“客户成功”软件热力来袭

    在《华尔街日报》( Wall Street Journal)去年刊登的一篇评论中，著名投资人马克•安德森指出了一个在硅谷众所周知的常识：拜软件技术所赐，建立一家公司再也不需要花费动辄数万美元的资本。

    Preact，一家总部设在旧金山的小公司，希望这样一个教益也可以应用到客户维系(customer retention)流程。

    这家初创公司认为，企业不应该花费一大把钱去争取新客户，这样做过于昂贵。相反，企业应该花费相对较少的资金来维系现有客户的满意度。

    两年前，Preact公司决定将这个流程自动化，并将其置于云端。该公司声称，通过融合行为科学、机器学习和大数据分析，它能够基于客户过去的行为来预测他们是否会流失、续约或升级。【“不要被动反应(react)，”这家公司坚称。“要提前行动起来(Preact)。”】当一位客户停止使用一款软件，掩藏在软件背后的企业将被告知。当一位高级用户提交支持请求，该操作将获得额外的关注。（Preact软件与Gmail、Salesforce、Zendesk和Marketo等软件集成在一起。）

    Preact隶属于一个名为“客户成功(customer success)”的软件类别。每过一个月，这个软件市场似乎就会变得更加拥挤一些。Gainsight公司可以说是该领域的主导厂商，以Bluenose和Totango为代表的预测服务商也在奋力争夺市场空间。就本质而言，通过对过去行为的详尽分析来预测未来表现，算不上特别新潮的实践。但今天的不同之处在于，这个流程可以实现自动化，实时监控一家全球性企业的运营状况。

    Preact公司CEO迈克尔•盖勒把Preact的自动化流程比作一个Nest智能恒温器（译注：Nest是一家从事智能家居业务的公司）。“从字面上看，你只需设置好它，它就会学习你们家的行为模式，”他说。“它甚至有一个能够探测家里是否有人的传感器。”

    虽然这个软件市场看上去热闹非凡，但它仍然非常年轻。去年，Gainsight公司首次在旧金山举办了一个名为Pulse Conference的年度会议，大约300名与会者就不断增长的客户成功软件市场进行了讨论。今年的会议吸引了900人，主讲人是大名鼎鼎的马尔科姆•格拉德威尔。

    Gainsight公司营销总监安东尼•肯纳达表示，这场会议的目标之一就是尝试着确定市场空间。当Gainsight公司开始运营时，“我们甚至无法让人们理解‘客户成功’究竟是什么东西，”肯纳达说。“人们对我们嗤之以鼻，认为这只不过是一种账单解决方案。”

    这种状况正在改变。一些专家说，对于企业级软件和中小型企业来说，客户成功是下一件大事。“唯有运营一家企业大约两到三年时间，你才能真正理解客户成功的重要性，并且看到它能够带来多大的影响，”风暴投资(Storm Ventures)合伙人贾森•莱姆金说。风暴投资是一只致力于创业早期阶段投资的风投基金。

    莱姆金说，在运营的头两年，大多数公司的收入和客户群都非常羸弱，进而无法准确预测客户行为。“但到了大约两年半的时候，”他解释说，“你就会开始在公司收入中看到一个模式。转介和口口相传频频出现，成为你最大的客户源泉。到了第三年，你终于拥有一个足够大，能够系统性成长的客户群。”

    In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal last year, the prominent investor Marc Andreessen pointed out what has become common wisdom in Silicon Valley: thanks to software, it no longer costs tens of thousands of dollars to build a company.

    Preact, a small company based in San Francisco, hopes that lesson applies to customer retention, too.

    The startup believes that businesses shouldn’t be spending fistfuls of money acquiring new customers, which is expensive. Rather, businesses should spend comparably less money keeping their existing customers happy.

    Two years ago, the company decided to automate this process and base it in the cloud. With a blend of behavioral science, machine learning, and big data analytics, the company says it can predict whether customers will churn, renew, or upgrade based on their past behavior. (“Don’t react,” the company insists. “Preact.”) When a client stops using a piece of software, the business behind it will be notified. And when a power user logs a support ticket, that action is given additional attention. (Preact’s software integrates with Gmail, Salesforce, Zendesk, and Marketo.)

    Preact is part of a category called “customer success” software that seems to get more crowded with each passing month. Gainsight is arguably the leading firm; predictive services like Bluenose and Totango are also vying for a piece of the action. There’s nothing inherently new about using detailed analysis of past behavior to predict future performance, but the difference today is that the process can be automated and monitored across a global business.

    Michael Geller, Preact’s chief executive, compares Preact’s automation to a Nest thermostat. “Literally, you just set it, and it learns the patterns of behavior in your house,” he says. “It even has a sensor to detect if people are there or not there.”

    Though there is buzz around the category, it’s still quite young. Last year, Gainsight hosted in San Francisco the first annual Pulse Conference, at which about 300 people showed up to discuss the growing customer success space. This year’s conference drew 900 people and keynote speaker Malcolm Gladwell.

    The conference is an attempt, in part, to define the space, says Anthony Kennada, Gainsight’s head of marketing. When Gainsight started out, “We couldn’t even get people to say ‘customer success,’ Kennada says. “People were marginalizing us as billing solution.”

    That’s changing. Some experts say that customer success is the next big thing for the enterprise as well as small- and medium-sized businesses. “It takes about two to three years running a business to truly understand customer success—and see how big its impact is,” says Jason Lemkin, a partner at the early-stage enterprise venture capital fund Storm Ventures.

    In the first two years of operation, Lemkin says, most companies have too little revenue and too small of a customer base to accurately predict behavior. “But by about year two and a half,” he explains, “You begin to see a pattern in the revenues. You see referrals and word-of-mouth showing up more and more often as the source of your largest customers. And by year three, you finally have a large enough established base that you can systematically grow it.”