What To Do When A Customer Wants to Cancel A Contract
Hopefully, 100% of your customers love you. But as time goes on, you’ll oversell a few deals. Or not quite deliver in some fashion. Or fail to deploy in others. And some customers will ask for their money back. When they e-signed binding, good old-fashioned...
Dear SaaStr: What Were Aspects of Your Startup That Were Easier Than Anticipated?
Dear SaaStr: What Were Aspects of Your Startup That Were Easier Than Anticipated? The part I didn’t originally get as a first-time B2B founder was how relatively easy it is to grow exising accounts and account size if your customers are happy. 120% NRR: Your revenue...
Dear SaaStr: What Do You Do With Churned Customers?
Dear SaaStr: What Do You Do With Churned Customers? You put them into a Get Them Back bucket and re-market to them with a dedicated program. And you have sales especially follow-up twice. Once in about 90 days, to see if they might want to come back —...
Dear SaaStr: What’s The Best Way to Get Traction After We Have Our First Few Paying Customers?
Dear SaaStr: What’s The Best Way to Get Traction After We Have A Few Paying Customers? Answer: try everything that just might work, even a little bit. Then: double down on anything that works even a little. That may sound obvious, but what I mean is, most start-ups...
Dear SaaStr: What Do You Do When Your Startup is Not Growing Anymore?
Dear SaaStr: What Do You Do When Your Startup is Not Growing Anymore? First, be honest about why. You can blame it on macro issues if you want, or on the competition over promising, or whatever — but if growth has radically decelerated, it’s likely because you...
There’s No Excuse for “We’ll Get Back to You in 1 Business Day” in the Age of AI
Recently I reached out to support at 2 fintechs we used, both at $500m+ ARR, and what did support say? “We’ll get back to you in a day.” There’s no excuse for this anymore in the Age of AI. There was no excuse ever, but pre-AI, keeping up...
Is AI Support Perfect? No. But It’s A Lot Better Than No Support at All
Dear SaaStr: We’re thinking about deploying AI for customer support. Is it actually good enough yet, or should we wait? Don’t wait. Do it now. Pick a leader and go. Just don’t forget to train it. You have to train AI support with your real data, FAQs,...
How OpenAI Built a Global CS Organization in 18 Months: Vanessa Gatihi’s Playbook for AI-Powered Customer Success
Vanessa Gatihi joined OpenAI as their first customer success hire 18 months ago. Today, she leads a global CS team as Head of AI Deployment & Adoption spanning San Francisco, New York, Munich, Paris, Dublin, London, Singapore, and Korea, serving a thriving...
What To Expect From a New VP of Customer Success in The First 30-60-90 Days
Dear SaaStr: What Should My New VP of Customer Success Be Doing In The First 30-60-90 Days? Here’s how I’d structure their 30-60-90 day plan to ensure they’re focused on the right priorities: First 30 Days: Meeting With Customers — ASAP. And Deep Dive and...
The Silent, Lurking Churn: Activation Rates Less Than 90%
It took me a little while to see activation rates as literally one of the 3-4 most important metrics in SaaS, but it probably is. I started to track activation rates at a lot of start-ups I work with, and I saw numbers that shocked me. I often see 60% or so...
The 10% Rule: How Much Should You Really Invest in Customer Success? With the CRO of Notion and VP of CS at GitHub
The 10% Rule: How Much Should You Really Invest in Customer Success? With the CRO of Notion and VP of CS at GitHub Every B2B CEO asks this question. So at SaaStr Annual + AI Summit we brought together the CRO of Notion and VP of CS at GitHub to answer it. Featured...
You’ll Lose Customers. It Hurts. But Don’t Let Them Become Angry Ex-Customers.
When a customer leaves happy, they often still recommend you When a customer leaves unhappy, they always recommend a competitor — Jason ✨👾SaaStr 2025 is May 13-15✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) February 19, 2025 The other day, I had an experience I’ve never had in 14...
In The Age of AI, Onboarding and Time-to-Value Should Be The #1 Goal for Customer Success
So we’ve been proponents of customer success at SaaStr since the earliest days, since our first SaaStr posts in 2012. The magic of high NRR and a strong CS team was something we were preaching and doing deep dives on since well before it was well understood....
30+ Tough Learnings from Losing a Top Customer
On both SaaStr University and Twitter, we had 30+ founders, CEOs and execs share their top, tough learnings from losing one of their top customers. There are some great teachable moments here, and also some deja-vu if you’ve been through it! “I should...
Founder SaaStr
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