Customer Success in SaaS Industry - what is it and how can it be achieved?

Customer success has recently become one of the trending topics specially in the SaaS industry. Customers hold a lot of power in the SaaS industry as they could terminate the platform subscription at any point, and it is absolutely critical for SaaS companies to make sure that their customers keep using their software over the long term (Skok, 2010). As a result, terms such as customer experience, success & retention have come into spotlight. This Thesis follows a qualitative approach to understand how improvement of customer success processes in B2B SaaS industry increases the retention of customers and revenue streams. It also clarifies the root causes of why SaaS firms lose out on customers in a long run and how best they could retain them. This study is centred around customer success and investigates how customer experience has an impact on retention. Methodology used for this case study is in-depth interview of stakeholders composed of employees of SaaS firms. The observations made in this case interview are analysed in the context of existing literature from fields related to customer success. The result is a set of propositions that are presented as a starting point for further exploratory research and empirical testing.