Customer Success Management Outcomes

For CSM to have the desired effect for suppliers, namely a reduced churn rate, it must be considered valuable from customers’ perspective. Research studies have shown that customers assess their suppliers’ CSM activities with regard to the quality of the suppliers’ resources, e.g. the CS managers’ competencies, and the quality of the resource integration process in which customer and supplier are involved, e.g. the communication process between both parties. The customer’s assessment of the supplier’s CSM quality then determines the customer experienced value in use—on the collective and individual levels—which is known to have an influence on the customer’s churn behavior. Besides the quality of the CSM activities, the customer-perceived extent of CSM (i.e., the supplier’s CSM effort that the customer actually perceives) can have a positive impact on the churn rate as well. This means that CSM activities should not only be of high quality and valuable to the customer, but they should also be carried out with a certain regularity and intensity. If these requirements are met, CSM activities can have a positive impact on the longevity of business relationships, reflected, for example, in a positive ROI for the supplier.