The cheapest user research happens before you build anything
We have made a free AI agent skill that runs a focus group on your PRD — while it's still just a document.
In Customer Success, we spend a lot of time cleaning up after decisions that were made too early. A feature ships, the tickets roll in, and it turns out the thing nobody questioned in the spec is exactly the thing real users can't get past. By then it's expensive: engineering time spent, expectations set, a roadmap to unpick.
Read on to get hold of this great skill - totally free!
Voice of Customer Is Broken at Most SaaS Companies — Here's Why
There's a particular kind of quarterly slide that I've seen in more CS and product reviews than I'd like to count. It shows a distribution of customer feedback scores — usually NPS, sometimes a themed satisfaction survey — with a note about the response rate and a few selected…
Your CSM-to-Customer Ratio Is Probably Not the Number You Should Be Optimising
The question "what's the right CSM-to-customer ratio?" has a confident answer in a lot of CS conversations. Depending on who you ask and what segment you're in, you'll hear something between 1:10 for high-touch enterprise accounts and 1:200 for a scaled tech-touch model. Some…
The CS-Led Growth Thesis: What It Actually Means to Grow Revenue From Existing Customers
Somewhere in the last four or five years, "CS-led growth" became a phrase you heard in almost every conversation about the future of the Customer Success function. The framing is compelling — existing customers are cheaper to retain than new ones are to acquire, the relationship…
Why Most SaaS Companies Are Losing Customers in the First 90 Days — and Blaming the Wrong Thing
There's a conversation that happens after a wave of early churn that I've heard in different forms across more SaaS organisations than I can count. It usually starts with someone in a post-mortem saying: "We think there was a product-market fit issue with this segment." Or:…
When to Hire Your First CS Ops Person — and What That Decision Actually Means
The question comes up more than you'd think. A CS leader — usually someone running a team of between five and fifteen, usually sitting somewhere in the growth stage of a SaaS company — will say some version of: "I know I need CS Ops. I just don't know when I needed it, and I…
How Business Transformation Consultancy Drives Company Growth
An honest look at how business transformation consultancy actually drives company growth, where it goes wrong, what to look for in a partner, and what you need to bring to make it work.
Crafting an Effective Customer Success Strategy for Your Business
I’ve watched Customer Success grow from a vague idea into a full-blown function. I’ve also watched a lot of businesses end up with a CS team that exists only on paper—trapped in reactive firefighting and obsessed with metrics that don't actually matter.
The hard truth? A strategy that looks great in a slide deck usually fails in real life because it’s built around what’s easy to measure, rather than what the customer actually needs.
Customer Success Operations: The Next Evolution of Customer Success?
From support-led beginnings to strategic growth and AI-powered insight, Pivotal Path founder James reflects on a 16-year career in SaaS and asks whether it’s time to properly define CS Ops.
“Over the last 16 years working in SaaS, I’ve seen Customer Success change dramatically.
When I first started, being called a Customer Success Manager often felt like shorthand for: James does a bit of everything, so let’s call him that.
And honestly, that was true for a lot of people around me.”
Mighty Midlands - Retail’s Digital Transformation & How Midlands Brands Are Thriving Online
The Midlands has long been home to some of the UK’s most iconic retail brands. However, as consumer behavior shifts towards digital-first experiences, companies must adapt or risk being left behind. In this piece, we explore how retailers like Boots and Gymshark have embraced digital transformation, combining e-commerce, social engagement, and technology-driven solutions to stay ahead.
Mighty Midlands: Customer Success is Pivotal in the success of these digital midlands businessess
Birmingham Boy and Customer Success Expert James Hayward-Zhu has given us a handful of the most impressive examples of Customer Success and digital innovation from his “Mighty Midlands” list:
You don’t have a hybrid worker problem, you have a tool problem.
In the evolving landscape of hybrid work, many businesses face challenges not because of where their teams are located, but due to the tools and protocols in place. Without effective collaboration platforms and clear processes, the potential benefits of hybrid and remote work can be significantly undermined.
The Digital Transformation Rush: Why Businesses Now Suffer in Silos
Instead of a seamless, connected operation, many businesses now find themselves suffering in silos—with disconnected systems, fragmented data, and overwhelmed teams struggling to make sense of it all.
Pivotal Path is Live: Elevating Customer Success Operations & More
We are thrilled to announce that Pivotal Path is officially live and open for business! After years of hands-on experience in customer success, data-driven strategy, and operational excellence, we are here to help SaaS and B2B companies take their business operations to the next level. To kick off our blog, Founder and Pathfinder for Customer Success operations, James Hayward-Zhu explains what he loves about customer success and the difference it can make to your business