According to Gainsight’s The State of the Customer Success Profession 2019 report, Boston is the second fastest-growing US market for Customer Success Managers. We trail only New York City, with a profession that grew 9.2 times from 2015 to 2018. LinkedIn currently hosts 4,916 job openings in Boston for various ‘Customer Success’ functions. The number of Customer Success roles and positions will only go up from here.
Due to growing acquisition costs, the prevalence of the SaaS model and numerous other factors, companies are continuing to invest in Customer Success organizations at increasing rates. As Customer Success continues to evolve, so do the challenges. Growth of our profession has been quick, meaning most of us are likely pioneering the first teams within our companies. We’re exploring, experimenting, and tinkering, but we certainly don’t have all of the answers. That said, with strength in numbers, it is likely that someone else has come across a situation similar to yours before.
Revenue growth for tech companies now includes a keen focus on improving the onboarding experience, addressing and tracking customer health & adoption, retention, as well as sourcing cross-sell & up-sell opportunities. This results in a need for constant iteration and improvement from Customer Success teams, no matter the stage or maturity.
We believe that bringing together Customer Success professionals across Boston to foster connections, conversations and community among peers will allow us to collectively continue to push the Boston tech ecosystem forward. Hopefully making some new friends, new practices, and even companies along the way.
Why Now and Why Us
Given the growth of technology and Customer Success in Boston, there couldn’t be a better time to come together and support this growing and critical community.
We couldn’t be more excited to be working with Underscore VC on this initiative. As Customer Success Fellows, we’ll be working alongside their amazing team to do what they do best, cultivate a community of incredible individuals to provide mutual value. With Underscore’s already existing network of 1,200+ Core Community members and our combined near-decade of experience in the Boston Customer Success world, as well as the connections we’ve made along the way, we’re looking forward to bringing passionate and driven individuals together to solve difficult problems, have meaningful conversations, and build a community.
Our jobs are built around relationships and helping people, namely our customers. If we take that same approach to the Boston Customer Success community, imagine what we can build with you.
What a Customer Success Community Looks Like
What that means is you will start to see a series of tailored events, content and online engagement. Here are a few things to look for to start:
Events | We’ll be hosting our first CS event of the year on March 18th. Our goal is to bring together different cross-sections of the community on a regular basis in a variety of different formats.
Online Communities | We’ll be building a Slack community to allow for the sharing of ideas and to connect with each other on an ongoing basis.
Coffee meetups | We think that group events are a great way to present ideas and bring people together, but one on one dialogue can create some of the most productive conversations. We’ll be experimenting with different ways to foster these types of interactions.
Customer Success Content | You can expect to see more customer success articles, such as this one authored by Salsify’s EVP of Customer Success, here on the Core Community Wire. We encourage you to flag these content opportunities with us and, if you’re up to it, raise your hand to write one!
Think there might be other interesting ways to connect or want to get more involved? Please pass along your information here or shoot us an email at csfellow@underscore.vc.
About the Fellows
Bryce DelGrande is the Manager of Customer Success at Shoobx. After growing Customer Success efforts at EverFi and Gravyty, he is building a foundation to help venture-backed companies and startup founders growing on the Shoobx platform as they navigate collaborating with their legal team during financings, hiring, equity grants and much more.
Jay Wilson is a Senior Manager of Customer Success at Buildium. His focus is on ensuring Buildium’s team of CSMs is enabled to partner in the success of Buildium’s 17,000 customers in the property management industry.