Business

Customer Success: The Definitive Guide in 2020

Published

6 years ago

06/29/2020

One of the most widely known concept, yet comparatively unknown and inexperienced to most marketers and organizations. According to a Digital Adoption Report, it is estimated that “More than 60% of organizations realized customer success as a formalized field in the last two years, until then relying on third-party consultants and experts to define their business strategies”.

Customer Success or often referred to as “Customer Buy Success” is a proactive art of creating a seamless experience for customers to achieve their potential desired outcome or reactive support through business interactions by making the entire customer journey objective and resolution-led.

Bain & Company defines – “Customer Success initiatives when collaborated with key management principles can lead to an increase in profits of a company by 95%”.

Difference Between Customer Success And Customer Service

To understand the difference between these two terminologies, we’ve to understand what customer success used to mean earlier and how it got transformed into the next version 2.0.

Version 1.0

Earlier customer success focused on mitigating the management related risks and improving the customer’s overall journey.

Version 2.0

However, the updated version of customer success recognizes customer experience and success as and beyond a growth engine where customer needs and value may vary according to businesses. Thus, adopting a more comprehensive, cross-functional approach that is customer-focused and aligned to improve the customer’s overall journey and retaining the customer simultaneously.

Mission & Objective – The vital difference between the two terms based on mission and objective are:

Customer success is concentrated on investing within the long-term, building the lifetime value of consumers through consistent support and investing in their business as if it were their own.

On the opposite hand, customer service focuses on winning the one-time transaction. Helping a customer in need who has issues with their account, the software, or any function that involves your business.

“Your customer makes their own success. By accepting that, you put the customer first.”
— Brian Gladstein

Approach – Customer success is concentrated more on empowering customers to succeed together with your product or service within the future, instead of solving issues within the short term.

Meanwhile, Customer service is your second acquisition test behind actually acquiring that customer within the first place, making it an important role within the success of any given customer or company.

Focus Areas & Metrics – In essence, customer success teams are focused on helping customers achieve greater value and are genuinely seeking to enhance their business. Success teams specialise in preventing conflict from happening, giving customers the facility to enhance their business, and developing systems that help customers to seek out continual success.

Whereas, Customer Service or Support roles generally fall into conflict resolution, responding to tickets, answering phone calls from struggling customers, and responding to all or any customer concerns.

Customer Service can be regarded as the baby steps to help in the overall customer success journey. Without customer service, customer success is null and void. If you’re a new customer buying a product from a company, you’ll likely need or expect the after-sales support or services in one way or another.

Why Customer Success Is Important?

The first interaction with customer support or service is going to be critical in determining their propensity to continue doing business with you.

In a study published in 2010, it was calculated that – “82% of consumers would bail on a corporation after one negative experience with customer service.”

While “51% of consumers will never return to a corporation after having a bad experience in customer service.”

Not only will one bad experience cause people to leap ship and test other brands, products, and services, but it often also seals your fate: losing the customer permanently.

“Until you know what it takes to achieve success from your customers’ perspective you will just waste valuable time.”
— Jason Whitehead

Customer Success is crucial to any business as bad customer service will have a reach twice as huge as a good experience, but it will take 6 times your good and positive experiences to make up for that bad one.

Customer Success is not only about the communication strategies but also the business processes you induce to keep proving your business value to your customers.

As it is often said, it can either “make your business or break your business.”

How Do You Succeed in Customer Success?

There are various ways or elements that businesses opt to succeed in Customer Success ranging from developing a solution-based platforms to team building models to improve the customer’s overall journey and experience.

Here are some of the points that you can implement to succeed in Customer Success:

1. Solution Focused Approach – In order to manage all your communications and interactions with your customers and business clients, you’ll need to build and implement a solution-focused customer success approach for your team to communicate all business interactions with existing or potential clients. These solutions can be anything ranging from software or tools required to connect to your customers in real-time and ensuring fast response, resolution, and success is derived to keep your customers happy.

2. Team-Building Approach – To manage all your business interactions, you’ll also require a team or group of people having knowledge with the customer success field to assist the existing customer base and potential new customers. The number of employees you hire will largely depend upon the size of the organization you have and how many customers you serve daily. Team building approach will not only drive your business to profits but also ensure customer experience, success, and service all at one time.

3. Formulating Strategies – One of the crucial most factors in deriving customer success is how as a business you formulate or bring about the strategies to build a larger customer base and simultaneously ensuring ROI and profits. The strategies will solely depend upon the services/products you sell and provide and what is it customers desire from your business or offering.

One such strategy plan as an example is shown below:

Identification of customer’s end goals and objectives
Establishing a team-building approach
Implement a solution-focused approach to interact and communicate with customers
Identify your short-term and long-term goals with a set of expectations
Estimate your strategy and share with your larger team to get everyone on the same page
Analyze the output responses/results you get from implementing the above strategies
Edit/Modify based on above results to further grow your business

4. Customer-focused approach – A customer-focused approach or strategy will not only help your business and team to effectively manage but will also help you in assisting your customers, ensuring the already-set expectations are met and aligned as per your customer. It also focuses on dynamically building your business as per customer needs that are ever-changing in nature to let you evolve your business and not dissolve.

“Smart companies have realized that customer loyalty is the most powerful sales and marketing tool that they have.”
— Bill Price

5. Educating and Spreading Awareness with your Customers – By recognizing and anticipating your customer needs prior to what they expect and ask will help in ensuring the sustainability of your business. With the help of a solution-focused approach, you’ll not only provide better resolution but will also retain your customers. By creating a knowledge platform for your customer, success will be assured.

6. Improving Customer Journey – As a business, you can onboard your customers with various guiding steps or knowledge to ensure a seamless journey throughout. It is a great way to delight and make your customers happy by providing various pieces of trainings, tools, resources, and knowledge platform they require to start with.

7. Better Communication within departments and team – You can ensure smooth and noise-free communication within your departments and team to help and route your customers to the appropriate position. Proactive and Reactive support based solutions like enabling chat-bots or secure messaging to customers to help with their queries.

8. Promoting Customer Loyalty – A business can ensure loyalty by providing customers with delightful and positive experiences so that customers feel satisfied and come back to buy your product or service. An effective royalty or loyalty program giving customers discounts/benefits can help your customers to sustain and retain your business.

How to Measure Customer Success?

A well-run customer success program involves many parts of a corporation’s overall success journey. As such, there’s a spread of knowledge that will help organizations measure the worth of their customer success initiatives.

The initial lines are needed to be focused on the measurement value gained by the customer. A customer that knows what proportion they’re taking advantage of their usage from your product or service is extremely unlikely to keep customers moving up the worth path.

Here are some of the tools or techniques you can use to measure customer success:

1. Customer Success through KPIs (Key Performing Indicators) – There are a variety of the ways through which you can measure and assess the success or failure of a customer success program, i.e. – through Key Performing Indicators (KPIs). Whichever KPI your business uses, it’s important to stay in mind the importance of measuring value delivered to both customers and the organization.

2. Customer Success through Churns – Churn in simple terms means, if you’re willing to spend ‘X’ amount of value in deriving your product cost, then you’ll definitely require ‘Y’ value to spend on retaining your customer.

Customers come, customers go—it’s an unfortunate state for any business but a reality and necessary part of any business. As a performance metric, though, customer churn is often highly useful in understanding the explanations why customers churn, it will help your business to measure on why customers retain from the service you provide to them.

“Customer success is about more than delivering service or support.”
— Bill Price

3. Customer Success through Net Promoter Score (NPS) – For any organization, the extent to which its customers would recommend their product or services is a crucial metric, which gets measured with the help of Net Promoter Score.

NPS measures this sentiment or part of customer’s feedback and provides an aggregate score for companies to keep an eye on which further analyses which part of your customer will provide a negative, positive, or neutral feedback. This often helps you in projecting potential new customers and customers who are no longer part of your services or products.

4. Customer Success through Customer Effort Score (CES) – CES or Customer Effort Score is a method used by organizations to measure a customer’s perceived level of ease at various points throughout the customer journey to understand the level of loyalty your customer offers to your brand or offering.

Gartner, a research organisation states – “CES is 25% more predictive of customer loyalty than other subsequent metrics.”

CES also helps in building a new customer base, retaining existing clients, and overall sustaining your business.

Conclusion

While “Customer Success” as a term and a movement might be relatively new, however, most of what’s covered in this definitive guide of 2020 certainly isn’t new. What’s new in this point around is that it has each of those things we as a customer do, the tactics businesses create to build a new customer base, and roll up under the umbrella of Customer Success.

Not just the organization of the Customer Success initiative, but the overarching Customer Success concept within a corporation is all about having the whole organization aligned around this idea of customer experience, success and service.

I believe through this guide, you’ll create initiatives or invest in technology to form each of these items thereon, and if you are doing so you’ll be happier than if you didn’t, but without a top-down list from the organizational alignment or rallying around Customer Success will fail to require hold during a real and meaningful way.

Work

Career Pivots That Pay: Blue-Collar Skills Worth Learning in 2026 When Office Jobs Feel Shaky

Published

2 days ago

06/10/2026

Jason Zhang

Career Pivots That Pay Blue-Collar Skills Worth Learning in 2026 When Office Jobs Feel Shaky

The office job that felt rock-solid five years ago doesn’t feel quite the same in 2026. Layoff announcements keep rolling through tech, finance, and media, and AI tools now handle plenty of the tasks that used to fill a 9-to-5. If you’ve been refreshing job boards with a knot in your stomach, you’re not the only one.

Here’s the quiet plot twist: skilled trades and hands-on work are having a real moment. The pay can rival a mid-level office salary, the work is hard for software to replace, and the path in is usually shorter and cheaper than another degree. If a career pivot is on the table, the trades deserve a serious look.

Why blue-collar work looks smart again

Two things are pushing white-collar workers to reconsider the trades. First, automation is chewing through routine knowledge work faster than anyone predicted, while plumbing leaks, broken HVAC units, and pallets in a warehouse still require a human with skills.

Second, a wave of older tradespeople is retiring, and there aren’t enough young workers stepping in to replace them.

That mismatch shows up as higher wages, signing bonuses, and steady demand. Add in the fact that most trades don’t require a four-year degree, and the math starts to look friendly. You can train, get certified, and start earning in months instead of years.

Trades and certifications worth a serious look in 2026

Not every blue-collar job pays the same, and not every one suits every person. The list below leans toward roles with steady demand, reasonable entry costs, and room to grow into higher-paying specializations or even your own business.

Electrician. Apprenticeships are paid, the licensing path is clear, and the work spans homes, commercial buildings, EV chargers, and solar installs. Once you’re licensed, the ceiling keeps rising, especially if you move into industrial or renewable work.
HVAC technician. Heating and cooling systems aren’t going anywhere, and the push toward heat pumps and energy-efficient retrofits is creating new specialties. Training programs typically run six months to two years.
Plumber. One of the highest-earning trades over a full career, with strong demand in both new construction and remodels. Like electrical work, it’s licensed at the state level and rewards experience.
Welder. Pipeline, structural, and underwater welding can pay exceptionally well, and certifications stack neatly on top of each other. The American Welding Society sets the standards most employers recognize.
Forklift operator. A fast on-ramp into warehousing, logistics, and manufacturing. OSHA requires operators to be trained and evaluated, and you can get your initial forklift certification online in about an hour, which makes it one of the quickest credentials to add to a resume.
Wind turbine technician. Often listed among the fastest-growing occupations in the country. The work is physical and involves heights, but pay is solid and the industry is expanding.
Commercial driver (CDL). Long-haul, regional, and local delivery roles all need licensed drivers, and specialty endorsements like hazmat or tanker push pay higher.

What the pivot actually looks like

Moving from a desk job to a trade isn’t as dramatic as it sounds. Most people start by picking one specific role, signing up for a short program or apprenticeship, and keeping a part-time income while they train. The Department of Labor’s Apprenticeship.gov site is a good place to search registered programs that pay you while you learn.

Expect a few growing pains. Your body will be tired in new ways for the first few months. You’ll be the rookie again, asking questions that feel obvious. The trade-off is that you build a skill people in your town will pay for whether or not the stock market is having a good week.

How to choose the right trade for you

Audit your tolerance. Be honest about heights, confined spaces, weather, and physical strain. Welding inside a tank is a different life than running service calls in climate-controlled buildings.
Talk to people doing the work. A 20-minute conversation with a journeyman electrician or shop foreman will teach you more than a week of reading. Ask what they wish they’d known at year one.
Cost out the training. Compare community college programs, union apprenticeships, and private trade schools. Paid apprenticeships are often the best deal, but they’re competitive.
Stack credentials early. A forklift card, OSHA 10, and a CPR certification are cheap, fast, and make you more hireable while you pursue the bigger license.
Plan your exit and your runway. Decide how many months of savings you need before you give notice, and whether a side gig can bridge the gap.

The bigger picture

Career pivots are uncomfortable at any age, but the 2026 job market is rewarding people who can do something real with their hands. The trades aren’t a fallback. For a lot of workers, they’re turning into the smarter primary plan, with steadier demand, faster entry, and a real shot at owning a business down the line.

If your office job feels shaky, treat that feeling as useful information. Pick one trade, take one class, earn one certification, and see how the next door opens.

Work

Tips for Working in a Small Local Government—And Actually Making It Work

Published

1 week ago

06/03/2026

Jason Zhang

Tips for Working in a Small Local Government—And Actually Making It Work

Stepping Into City Hall (Or That Tiny Office)

If you’ve landed a job in a small local government, it probably didn’t come with a slick corner office and a fancy espresso machine. More likely, you found yourself at a creaky desk surrounded by stacks of paperwork, with a landline phone that rings just a little too loudly.

Here’s the thing though—small-town or neighborhood-level government offices might not have the glitz, but they’re where community actually happens. People remember your face, and your work genuinely matters.

So whether you’re the newbie at the counter or the behind-the-scenes type, here’s how to thrive (and keep your sense of humor intact).

Everyone Wears a Lot of Hats—Embrace It

One day you’ll be helping a neighbor fill out a dog license form, the next you’re discussing pothole repairs at a council meeting. In a small government, “that’s not my job” is a phrase nobody really uses. If you’re willing to pitch in wherever help is needed, you’ll be everyone’s favorite coworker in no time. Flexibility is gold here.

Listen First, Solve Second

People come into city hall with everything from big ideas to oddly specific complaints. Take a minute to really listen, even when things get repetitive (because, trust me, they do). It’s often less about the form itself, and more about feeling heard. That little bit of empathy pays off in happier citizens—and your own peace of mind.

Get Friendly With Regulations (But Stay Human)

Nobody wakes up excited about municipal codes. But knowing the basics saves you from sticky situations and builds trust. You don’t need to be a legal eagle, just know where to find answers. If you get a tough question, be honest: “Let me double-check that for you.” Most people appreciate sincerity over trying to look like you know everything.

Use Tech to Streamline Government Operations (Seriously)

These days, “we’ve always done it this way” doesn’t cut it when you’re drowning in paper. Even modest tech upgrades—simple scheduling apps, cloud files, or better email systems—can save hours (and maybe some sanity).

More and more small towns are using online forms, automatic reminders, or digital records to minimize busywork. When you use tech to streamline government operations, you end up with more time for the stuff that actually needs a human touch.

Talk to Everyone—And Then Talk Some More

No, you don’t have to love small talk. But the more you connect with coworkers, residents, public works, and even that city council member who always runs late, the smoother things run.

Collaboration means fewer crossed wires and more creative solutions. You’d be surprised how much gets figured out just by walking across the hall—or waving at someone at the farmer’s market.

Self-Care Is Not Optional

This job is rewarding, but it’s not always easy. Protect your downtime, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. A cup of coffee with a teammate, a deep breath before answering that fifth call about recycling bins—it matters.

Real Impact, Real Community

At the end of the day, your job is about people and progress, not just forms and emails. Celebrate small wins. Share success stories. And remember: small local government might be a challenge, but it’s also where you get to change things, sometimes one smile (or pothole) at a time.

Business

How Can Split-Dollar Plans Help Businesses Retain Key Employees?

Published

1 week ago

06/03/2026

Jason Zhang

How Can Split-Dollar Plans Help Businesses Retain Key Employees

Retaining indispensable employees has become a high-stakes challenge for both privately held and publicly traded firms. In today’s fluid labor market, salary bumps alone no longer guarantee loyalty. Companies seeking a longer-lasting bond are turning to split-dollar life-insurance arrangements.

These plans marry attractive insurance protection with a compelling wealth-building benefit, creating a win-win for employer and standout performer. Retention strategies must therefore feel progressive and personally resonant to succeed.

Equity-Like Rewards Without Dilution

Split-dollar plans let an organization advance premium payments on a permanent life-insurance policy owned by the executive. In a typical endorsement arrangement, the business retains rights to recover those premiums, while the employee receives the policy’s death benefit in excess of that repayment amount.

Over time, the contract’s cash value grows tax-deferred, resembling a personal equity stake—yet no new shares are issued, and voting control stays intact. A seasoned financial services company can structure the agreement so repayment occurs at retirement or separation, giving the employer a built-in incentive period aligned with talent-retention goals and longevity.

Immediate Protection That Matters to Families

Key contributors often shoulder household responsibilities that hinge on their continued earning power. Because split-dollar arrangements involve sizable life-insurance death benefits from day one, employees gain peace of mind before any vesting cliff arrives. That safeguarding message lands well with leaders juggling mortgages and tuition.

That immediate security contrasts sharply with stock options or phantom equity, which may feel abstract or too dependent on future company valuations. Knowing loved ones are financially protected keeps valued staff focused on high-impact work rather than worrying about “what-if” scenarios, deepening emotional loyalty to the firm.

Tax-Smart Cash Accumulation Over Time

Within designed split-dollar plans, policy cash values grow free of current income tax, and employees may access that buildup via policy loans. Withdrawals are treated as a return of basis first, minimizing taxable exposure. The result is a tax-advantaged reservoir that can fund college, startups, or sabbaticals.

Meanwhile, the company’s premium advances are treated as a recoverable asset, avoiding a direct hit to the P&L. This dual-benefit architecture feels more generous than a standard bonus yet remains cost-efficient for the employer, providing a sophisticated reward that rivals outside offers without triggering hefty payroll taxes.

Strategic Vesting and Golden-Handcuff Power

The real retention magic appears in the vesting schedule. Employers decide when employees can assume full ownership of cash values or death-benefit components, often tying milestones to key projects, performance metrics, or targeted tenure. That clarity turns intent into concrete, enforceable value for both parties.

If the executive leaves early, the business simply recovers its premium outlays, and the enhanced benefit evaporates, a stark reminder of the value of staying put.

Because the arrangement is contractual and funded, it carries more weight than a vague promise of future bonuses, effectively handcuffing mission-critical talent during the company’s most pivotal growth years.

Conclusion

Split-dollar plans weave protection, accumulation, and cost efficiency into a cohesive package. They let businesses reward star performers with something meaningful yet less dilutive than an equity grant for employers.

When crafted thoughtfully and communicated clearly, these agreements become a silent partner in the firm’s retention strategy—affirming that the company is invested in the employee’s future for as long as the employee remains invested in the mission. And in an era where competitors poach aggressively, that silent reinforcement speaks volumes.