The future of the customer success field is extremely bright. And, I am not saying that just because I am writing a blog on the biggest customer success trends and predictions for 2022. There are quite a lot of fantastic things to expect in the customer success field in 2022. Before I take you on the journey of exploring the customer success trends and predictions for 2022, let me take you one year back in the memory lane and then fast forward to the future.

Last year was quite eventful for the CS world, to say the least. We saw the empowerment of the customer success function. It was also observed that the long tail of customers is very vital for the growth of B2B SaaS businesses. With time, it became evident that customer success as a field has become more strategic than ever before. We saw customer success as a potential earn booster for our B2B SaaS businesses during the pandemic.

Back to the present, customer success has become quite a multi-disciplinary field. We see an expansion in the roles coming up in this field, including onboarding managers, CS engineers, support, renewal managers…the list goes on. It has become easier to start a career in customer success than ever before. 

This was just a snapshot of what has already happened. If you think this information was exciting, I will say this is just an appetizer. The whole meal and the dessert are still waiting for you! 

Keep reading… 

In the forthcoming sections of this blog, we have disclosed some sensational customer success trends and predictions for 2022 lined up just for you! 

Biggest customer success trends and predictions for 2022

Let’s now look at some of the biggest customer success trends and predictions for 2022. 

2022 is the year of CS-led growth 

This year, CCOs will continue to play a major role in putting a stronghold over their organizational eminence and authority. We are already seeing a major shift happening there. During the pandemic, there was a time when the customer success field was truly tested. In fact, it turned out to be a major winner during those tough times by being the sole source of revenue for organizations as new businesses dried up.

CS leaders today have proved their worth in gold in terms of business value during such tough times. Now is the time for them to reap the dividends of the hard work. In the months to come, CCOs will have their say in the organization’s budget. They will own everything that is post-sale that encompasses the renewal and expansion.

Since CS is still growing, there are times when customer success leaders might get ahead of time and ask for more than they can actually handle. The new sales strategy needs to go hand-in-hand with the customer success department. From the perspective of NRR and GRR, losing a customer might harm a business in many ways.

Since CCOs will have their say in the company in terms of the numbers being churned and the high-performance of their team, they will have a major say in the business. That is why I can vouch for it that customer success will become one of the pioneering fields to see a C-Suite Executive level position being held in the coming years!

AI/ML will rule the customer success field in 2022 & beyond 

AI/ML has started to show its effect in each and every business in some or other way. Today, it has become quite essential for B2B SaaS companies to employ AI/ML because of the amount of customer data available to sift. It is humanly impossible to sift through so much data in less time.

The traditional CS software did not consider the AI/ML part, so it could not accurately predict the early warning signs of customer churn. Today, with the help of CS software powered by AI/ML, it is possible to scan millions of customer data in minutes, adjudge the past user behavior, CSM’s activities, and engagement with customers. All these activities can make you learn the customers in a better way.

With its help, you can retain your customers in a hassle-free manner. You can then use AI and ML to generate smart recommendations and unlock the customer’s lifetime value that is at risk of churning out.

AI and ML can help you generate metadata data, engagement data, and product adoption data to learn the renewal history that helps decode what drives the renewals and upsells. With the help of its advanced AI model and big data crunching, you can learn about every new renewal, upsell, and even churn! Isn’t it amazing?

The metrics used to evaluate customer success will become less sophisticated 

In the last two years, B2B SaaS companies had to undergo lots of hard work to ascertain the best way to make their products work for customers. Due to unprecedented times, it became harder to satisfy the customer’s needs. But, customer success has dealt with this change quite well, thanks to the metrics that have provided invaluable insights to the CSMs.

In 2022, we will see these metrics getting a lot less sophisticated, making it easier for CS practitioners to understand the value they derived from each customer. It will go a long way in putting together the usage metrics about active users and letting CSMs know which features are adored by customers. This will ensure that the customers stick around with your product for a very long time.

Customer success will become a promising career option

In 2022, you will see many young post-graduates and experienced professionals opting for a career in customer success. It will be heartening to see that. And, on top of that, with a large pool of companies starting to invest in customer success, the demand for customer success professionals will grow with time. We will see new designations being created for the CS domain that would encourage more and more people to join this field.

Customer success budgets will soar drastically across the globe 

With time, as the processes, tasks, and teams get more awareness about the customer success field, the overall expenditure on customer success will soar. This will make the task of CFOs cut out to allocate the budget to CSMs based on the money they have already spent in the last year. The past results will also encourage the CFO to invest in customer success. And, with the rise in the customer success budgets, the overall customer retention rate and customer loyalty with escalate.

A recent South-East Asia Customer Success Survey had depicted that C-Suite Executives today are giving more prominence to customer success than ever across the globe. This only validates our prediction that the customer success budget will soar drastically across the globe in 2022.

Different plans of compensation for different customer success functions 

The rate at which the customer success field has evolved, there will come a time when the different functions in the CS field will have different compensation plans based on the proportion of interaction each person has with the customer.

These compensation plans will include commissions for CS executives who bring new clients and retain them for a specific period. But, there will come a time when commissions will not be enough. This is where variable compensation will come into the picture.

For a CSM, the variable compensation will be entirely based on the churn ratio. The job of the CSM is to drive net churn and optimize costs. So, churn rate will be yet another variable that CSMs will have to worry about.

Final Thoughts 

In 2022, I am sure that the CS field will grow from strength to strength as these months roll by. I am definitely looking forward to this year as the one that helps B2B SaaS companies enhance the customer’s value and concentrate on the efforts around it. 

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