3. SixteenVentures by Lincoln Murphy
   Consulting firm that works with SaaS companies to help them acquire, retain, and monetize users. Lincoln Murphy posts regularly on customer success, customer experience, and customer-centricity.
4. ForEntrepreneurs by David Skok
   Starting his first company at the age of 21, David Skok enjoys posting articles that allow entrepreneurs to help them start their companies. He also posts regularly about Customer Success and Customer Experience.
5. Higher Logic Blog
   Higher Logic is an engagement platform provider and they share advice on how to grow a community and drive customer engagement along each stage of the customer lifecycle.
6. ESG Blog
   Provides both best practices and execution for technology companies to reach 100%customer base with proactive communication.
7. Desired Path by Kia Puhm
   Helps companies organize their business around their customers to effectively drive customer revenue and achieve faster and better revenue growth.
8. Customer Bliss by Jeanne Bliss
   This blog shares about the true meaning of “customer experience”– starting with a purpose and the leadership. Jeanne Bliss helps you build the behaviours and experiences that define you, fuse people to you, and establish a connection.
9. SaaStr
   The largest web community of SaaS founders and entrepreneurs, with over 2.5 million views per month across the web, and over 16 million views on Quora.
10. Picture CS by Ellie WuEllie
    Wu helps understand the entire customer lifecycle and experiencing the hypergrowth in Customer Success.
11. Tomasz Tunguz
    Venture Capitalist at Redpoint, Tomasz Tunguz writes for a variety of topics from Analysis Benchmarks to Startup Strategy trends.
    

1. Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenueby Lincoln Murphy, Dan Steinman and Nick Mehta:
   This is Customer Success 101 and is a must read for anyone in the Customer Success space. It talks about the rapidly accelerating growth of the entire customer success industry
2. Farm Don’t Hunt: The Definitive Guide to Customer Success by Guy Nirpaz:
   This book talks about the intellectual underpinnings of Customer Success as a theory and quickly moves to providing pragmatic, actionable advice for orienting your business around this new model.
3. The Trusted Advisor by Robert M. Galford:
   This classic book explores the paradigm of trust through professional services. The Trusted Advisor will guide success not just in the advisory professions but in leadership and life as well.
4. What Customers Crave: How to Create Relevant and Memorable Experiences at Every Touchpoint by Nicholas J. Webb
   Higher Logic is an engagement platform provider and they share advice on how to grow a community and drive customer engagement along each stage of the customer lifecycle.
5. Chief Customer Officer 2.0: How to Build Your Customer-Driven Growth Engine by Jeanne Bliss
   Chief Customer Officer 2.0 gives you an ultimate framework that has launched and advanced the customer experience transformation in both business-to-consumer and business-to-business companies around the world.
6. From Impossible to Inevitable: How SaaS and Other Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin
   The Book teaches how to accelerate predictable revenue growth for your company.
7. The Customer Success Pioneer: The First 12 Months of Your Journey Into Growth by Kellie Lucas
   Helps you know how to transform churn into maximum recurring revenue and growth. It provides expertise on how you can bring clients in project and also relationship management, most specifically with a focus on Customer Success.

1. The SuccessHACKER community
   A community where you can share your challenges, answer questions and learn what works from other Customer Success managers and teams.
2. Customer Success on Reddit
   Reddit is a network for different communities based on people’s interests. If you’re looking for a fast way to connect with other professionals, it is here.
3. The Customer Happiness Experts Association
   The association hosts a content aggregator, where CSMs can stay up to date on news within their field.
4. Customer Success on Quora
   The topic “Customer Success” on Quora has 8.8k followers. Quora is a great platform to post your questions, give and receive answers.
5. Slack Communities
   There is an increasing amount of Slack communities out there. Customer Success-focused slacks groups you can join are the CS Heroes Slack and the Customer Retention/Happiness.

1. The Customer Success Forum
   The Customer Success Forum is a part of the Customer Success Association, which offers a variety of resources.
2. Customer Success Managers in Action
   With 12.9K members the goal of this group is to bring together ideas, strategies and tactics from Customer Success professionals around the globe in order to enhance the profession of Customer Success..
3. Customer Success
   With 23K members this group helps you network with others who are passionate about Customer Success. You get to meet like-minded people responsible for success in any phase of the customer lifecycle. Learn how to drive business outcomes, share job opportunities and ask our network about CS best practices..
4. Customer Success Executives
   This is a group for Customer Success and Account Management Executives in Software and Internet to exchange best practices..
5. Customer Experience & Customer Success Community
   This group helps you transform your business and understand the significance of your customers’ experiences..

The aim of this list is to help you become more connected and aware of some of the great minds. Here are Top Influencer list of 2021

1. Jay Nathan, Co-Founder, Gain, Grow, Retain CS community
   LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaynathan/
2. Lincoln Murphy, Founder, Sixteen Ventures
   LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/lincolnmurphy/
3. David Sakamoto, VP of Customer Success, GitLab Inc
   LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/dsakamoto/
4. Puneet Kataria, Founder, CustomerSuccessBox
   LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/katariapuneet/
5. Chad Horenfeldt, Director, Customer Success, Kustomer
   LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadhorenfeldt/

1. Success Hacker certification
   The Certified Customer Success Manager (CCSM) programs are industry-recognized and accredited credentials focused specifically on the role of a Customer Success Manager.
2. Practical CSM certification
   Offers a variety of courses from fundamentals to industry required skills for a customer success manager.
3. Customer Success Management Fundamentals
   This course can help you get up to speed with the fundamentals. This course addresses what CSM is and why it’s important. Also what types of situations CSM applies to and how CSM can help increase a business’s sales revenues and profitability.
4. Onboarding and Adoption Best Practices for Customer Success Management
   This course takes customer success managers through the processes and steps needed to ensure that their customer’s stakeholders are fully prepared and ready to proceed with making the customer’s initiative successful.
5. Customer success management
   Optimize your customer journey and learn applicable strategies for helping your customers achieve their desired levels of success with your platform, product, or service.

1. Gain Grow Retain
   Co-hosts Jeff Breunsbach and Jay Nathan have this podcast dedicated to customer success leaders in the B2B SaaS and tech space. The hosts share conversations about growing and scaling subscription businesses.
2. The Jasons
   Co-hosts Jason Noble (London) and Jason Whitehead (Washington, DC) are both recognized experts in customer success, and both have a deep working knowledge of CS and its principles.
3. Decoding the Customer
   This is a weekly podcast by Julia Ahlfeldt where she talks about Customer Experience ideas, best practices and industry success stories. New episodes, including her mini CX Masterclasses, are published every Thursday..
4. The Modern Customer
   Blake Morgan’s area of expertise lies in Customer Experience, not just Customer Success. So her podcast covers a wide spectrum of topics that’ll keep you motivated and help acquire your goals.
5. Customer Success Leader
   The host Eric Crane talks about data optimization and customer onboarding efficiency. Here you’ll learn how thought leaders in the industry have struggled and succeeded, equipping you to make improvements.

1. Creating a Modern Customer Success Service – Customer Success Framework
   Location: VirtualDate: June 23, 2021
   This customer success webinar focuses on how researching, developing, implementing & managing a modern customer success service benefits the business. The recordings are a reflection of all the collective thoughts of Customer Success thought leaders captured in friendly discussion on the selected topic.
2. Bain & Eco Webinar: Elements of Value for B2B Sales & Customer Success
   Location: VirtualDate: Jun 23, 2021Webinar on the 40 ways your Sales and Customer Success teams must quantify and track value to win and retain customers.The webinar will help you learn how to measure and deliver business value that customers want throughout the buyer’s and customer’s journey.
3. INBOUND 2021
   Location: Boston, MA & OnlineDate: Sept 7-10, 2021Here you will find uniting professionals across the globe and feature their stellar and spot-on content, networking opportunities, and high-octane events.
4. CS100 Summit
   Location: Sundance, Utah Date: Sept 14-17, 2021This event will be held from 14-17 September at the Sundance Mountain Resort. It binds top-level executives, thought leaders, and innovators present in the customer success space.
5. SaaStock Dublin
   Date: October, 2021 (TBA)‍Location: Dublin, Ireland
   SaaStock is an admired event for startups and scaling businesses of all sorts.More than 4000 attendees will also learn the importance of customer success when growing a SaaS company.

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Newsletters help you to be digitally updated with valuable content about businesses, products and services you prefer. Content like latest happenings, discounts, highlights and social content.

1. Keep The CustomerKeep
   The Customer is a repository of resources for Customer Success Professionals. Also, subscribe to this newsletter to learn about the top voices in the industry.
2. Chief Customer Officer Council
   The ONLY newsletter geared exclusively for the CCO, but would add value for most in this space. Therefore, learn the best practices & critical strategies to drive solid business results.
3. PracticalCSM
   Practical CSM is a monthly newsletter that provides an ongoing measurement of how one is doing at every step of the Customer Success journey.
4. Enlightened Customers
   The newsletter ‘Enlightened Customers’ helps Customer Success teams and leaders. Especially those looking for assistance with Customer Success strategies. Else, if they require Customer Success coaching.
5. Lucky Sevens
   Every month, they scour the world – much like Indiana Jones – for the gems of the customer service world. So, expect this newsletter in the 3rd week of every month.