How to Build a World-Class Customer Success Machine: Top Lessons from the CRO of Notion and VP of CS at GitHub
"Your CS org will look TOTALLY different at $1M ARR versus $100M ARR. Embrace the evolution."
The Customer Success Evolution: From Support to Strategic Growth Engine
Customer Success is going through radical change now. It’s not just a department—it’s your company’s secret weapon for sustainable growth. Erica Anderson, CRO of Notion and Abbas Haider Ali, VP of CS at GitHub joined SaaStr Annual’s Chief Customer Officer Summit to share the latest in CS across B2B.
Erica Anderson: Notion’s Revenue Catalyst
Erica Anderson stands at the helm of Notion’s revenue strategy as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). With a remarkable tenure at GitHub spanning 10 years before joining Notion, she brings a wealth of experience in scaling technology companies. Her journey is marked by a unique approach to customer success that transcends traditional sales models.
Abbas Haider Ali: GitHub’s Customer Success Visionary
As VP of Customer Success at GitHub, Abbas Haider Ali has been instrumental in transforming how technology companies approach customer engagement. His leadership has been characterized by building robust customer success frameworks that drive both customer satisfaction and business growth.
An Unconventional Beginning
Their professional relationship began with an unexpected twist – Erica informed Abas of her departure from GitHub on his very first day at the company. This unusual start set the stage for a collaborative relationship that would continue to evolve, demonstrating the interconnected nature of tech leadership.
The Customer Success Org: Not Your Grandfather’s Support Team
When you’re scaling a SaaS business, your CS team isn’t just a single function anymore. We’re talking:
Customer Success Managers
Professional Services
Technical Account Managers
Renewals
Account Management
Customer Experience Teams
Pro tip: Your CS org will look TOTALLY different at $1M ARR versus $100M ARR. Embrace the evolution.
Investment: The 10% Rule of Customer Success
Here’s a golden nugget straight from the playbook: Aim to invest about 10% of revenue in Customer Success. Why? Because this is your growth catalyst.
🚀 Quick Math:
Spending more than 10%? You better have a killer reason
Monetize professional services
Track your spend as a percentage of ARR
At Notion, they’re targeting 3.9% – laser-focused efficiency
Measuring Success: Beyond Traditional Metrics
Forget just looking at gross retention. The new CS playbook is about leading indicators:
Onboarding velocity
Product adoption rates
User engagement metrics
Monthly active users
Net retention rate (NRR)
Structuring Your CS Team
Two dominant models:
Pod Structure (GM Mode): Goals clustered together
Functional Structure: Centralized CS teams
Pro Advice: Your structure should flex with your company’s growth stage.
Customer Success Organization and Teams
Erica mentions that the teams involved in customer success evolve over time as the company grows, including customer success managers, Professional Services, customer experience teams, technical roles, renewals, and account managers
Abbas notes that GitHub’s customer success organization started with Professional Services and support, then evolved, while Notion has built out teams and more roles.
The discussion highlights the importance of documenting the origin and evolution of a customer success organization, especially for companies in earlier stages.
Customer success teams can originate from different departments such as support, services, or customer success management, depending on the business needs, and can evolve over time as the company grows and the product becomes more complex.
The scope of customer success determines the leaders, functions, and roles needed, and can include support, services, training, technical account management, renewals, account management, customer experience, and engineering.
The evolution of customer success teams can be seen in companies like GitHub, where it started with a small group and grew over time, and Notion, where it started with support and customer success and is now layering on professional services and renewals.
At GitHub, the initial focus was on getting people onto the software development platform, which led to a focus on professional services, while at Notion, the focus was on onboarding customers and providing hands-on support due to the product’s learning curve.
Investment in Customer Success
The investment in customer success can be measured in different ways, including dollars spent, percentage of ARR, and investment in different areas of customer support, such as dedicated hands-on support and resource allocation.
Understanding the needs of customers and the business performance perspective is crucial in determining the evolution of customer success teams and the investment required.
Notion’s customer success team is currently evolving to meet the needs of customers, with a focus on layering on professional services and renewals, and the company values customer feedback and user insights to inform its product development and customer success strategy.
Customer Success Vectors and Journey
Customer success involves two main vectors: the pure numbers way and the models needed to support the business, which depend on different areas of the business and the level of touch and experience.
The customer journey drives the functional piece of customer success, and mapping it out is crucial to making customers successful, which ultimately affects the numbers.
Having a clear understanding of the customer journey and the functional things needed is essential, as seen in GitHub’s and Notion’s approaches to customer success.
Budgeting for Customer Success
A common question asked is how much to spend on customer success, and the answer is 10% of revenue, which is a benchmark for businesses that want to raise money effectively and scale.
Spending more than 10% requires a good reason, such as growing faster than peers, having strong lead quality, and monetizing conversations.
Monetizing professional services can help protect the 10% budget for new initiatives and build a more sustainable business.
Customer success leaders should know their revenue spend on customer success, broken down by function, to have a strong perspective on ROI.
Notion’s customer experience organization, for example, tracks its spend as a percentage of ARR, with a goal of 3.9%.
Measuring Customer Success
Measuring customer success involves tracking various metrics, including adoption, revenue expansion, and onboarding velocity, to understand what’s working and what’s not, and to predict long-term success.
At Notion, customer success is measured by metrics such as Integrations that a customer is enabled for, database usage, and editing, which indicate that someone is getting off on the right foot and will be successful long-term with the product.
Defining the onboarding journey and how someone becomes a more advanced user within the first 90 days is crucial, and metrics such as monthly actives and net retention rate (NRR) are used to evaluate success.
The key performance indicators (KPIs) for customer success teams should include leading indicators such as activity, onboarding velocity, and durable usage over time, rather than just lagging indicators like gross retention rate (GRR) and NRR.
GitHub’s customer success team also focuses on leading indicators, and when the VP of Customer Success joined, they worked with the leaders in customer success to establish new KPIs that went beyond just lagging indicators.
The goal is to have a set of metrics that provide a comprehensive view of customer success, including both leading and lagging indicators, to drive growth and predict long-term success.
KPIs and Business Reviews
A strategy organization involves sitting down to discuss key performance indicators (KPIs) and how to measure success based on historical data and future projections.
At GitHub, the customer success team has a document that outlines 50 pages of missions, unique values, KPIs, leading and lagging indicators for every single function, which is reviewed on a monthly basis.
The document was initially created by the VP of Customer Success in their first 30 days and has since become a contributed document from the entire team.
The purpose of KPIs is not for vanity, but to identify areas that need improvement, and business reviews focus on discussing the yellow and red indicators rather than the green ones.
If there are no yellow or red indicators, it may be a sign that the team is not being aggressive enough in their business goals.
Internal and External Magic
There can be tension between cheap customer offers and the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), especially when new customers are left hanging on their first day.
To identify “magic” happening between organizations, signals include whether everyone knows where they fit in the customer journey and if their roles are aligned across the organization.
Internally, magic happens when there is clarity on roles and momentum is built upon, rather than overlapping efforts.
Externally, magic happens when customers have a great experience, such as a recently onboarded customer of Notion posting a positive review on LinkedIn.
Notion’s adoption at the company has been amazing, with people highly engaged, and this is a memory that will never leave, as externally, they made magic happen without any conversation with the company, and a CEO took the time to write about it on LinkedIn.
Customer validation is the best validation, and a screenshot of a customer’s public praise on LinkedIn is something to be remembered, especially for a Customer Success Manager (CSM), and can be used in future interviews.
Key Elements of Success
Key elements of success include clarity of roles, accountability for the team, joint recognition, and mutual respect, which is essential for customer obsession, but it can sometimes turn creepy if not balanced.
Having clear lines of responsibility and a common language to talk about different stages of the customer life cycle is crucial, and using a sales framework that is common across the organization can help.
Leadership interchangeability, where leaders can walk in the shoes of their revenue peers, is also important, and can send a signal that magic is happening within the organization.
Customer stories and unsolicited public praise from customers are the ultimate validation, and can be used to demonstrate success.
Monetizing Customer Success
The question of whether customer success should be monetized or not is complex, but the answer is yes, as it can maximize the 10% investment in customer success.
Professional Services can have a positive margin contribution, but it depends on the specific circumstances.
The goal is to shift from a “no” to a “yes” in terms of whether customer success proactively sells, and it’s a journey that requires continuous effort.
Customers are always willing to pay for priority support, and this concept is similar to paying for a VIP pass to be at the front of the line.
Customer Success Team Structures
There are two common structures for customer success teams: a pod structure with a General Manager (GM) mode where different goals are grouped together, and a functional structure where all customer success teams are together.
The preferred structure depends on the company’s growth stage and goals, and it’s possible to switch between the two structures as the company evolves.
At GitHub, the customer success team uses a functional structure, while at Notion, it uses a pod structure in a GM mode.
CRO and CCO Relationship
The relationship between the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) and the Chief Customer Officer (CCO) is crucial for a business to scale, and it’s essential to prioritize this relationship.
Erica, the CRO of Notion, and the VP of Customer Success at GitHub, emphasize the importance of their relationship and how it has evolved over time, including after Erica left GitHub.