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The concept of customer success was created at Salesforce.com after the company discovered it had an 8% monthly customer churn rate, which threatened its long-term viability despite a successful IPO.
Around 2006, Salesforce.com grew from 15,000 to over 120,000 customers in a single year.
Leading up to its IPO, Salesforce.com experienced 88% year-over-year bookings growth for three consecutive years and saw its market cap rise from $300 million to over $1.5 billion.
Within the healthcare industry's adoption of customer success, informatics is the most advanced, medtech is in the middle, and biotech and pharma are the least mature.
Customer success as a business function is considered table stakes in the SaaS and high-tech industries.
SaaS and high-tech companies typically staff their organizations with a ratio of 2 to 2.5 customer success managers for every 10 sales representatives.
Medtech devices have higher customer exit barriers than SaaS products due to deep integration into clinical workflows and extensive user training requirements.
Solventum has recently completed a comprehensive mapping of its entire customer journey, from initial awareness through contracting, deployment, invoicing, retention, and expansion.
Within the medtech industry, Intuitive Surgical, Johnson & Johnson, and Abbott are companies with pockets of well-regarded customer success functions.
Rupal Ayer estimates that 35% to 40% of Fortune 100 SaaS companies now have customer success representation at the C-suite level.