Over the last five years, “consumerization of SaaS” has gone from being a buzzword to being table stakes in the enterprise software industry. Design and usability are no longer a way to differentiate. If your product is not well-designed from a usability standpoint, your product is not even in play.
In the same five years, Gainsight (a Lightspeed portfolio company), has created a movement in the B2B world around customer success, making it a business imperative for companies of all shapes and sizes. In doing so, Gainsight ushered in “The Age of the Customer.” When we first invested in Gainsight, I had blogged: If you have customers, you need customer success. Our investment thesis was that it’s no longer enough to do well in sales and marketing. Your post-sales engagement with the customer is just as important, and Gainsight has put itself firmly at the center of the post-sales world since its launch.
But if you believe that the journey of a great company starts with a great product successfully engaging and delighting its customers, it’s not enough for customer success to start post-sale. In the age of the customer, I’d argue that the journey towards customer success really starts with product.
All too often, we see customer success used to paper over product gaps and shortcomings. It’s a waste of the growth-driving potential of both the customer success team and an otherwise innovative product. In order for customer success to create value for the business, it needs to be proactively driving positive outcomes for clients, not compensating where the product falls short.
Additionally, customer success teams can’t really drive positive outcomes at scale without engaging customers where they live: inside the product itself. We know that most day-to-day interactions between customer and vendor are happening inside the product. It’s a powerful channel that growth-focused companies are maximizing.
Earlier this week, Gainsight announced it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Aptrinsic, a product-led growth solution that delivers powerful analytics and in-product engagements to increase adoption and retention of B2B products. With the acquisition of Aptrinsic, Gainsight is building a bridge between the worlds of customer success and product management for B2B companies.
To learn more about how the acquisition of Aptrinsic strengthens Gainsight’s ability to help subscription businesses maximize growth, check out the video below with Mickey Alon (Aptrinsic CEO), Nick Mehta (Gainsight CEO) and Allison Pickens (Gainsight COO):
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