Executive Summary
Recent developments in how organizations engage with their customers, predicated on customer demands as well as advancements in generative and agentic artificial intelligence (AI), are forcing the hand of vendors and practitioners alike when it comes to defining customer success. Customer success has evolved from a single departmental team focused on securing subscription renewals (and, typically in the world of software as a service [SaaS]) into a more full-journey focus where the goal is to orchestrate engagement with customers to optimize lifetime value. This has led to a new definition of the customer success technology stack, with many new components needed for success, including those for customer data analytics, community management, elearning, and more.
Vendors have made significant new acquisitions to round out their customer success offerings, not only to be more full-journey-focused but also to aid in driving product adoption and usage as well as optimizing the identification of cross-sell and upsell opportunities throughout the customer lifecycle. This report sheds light on how customer success is changing and how vendor portfolios are responding and provides recommendations to help practitioners ensure that their customer success organizations are as strategic as possible, given the unique business climate today.
