Gainsight Launches Customer Success University and Career Hub to Invest in Future Leaders

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - May 14, 2014) - PULSE 2014 -- Gainsight today unveiled new additions to the Customer Success Resource Center that advance both the education of industry best practices and placement of qualified candidates into career opportunities in Customer Success. Customer Success University is an online certification platform for individuals seeking to learn the critical skills required to develop a career in Customer Success. Also announced, Gainsight's Customer Success Career Hub will serve as the industry's preeminent job opportunity destination -- connecting job seekers with employers actively hiring in Customer Success. Career Connect integrates job listings from leading career sites such as Monster, Careerbuilder, Yahoo!Jobs and others.

These announcements come fresh off new data released by Gainsight courtesy of Glassdoor, a jobs and recruiting community, on 2014 compensation trends for the Customer Success Management profession. The Glassdoor report revealed that hiring in the Customer Success industry is heating up as more than 5,460 employers are currently seeking to fill CSM job titles nationally.

Other findings of the research included the following:

• It Pays to Be in Customer Success: Customer Success Managers earn a national salary average of $85,000 per year, with the San Francisco Bay Area ranking 10 percent higher than the national average at $92,701 per year. These statistics are based on over 70 salary reports on Glassdoor.

• Job Satisfaction is High: Customer Success employees are reporting higher job satisfaction ratings over the past few years, with an impressive 3.3 of 5.0 in 2014. The 2014 rating is up from 2.9 in 2011. The average Glassdoor employee satisfaction rating, across all professions, is 3.2.

• The Future is Bright: 46 percent of employees in Customer Success feel their business outlook will improve in the next 6 months, 6 percent above the national average on Glassdoor across all professions.

"Gainsight is committed to advancing the Customer Success movement by investing in the people who make up the backbone of the category," said Lincoln Murphy, Gainsight's Customer Success Evangelist. "It is our responsibility as first-movers in this market to look beyond technology in order to raise the awareness, education and resource availability to future practitioners and executives. Customer Success University and Career Connect are two of our first initiatives that execute on Gainsight's mission of leading the world in this new, customer-centric frontier."

Introducing Customer Success University
Announced at today's Pulse Conference in San Francisco, Customer Success University is the industry's first online education and certification platform. Students can enroll in self-paced curriculum curated from leading Customer Success experts to prepare for careers in the growing field. With the first learning track, Customer Success Manager 101, launching in June 2014, students will learn the critical foundation of a career as a Customer Success Manager, including:

• The RED, Yellow, Green Meeting

• The Terminology of Customer Success

• Handling Common Customer Situations

Gainsight is now pre-enrolling students for the initial June class and will price the program at an introductory rate of $299 per student per learning module.

Gainsight Career Connect Links CSM Job Seekers and Employers
Also announced today was Gainsight Career Hub, the first and only online job board built exclusively for the Customer Success industry. Career Connect curates job listings from a variety of data sources, including CareerBuilder, Monster, Yahoo!Jobs and more, giving both candidates and hiring managers a single destination for all things CSM recruiting.

Candidates can upload resumes to Career Connect, search for relevant CSM job opportunities and apply for positions directly from the website. Employers can post openings and evaluate candidate qualification. Gainsight plans to integrate incremental data sources into Career Connect over the next few months.

Survey Says: Customer Success is Driving Boardroom Discussions
Gainsight surveyed over 100 CEOs from leading subscription businesses on how Customer Success is becoming a strategic priority in the boardroom. Results from the survey found that:

• Customer Success is a key conversation in the boardroom: Nearly 70 percent of CEOs include Customer Success metrics as part of the strategic conversation during board and executive meetings. More than ever, Customer Success is top-of-mind for CEOs in creating solid, high-growth companies.

• Customer Success is perceived to be more important than many other corporate functions: An overwhelming number of CEOs -- nearly 80 percent -- believe Customer Success is strategically more important than Finance. 74 percent ranked Customer Success as being more important than Human Resources and 46 percent ranked it higher than Marketing.

• Head of Customer Success now reports directly to the CEO: Nearly 60 percent of respondents state that Customer Success reports directly into the CEO. This suggests that the Customer Success function is strategically crucial to the direction and financial health of the company.

• Customer renewals and upsells are strategic metrics in the boardroom: While customer churn is still an important consideration, more than half of the CEOs surveyed view customer renewals and "upsells" as key metrics that are presented to the board. As a result, companies are now under pressure to design a well-orchestrated method of achieving upsells, cross-sells and saving customers through down-sell opportunities where possible.

"The results of our survey were stunning, but not surprising to those of us who live and breathe Customer Success -- it's a movement that's taking center stage in the boardroom. The overarching practice of Customer Success within a company is becoming more aligned with the entire organization itself -- not just a siloed function for the sales team, but assimilated into the DNA of the company," said Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta.

Gainsight is showcasing these findings and new initiatives at Pulse 2014, the first and largest Customer Success event in history, currently taking place in San Francisco. Learn more: http://pulse.gainsight.com.

About Gainsight

Gainsight, the first and only complete Customer Success solution, helps businesses reduce churn, increase up-sell and drive Customer Success. The company's SaaS suite integrates with Salesforce and uses Big Data analytics to evaluate sales data, usage logs, support tickets, surveys and other sources of customer intelligence. In this way, Gainsight provides a 360° view of customers and drives retention across Customer Success, sales, marketing, executive and product management. Learn how leading companies like Angie's List, Castlight Health, Marketo and Informatica are using Gainsight to help their customers succeed at www.gainsight.com.

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