Customer Success Management, Part III: Measuring Success in Today’s CSM Program

Customer Success Management at Personio has spanned multiple years, teams, and strategies since we implemented it in 2019. In Part I of this series on CSM, we looked into what CSM actually is, the value it can bring to an organisation, and the process behind piloting Personio’s first CSM program. In Part II we talked about the evolution of the program, how we shifted to focus on value and adoption and ensured the program could scale with Personio’s growth and our customer’s needs.

In this third and final part of our series on Customer Success Management, we’ll detail what Personio’s CSM program looks like today and, more importantly, how we measure success.

Our team currently consists of over 25 CSMs, reporting into four Team Leads who are responsible for specific regions. Each CSM works with a portfolio of eight to 12 customers, with the number of customers varying by region and customer size. A CSM’s typical customer can range in size of employees, but they are among the largest organisations within Personio’s customer base with anywhere from 300 to 2,500 employees. They also tend to be fairly complex companies, with high growth, and multinational organizational structures.

As Customer Success Managers, our team engages with the customers from Day One of their journey with Personio (and sometimes even sooner, when our partners-in-crime on the Sales side involve us for support in scoping workshops or technical validation). CSMs are their primary points of contact, responsible and accountable for the value and success they experience from our product. And we are in a unique position to advocate for our customers internally, communicating customer feedback to our Product teams and providing input on the product roadmap.

Within our customers’ own environments, we provide insights and best practices we’ve learned while working with their peers. We connect them to industry experts, we fire fight and (de)escalate, we train and we educate our customers to drive adoption. But beyond all of that, the primary goal of our team is to increase the speed at which our customers derive value from their Personio product.

How We Measure Success

Speaking from a business perspective, we obviously monitor growth both in the form of customer count, service average revenue per account (ARPA), total monthly recurring revenue (MRR), and attachment rates of our service. We also monitor the gross margin of our service and team.

In parallel, we closely monitor KPIs such as:

• Net Retention Rate: The holy grail metric of Customer Success and B2B SaaS in general, as it is a key indicator of the health of our customer base and how successful we are in growing them.
• Logo Retention Rate within CSM: How many of our customers continue to book our service over a period of time, versus how many remove the service from their subscription.
• Referenceability / Advocacy: The amount of our customers that are Personio and CSM advocates, measured in the form of a signed reference agreement which then leads to references, referrals, and case studies or testimonials
• Customer Satisfaction: How satisfied are our customers with our service offering, and whether or not they would recommend it to a friend or colleague.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Would our customers recommend the Personio product to a friend or colleague, as rated on a scale of 1 to 10.
• Product Adoption: How thoroughly our customers are using and adopting our product and or specific features and modules

With these KPIs, it is particularly interesting to compare the numbers for customers with a CSM and customers without a CSM. Ideally, all numbers are higher and better for customers who do work with a CSM. In our case, we recently measured this comparison through a relational survey in Q3 of 2022. The survey showed that respondents with a Customer Success Manager were 69% more likely to strongly feel that Personio adds value to their business than respondents that do not have a CSM.

This is a great testament to the service that Personio’s CSM team delivers to our customers, and the impact that CSM Programs can have in other organisations.

Packaging the Service with Personio’s Success Plans

As of October 2022, we now offer our customers a range of Service packages, called Success Plans, that they can subscribe to in addition to their software subscription. This new offering is designed to provide structured and transparent service options that can meet the individual needs of each customer. With Personio’s Success Plans, we are aiming to bring our Customer Success, Customer Support, Professional Services, and our self-guided educational services under one comprehensive umbrella.

The plans have transparent outlines of services and costs, with options to choose between three plans varying in level, type, and speed of support, as well as guaranteed service level agreements:

Our Customer Success Management Service is now part of the Premier Success Plan. Customers above a certain size and with an annual software subscription can purchase the Premier Plan and will receive the high-touch CSM Service, alongside many additional benefits and services, like extended support availability, an increased number of account owners, and test instances.

What’s Next?

Together with our colleagues in Professional Services, the Education Team, and the Customer Support Team, we will expand the Personio Success Plans, adding more services and benefits to all levels so we can continue to delight our customers with an excellent service offering. We have lots of ideas and are always looking for curious-minded individuals to help us build those out. Check out our open roles on the careers page!