Why we’re investing in the Customer Growth Awards

Today, I’m pleased to announce that we have acquired the Customer Success Excellence awards. We’ve been privileged to experience the vast growth in teams that support revenue growth for post sales — Account Management, Customer Support and Customer Success Operations to name a few— and in recognition of this, we’re relaunching it as something bigger.

We’d like to welcome to the world the Customer Growth Awards.

The new name reflects two paradigms: the importance of these teams in growing their own revenue from existing customers, but also how they help their customers themselves grow: whether that’s in revenue, efficiency or other metric the customer measures success.

Why did we decide to act?

When I started Hook in the confusing days of Covid back in 2020, there were a couple of principles on my mind about Customer Success.

The first, was that Customer Success was under recognised. CS is arguably the most important part of any SaaS GTM strategy given that SaaS businesses are built on retaining and growing customers efficiently. Yet I saw again and again that CS teams struggled to get a seat at the table when it came to budget, headcount or important strategy decisions.

The second principle was that being able connect CS to revenue was an important problem to be solved. After all, the closer that teams are to the source of money, the clearer their contribution is. Being able to make the connection from work to revenue also gave Customer Success teams the ability to be able focus their effort on where it offered the most value.

The tectonic shifts in Customer Success

Previously, I led Customer Success at a $4bn Cisco acquisition. I’d felt the resistance first hand in moving my own team closer to revenue. “Customers will think we’re sales people”. Back then, we were in the infancy of SaaS; the market has tripled in size since.

Over the last 18 months, we’ve seen a fundamental shift in how Customer Success teams are viewed. The continuing challenges of changing tech markets — including fundraising, competition and AI — have made CEOs, CROs and CFOs look at costs and return on investments with a fine toothcomb. For teams, this has helped many focus even more on how they position their customers for growth. For individuals, many have seen a lot of personal growth as these challenges create opportunities.

Customer Success Excellence

When I met Alex Farmer back in 2021, I immediately felt strong alignment on our vision about the importance of Customer Success in helping companies grow. While I was growing my revenue growth startup Hook, Alex was plotting on an even more important mission: finding a way to recognise those people in Customer Success that had made big waves.

Alex was passionate about recognising not only those who talked the talk — but those who had walked the long hard yards to make a difference to their customers, and as a consequence, to their own companies. He stood as a shining example of the power of Customer Growth: having rapidly grown from a Chief Customer Officer to Chief Revenue Officer in his day job.

Alex launched the Customer Success Excellence awards in 2022 and it was an immediate success. Within a year, his team had hosted awards in the UK and US, recognising the top performers across the industry hosting over 400 people in glitzy ballrooms to recognise dozens of people that had been narrowed down from the tens of thousands of people in the industry.

Over the last few months, Alex & I talked about how we could take this to the next level. At the same time, I felt strongly that at Hook we had a duty to help fuel community within this rapidly changing industry.

Welcoming the Customer Growth Awards

We completed the acquisition a few days ago of the Customer Success Excellence Awards, and are relaunching them today as the Customer Growth Awards. The world’s only awards focused on revenue teams driving customer value. Alex will be supporting us over the coming year in combining our vision.

Our first awards ceremony will be held in Europe on 1st May at the stunning Pan Pacific Ballroom in central London, hosting 200 people in the industry. Judged by top revenue leaders across the industry, we are excited to celebrate the successes of the bright people that championed the revenue growth torch so brightly and executed on it.

Later this year, we will be hosting our US awards. Over the coming months, we’ve dedicated investment to ensuring this community is properly served with the recognition and resources it deserves to grow.

I feel very privileged to be able to have the opportunity to bring together people in such an important time in our industry. Over the coming weeks, I’m excited to meet many of you and hear more about the Customer Growth stars and to see them be recognised.

To find out more about our awards, see customergrowth.com.