Managing Customer Success in Business Markets: Conceptual Foundation and Practical Application

Abstract

Customer success management is gaining momentum in business markets. From an initial focus on selected industries, such as software-as-a-service, interest in customer success is spreading among business-to-business marketing practitioners. To date, academia has largely neglected this concept and its organizational implementation. Based on extant managerial literature and research on value in use in business markets, we distinguish between customer success as a customer-perceived construct, customer success management as a joint customer-supplier management process, and the emerging job position of customer success managers in supplier organizations. Based on the case of a provider of IoT devices, software and services in decision agriculture, we illustrate how customer success management is practiced in a business marketing context and refine our understanding of customer success management and its constituents. Finally, we suggest promising avenues for future research in this managerially important, under-researched and rapidly growing domain.