Digital Customer Success 101: What You Should Know about the New Function Brewing

Digital Customer Success
dij’-i-tl kuhs’-tuh-mer suhk-ses’
Noun

Customer success function with digital superpowers.

TL;DR: If you're laser-focused on offering the best customer experience while maximizing revenue, you’ve already started thinking about “Digital Customer Success”.

And it’s not just us. Over the past few years, the term “Digital Customer Success” has grown from a silent blog post to a tidal wave of webinars, industry reports and boardroom conversations.

But why this sudden shift?

According to a 2023 Trends and Outlook in Customer Success report from Bain & Company, retaining customers is at least five times more cost-effective than acquiring new ones.

The message is clear: Customer Success (CS) isn't just important; it's the lifeblood of SaaS.

Yet, the traditional CS playbook will no longer work. Here’s why:

1. CSMs are burnt out as they are being asked to do more with less.
2. B2B customers are expecting round-the-clock support that never sleeps.
3. Investors demand leaner operations without sacrificing customer satisfaction or revenue growth.

Enter Digital Customer Success—not just a solution, but a revolution. It is the secret weapon that will help CSMs work smarter, not harder.

What Do We Even Mean by Digital Customer Success (Digital CS)?

How do you start building something unless you can clearly articulate what it means and what it should be?

One resounding trend you’d notice in all the page-one Google search results on this topic is how Digital CS is defined as “the blend of human and digital interactions to provide personalized customer experiences at scale”.

But this definition only scratches the surface. Digital CS is the culmination of years of evolution in customer success strategies:

1. Traditional CS: One-on-one service for every paying customer.
2. Segmented CS: High-touch for high-value clients, tech-touch for others.
3. Digital-First CS: A holistic digital strategy for all customer segments, born from the pandemic's challenges.

Today's CS teams face a Herculean task: do more with less. From closing renewals to fixing churn, the list seems endless. The question is: Is this scalable as you keep adding new customers?

The definitive answer is NO. Customer Success teams can’t simply keep increasing CSM headcount as they grow their customer base. It’s inefficient financially, as well as from a human resources perspective.

This is where Digital Customer Success truly shines.

So what exactly is Digital Customer Success? A Customer Success strategy that balances human and digital interactions to offer personalized experiences at scale while requiring low or no touch from the Customer Success Managers. Easier still, Digital CS is your customer success function with digital superpowers.

Digital Customer Success = Success for All. “Do more with less” doesn’t have to mean organizations spinning their wheels and burning themselves out. It means embracing new technology to scale our businesses in ways we never have before, to increase Success for All, and to bring our Human-First mission to a whole new level.

Nick Mehta,
CEO, Gainsight

The Foundations of Digital Customer Success

1. It's a process, not a destination.
2. Applicable to customers of all sizes.
3. Leverages automation and robust data.
4. Applicable to the entire customer journey.
5. Utilises omni-channel engagement.
6. Requires cross-functional effort.
7. Enhances, not replaces, Customer Success Managers.

Remember, there's no one-size-fits-all approach to digital CS programs. The key is understanding an org’s current state of customer experience, CSMs’ daily activities, customer profiles, nature of the product, data sources, and tools used.

We like how Alex addresses this challenge. Alex Turkovic, named one of 2023's Top 25 Customer Success Influencers by SuccessHACKER, explores these concepts weekly on The Digital Customer Success Podcast. His insights have led to a foundational framework for building and scaling digital customer success initiatives:

The Difference Between “Traditional” Customer Success and "Digital" Customer Success

The main difference between traditional Customer Success and Digital Customer Success is that the latter relies on a one-to-many approach instead of one-to-one interaction. Think of it as upgrading from a bicycle to a Tesla - both get you there, but digital does it with style, speed, and a whole lot less sweat.

This table is your cheat sheet to understand why Digital CS is the cool kid on the block.

Aspect	Traditional Customer Success	Digital Customer Success
Approach	One-to-one interactions	One-to-many and Many-to-many interactions
Customer Interaction	Mainly human	A blend of human and automated
Focus	Reactive problem-solving	Proactive value delivery
Scalability	Limited by team size	Highly scalable
Self-Service	Limited options	Comprehensive resources
Personalization	Manual and time-consuming	Automated and instant
Response Time	Business hours	24/7 availability
Cost Efficiency	Higher costs due to the need for more customer success managers	Lower per customer through automation and self-service options
Communication Channels	Primarily direct communication like emails or calls	Multi-channel, including in-app messages, chatbots, and self-service portals
Data Usage	Basic metrics for reporting	Advanced analytics to predict behaviour and personalize experiences

Leader Spotlight: Aaron Hatton on Digital Customer Success

Aaron is the Digital Customer Success Program Manager at Gainsight.

Here are some key takeaways from our conversation with Aaron:

1. Digital Customer Success is a way to be able to scale your customer success strategy by creating personalized and automated motions.
2. The exact painful moment when CS leaders start thinking about going digital is when they are feeling overwhelmed by the volume of customers.
3. Every company should have digital CS before they scale their customer success team. The typical way to start is a pooled CSM model where 5 CSMs support 500 accounts. With the pooled CSMs, you start to realize you have to move from a reactive to a proactive approach.

Why Digital Customer Success Is Critical for Your Business

1. Free Your Talented CSMs for Strategic Impact

Digital CS creates self-service resources for customers throughout their journey, from onboarding to renewals. This shift allows your Customer Success Managers (CSMs) to focus on high-value, strategic activities instead of repetitive tasks. The result? Your CS team can dramatically scale their impact without increasing headcount—a game-changer for businesses aiming for sustainable growth.

Here’s an example to start chewing:

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The Problem:
CSMs spend ~30% of their time manually training customers (mostly 1:1).
Average CSM salary in the USA: $90,000
Time spent on manual training: 30%
For a team of 10 CSMs, the annual training expense: $270,000

The Solution:
Digital Customer Success

How:
Replace manual training with Digital Customer Education initiatives.
1. Invest in an LMS with built-in content creation.
2. Launch your Academy for 1:many training sessions.
3. Assign one CSM to manage the program (~30% of time).

Result:
You get 100% of the time of the remaining 9 CSMs to:
✅ Improve and expand customer relationships
✅ Drive higher product adoption rates
✅ Increase upsell opportunities
✅ Build and nurture a customer community

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2. Meet Your Modern Customer Expectations  

We’re in a world where we expect instant help and personalized experiences. Modern B2B customers seem to have caught the B2C bug. They want

• 24/7 access to help
• Self-service options
• Personalized guidance when needed

Consider this compelling stat from HigherLogic: 79% say they expect organizations to provide self-service support tools to help customers find answers without having to contact support.

Digital CS perfectly bridges this gap by blending automation with the human engagement. It enables CSMs to deliver tailored experiences at scale, regardless of customer segment, ARR, or journey stage. This approach ensures you're meeting and exceeding the evolving expectations of your customer base.

3. Gain a Decisive Edge over Competitors

Imagine this: There are two companies that both have 5000 customers who need help setting up their profiles. Company A uses automated tools and targeted emails to guide customers. Company B relies on CSMs to manually assist each customer.

Which company will:

• Help customers onboard faster?
• Deliver value more quickly?
• Avoid customer frustration due to wait times.
• Prevent CSM burnout?

In the fast-paced SaaS world, where new competitors emerge daily, a digital-first CS strategy is essential to help you thrive. It allows you to scale quickly and offer smooth and personalized experiences to customers wherever they are and whenever they need it.

4. Drive Revenue

Implementing Digital CS can significantly impact your bottom line:

1. Improved customer experience leads to higher retention and reduced churn, directly boosting revenue.

2. When CSMs are automatically managing a high volume of new customers, it is easier to identify and act on upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

3. Automation handles repetitive tasks, reducing the workload on CSMs and freeing up time to focus on relationship-building and revenue-generating activities.

5 Benefits of a Digital Customer Success Strategy for Your B2B SaaS Business

1. Scalable Processes

Whether you are serving 100 or 10,000 customers, digital-led onboarding, adoption, and training processes will scale with you, not hold you back.

a. Support more customers without needing to hire more CSMs proportionally.
b. Automate routine tasks, freeing CSMs for strategic activities.
c. Maintain a high-quality experience for each customer you acquire without overwhelming the team.

2. 24/7 Customer Support

Digital-first CS approach would allow centralized resources to handle repetitive queries and reserve human support for the limited number of complex queries.

a. Provide instant answers and assistance around the clock.
b. Offer self-service resources such as a Knowledge Base for common issues and questions.
c. Improve customer satisfaction with always-available support.

3. Data-Driven Decision Making

Digital CS uses tools to automate the repetitive parts of a CSM’s job. These tools provide comprehensive customer data on customer behavior, preferences, and outcomes. Thanks to this data, you can:

a. Offer customized interactions based on data segmentation.
b. Identify patterns and trends to predict and prevent churn.
c. Flag data patterns that show where customers struggle to meet their outcomes.
d. Combine multiple customer metrics into a single customer scorecard.

4. Faster Time-to-Value

The most crucial time for a user in the SaaS business is during onboarding. If you get onboarding right and accelerate the time to value, the likelihood of them using your product becomes higher. Digital CS automates the onboarding experience with centralized resources and in-app engagements.

a. Automate onboarding communication and messages using customer data.
b. Offer self-service resources to help customers get started with your platform irrespective of their time zones or CSMs’ availability.
c. Automate engagements to guide users to key features based on their expectations.

5. Personalization at Scale

A digital-first process allows CSMs to leverage data to personalize the experience for a high volume of customers without necessarily giving each customer attention.
a. Personalize onboarding, adoption, and training experiences based on customer goals and expectations.
b. Provide relevant content and guidance based on user behavior.
c. Use automation to send the right message at the right time in the right channel.

"It’s not difficult to automate and deliver information to the customer or user, but it is (difficult) to deliver the right information to the right user at the right time. That’s the intelligence that’s required in Digital Customer Success."

Maarten Doornenbal
Co-founder, Churned

How to Implement a Digital Customer Success Strategy?

Step 1: Figure out the Fundamentals

1. Understand Your Customer Segments

At Trainn, we believe digital is for everyone—like Wi-Fi in a coffee shop. But just as some customers prefer lattes while others go for espressos, each segment needs its blend of human and digital experience. Understanding your customer segments will help you tailor an effective digital approach.

🤔 Questions to ponder:
a. How many segments do you have?
b. What key attributes define your segments —ARR, persona, industry?
c. How do digital needs and expectations vary across different segments?
d. Which segments are most likely to benefit from a digital CS approach

2. Permission to Contact

Ensure you have the proper consent and legal authorization to engage with customers through automated messages across different digital channels.

📝 Checklist:
a. Do you have explicit permission to contact customers via various digital channels?
b. Are you playing by the rules (GDPR, CCPA)?
c. How can you smoothly collect and manage these digital communications

3. Customer Journey Map

Your customer journey map is like GPS for your digital CS strategy. It shows where your customers are, where they're going, and where they might hit traffic jams.

🗺️ Key points to map:
a. What are the critical stages in the customer journey?
b. Which touch points can be automated?
c. Which touch points need the human touch?

4. CSM Activity Analysis: Understand Where’s the Time Going

Time is money, and your CSMs are spending a quarter of it on admin tasks. That's like using a Ferrari for grocery runs! Conduct a CSM time spend analysis to get a picture of where they are spending their most time.

🤔 Questions to ask:
a. Which CSM activities are currently most time-consuming or repetitive?
b. What tasks could be effectively digitized or automated?
c. How can we measure the impact of transitioning specific activities to digital formats?

5. Assess Your Current Digital CS Toolkit

Take stock of the digital tools already in use within your organization to ensure integration and avoid redundancy in your new strategy. This assessment will help you identify gaps and opportunities for improvement in your digital CS toolkit.

⏱️ List to investigate:
a. What digital CS tools are scattered across departments?
b. How well are these tools meeting your current needs?
c. Are there any gaps in your digital CS toolkit that need to be addressed?
d. How can new tools play nice with your existing tech stack?

Step 2: Understand Your CSMs' Biggest Challenges

Typically, a team of CSMs work tirelessly to serve a large number of customers. Based on your current customer success processes and CSM time spent analysis, pinpoint the biggest pain points. The feedback from your CSMs will also help you identify gaps and opportunities for digital enhancement. Once you have a list of challenges and opportunities, you can start working towards knocking them off with your fully developed digital CS program.

Examples of CSM pain points
- Firefighting repetitive customer queries.
- Difficulty in scaling personalized communication.
- Getting enterprise customers to attend Quarterly Business Reviews.

Step 3: Set Clear Goals and KPIs

Define SMART goals for each stage of your customer journey that will involve automation. You can quantify these goals in terms of key performance indicators (KPIs). These are your mile markers on the road to digital CS success.

Examples of KPIs from different stages of the customer journey:

• Onboarding: average onboarding time
• Adoption: feature utilization rate
• Escalation: average first-contact resolution rate
• Renewal: Net Promoter Score
• Expansion: average customer lifetime value

💡 Pro tips:

1. Develop KPIs specific to your product and your business objectives.
   For example, Trainn is a no-code customer training platform. So our KPI is all about reducing Time To Value (TTV) during onboarding.
   
2. Segment your KPIs like you segment your customers
   This will help you set specific KPIs for each segment and deliver more customized and relevant automation. For example, your enterprise customers with big-sized teams might take a quarter or more to get onboarded into your product. On the other hand, your SMB customers will take a week to start using your product.

Step 4: Build an Executable Digital CS Strategy

Imagine your current CS state and your dream digital CS future. Now, let's build the strategy that will bridge them!

As Marley Wagner, a Digital Customer Success Consultant and Successcoaching’s 2022 Top 100 Customer Success Strategist, astutely observes, "On average, it takes between two and three years to build and optimize a fully mature digital customer success program." This timeline sounds reasonable when we consider the depth and breadth of transformations required.

Here's a snapshot of what that journey might look like:

Current CSM Painpoints	Future Digital CS Vision
Firefighting repetitive customer queries	- A knowledge base article to answer the query - CSM-led community of customers for peer-to-peer support
1:1 training for larger teams (done multiple times)	- Academy for self-paced learning - Automated webinars - Interactive product tours
CSM-led time-consuming onboarding processes	- Automated onboarding workflows - Interactive guided setup - Self-serve onboarding hub with videos
Reactive problem-solving for at-risk accounts	- Proactive issue detection - Automated health scores - Predictive analytics for churn prevention
Getting customer attendance for Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) for enterprise accounts	QBRs and utilization reports conducted for all customers through automation.
Difficulty in scaling personalized communication	- Automated emails based on usage - In-app notifications - Personalized content recommendations based on usage patterns - Personalized training courses based on role
Inconsistent product adoption across the customer base	- Automated feature emails - Gamified product walkthroughs - Feature spotlight campaigns - Usage-based nudges and tips
Time spent on manual data collection and reporting	- Automated data aggregation - Real-time dashboards - AI-driven insights

Bonus: It can be helpful to include another column ‘Impact’ to showcase how your digital CS solutions align with your specific KPIs.

Step 5: Choose Your Digital CS Tools

A crucial part of putting together an actionable digital CS strategy is to look at your existing tech stack to see if you have the tools to make your vision a reality. But remember, we're not replacing your CSMs—we're giving them superpowers.

🔧 Tool checklist
1. What systems do you need to make your digital CS solutions a reality?
2. What are the existing digital CS tools in your tech stack?
3. Does it integrate with your existing system?
4. Can it grow with your business?
5. Does it offer user-friendly dashboards for your KPI data?

Step 6: Develop a Detailed Digital CS Roadmap

Create an implementation roadmap that would make Google Maps jealous. Include key initiatives, timelines, resources, and KPIs for each stage of the customer journey.

🗺️ Pro Tips:
1. Begin with pilot projects or phased rollouts to test new strategies before scaling up.
2. Use whatever format works for your team—whether it's a high-tech project management tool or a wall full of sticky notes!

Step 7: Train Your CS Teams and Roll out in Phases

The number one enemy in achieving this digital transformation is the status quo of your CSMs. Your CSMs might be stuck in their old ways. Time for some gentle persuasion and training!

🎓 Training ideas:
1. Create a Netflix-style video hub for on-demand learning
2. Host hands-on workshops (with snacks—learning is always better with snacks)
3. Identify internal champions to lead the charge

Use a phased rollout to introduce new tools and processes gradually, allowing for adjustments based on feedback and performance.

Step 8: Monitor, Analyze, and Optimize

With a digital customer success approach, you’ve got data at your fingertips—use it! Keep an eye on those KPIs and don't be afraid to tweak your approach.

📊 Did you know? According to a Gainsight report, KPIs are still in their infancy with digital customer success. While only 27% of companies with a Digital Customer Success program have well-established KPIs, 60% said their KPIs are currently “under construction”.

Use your automated dashboards and reporting tools to monitor your KPIs and identify what's working and what isn’t.  Identify performing processes and automation that should be maintained and scaled up: Troubleshoot underperforming processes and A/B tests with different approaches (messaging, workflows, segments).

Best Practices for Implementing Digital Customer Success

1. Leverage the AI revolution: Deploy AI-powered tools like chatbots and automated workflows to handle routine tasks.
   
   💡 Pro Tip: Start with simple use cases like FAQ chatbots, then gradually level up to more complex scenarios. According to Gartner, by 2025, 50% of customer service interactions will be handled by AI. Don't get left behind!
   
2. Build your Digital CS Swipe File: Create a swipe file of self-service resources for your product.  Include knowledge base videos, interactive feature walkthroughs, and bite-sized courses.
   
3. Transition with care: Ensure your CSMs carefully transition current customers into a digital setup.
   🚫 Avoid the FOMO: Ensure customers don't feel like they're getting less for the same price.
   ✅ Do: Personalize the transition, highlight new benefits, and offer "white glove" onboarding to the digital experience.
   
4. Appoint CSM monitors - your digital guardian angels. Even in a digital world, the human touch is golden. Appoint CSM monitors to oversee your digital solutions, making sure everything runs smoothly and no customer falls off the radar.
   
5. Make digital CS a cross-functional effort: Partner with marketing and product to
   -  unlock additional communication channels and tools
   - align messaging, goals, and insights for a cohesive customer experience
   For example, marketing has sophisticated email automation tools that can be used for sending automated emails. ​​According to McKinsey, companies with strong cross-functional collaboration are 1.5x more likely to report higher customer satisfaction scores.

Digital Customer Success in Action: How Wingman by Clari Soared Above the Support Storm

The problem: Pandemic-triggered lockdowns multiplied the need for sales teams to use a sales intelligence platform like Wingman by Clari. Wingman started scaling aggressively — both in acquiring new customers and in expanding its product capabilities.

As a result, support queries first doubled, then tripled. With every passing day, the small CSM team at Wingman realized they were firefighting day and night to handle queries. Support docs and onboarding tours could not keep pace with their fast-changing product features.

The need for digital CS: Wingman wanted to help customers onboard without straining its CSMs. Most importantly, they wanted a solution to educate customers at scale, without the team being available 24*7.

The Solution: Using Trainn’s digital customer success solution, Wingman launched the Wingman Academy. The team created product onboarding videos, grouped them based on stages in the customer journey, and launched the Wingman Academy for onboarding and training.

The Result:
1. The Support team at Wingman uses how-to videos for proactive customer support.
2. Self-service onboarding experience for customers, freeing up CSMs time.
3. Wingman Academy acts as a digital customer success partner for SMBs.

Want to dive deeper into this customer success transformation story? Check out the full case study here.

Your Path to Digital Customer Success with Trainn

Trainn is an AI-powered, unified platform to create, manage, and scale customer training and digital customer success initiatives. Trainn helps CSMs offer self-serve onboarding, product training, and technical support with its content creation and distribution suite.

You can:

1. Create self-service resources —videos, guides, and walkthroughs remarkably fast. Organize this content for self-serve onboarding, adoption, and customer training.
2. Launch a Knowledge Base without writing a single line of code.
3. Launch a digital Academy without engineering dependencies. Turn your 1:1 training into 1:many programs. Develop comprehensive courses for onboarding, training, or product education.
4. Measure and optimize. Track customer-level and LMS metrics such as courses enrolled, engagement, and completion rate. Analyze how your digital initiatives are boosting Time to Value (TTV), product adoption, and customer retention.

With Trainn, you’re not just adopting a tool—you’re embracing a strategic partner committed to your digital customer success.

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📕A Collection of Resources on Digital Customer Success

1. Collection of digital customer success tools
2. The Digital Customer Success Podcast by Alex Turkovic
3. Gainsight’s big book on digital customer success
4. Offered a Digital Customer Success Manager position - should you take it or not?
5. Resources from Marley Wagner

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FAQs

1. Is Digital Customer Success only for SMB customers?

No, Digital Customer Success is valuable for organizations of all sizes. According to a 2023 Gartner report, 85% of customer interactions will be managed without human agents by 2025, regardless of company size. Digital CS is particularly beneficial for:

i) Customers of all sizes: From startups to enterprise clients
ii) Both power users and casual users of your product
iii) Hard-to-reach stakeholders

Digital CS allows enterprise customers to access information quickly while giving SMBs the support they need without requiring extensive human resources. For example, Salesforce uses digital CS tools to support its vast customer base, from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies.

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2. Is Digital Customer Success owned by the customer success team?

While often spearheaded by customer success leaders, Digital Customer Success is most effective when implemented as a cross-functional initiative. A 2022 study by the Technology & Services Industry Association (TSIA) found that companies with cross-functional Digital CS teams saw a 23% higher customer satisfaction rate compared to those where Digital CS was siloed in a single department.

To maximize impact, build your digital CS team with representatives from:
- Customer Success
- Marketing
- Support
- Product

This cross-functional approach ensures a cohesive strategy that leverages diverse expertise and aligns with overall business goals.

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3. Do you need developer or engineering dependencies for Digital CS initiatives?

While some Digital CS initiatives may require technical support, many can be implemented with low-code or no-code solutions such as Trainn. However, the level of developer involvement depends on the complexity of your Digital CS strategy and existing tech stack.

Times when you might need dev support:
- Integration needs: Connecting Digital CS tools with your CRM or product
- Customization: Tailoring off-the-shelf solutions
- Data management: Handling large amounts of customer data securely

That said, having a technical liaison or dedicated engineering resource can be valuable for more advanced implementations or when scaling your Digital CS program.

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4. How to transition customers carefully into a digital-led customer success program?

Transitioning customers to a digital-led CS program requires a strategic approach. A study by Forrester found that companies that carefully managed this transition saw a 12% increase in customer retention rates. Here's a step-by-step guide:

a. Identify the customers to move. Determine which customers meet the criteria for your new digital touch engagement model.
b. Break them into phases.
c. Communicate clearly. Create personalized emails notifying customers of the change. Highlight the benefits and list all available self-service resources.
d. Offer personalized support: Provide an option for customers to schedule a meeting if they have questions or concerns.
e. Iterate based on feedback: Use insights from each phase to improve your transition process.
f. Simplify information consumption: Since digital CS shifts the responsibility of information digestion to the customer, focus on creating easily digestible content. For example, HubSpot successfully transitioned many customers to their digital Academy by offering bite-sized video lessons and interactive quizzes.
g. Monitor engagement: Use analytics tools to track how customers interact with your digital resources and adjust your strategy accordingly.

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