Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
By signing up for your free account, you agree to receive e-mails from Triggre.
By signing up for your free account, you agree to receive e-mails from Triggre.
Software businesses often feel the pressure to prioritize growth above all else. The focus is usually on customer acquisition, with sales efforts front and center. But there’s a strong case for putting customer success first starting on day one.
The idea that customer success is something to consider only after you’ve built a large customer base is flawed. From the moment your product goes live — even in its earliest form — customer success plays a critical role.
In the beginning, your first users are more than just customers; they are also product testers, early adopters, and your most valuable source of feedback. Understanding how they interact with your product allows you to answer key questions:
Having a customer success mindset early on helps you adapt, improve usability, and prioritize development based on real-world usage, not assumptions.
As your product starts gaining traction, more users means more feedback and usage patterns to analyze. This is when customer success becomes even more essential. It’s not just about keeping customers happy — it's about learning how your product fits into their daily operations and how you can deliver ongoing value.
Without this feedback loop, it becomes hard to build a product that continues to meet user needs as you grow. You risk building features that don’t get used, or missing out on critical improvements that could boost retention.
It’s easy to understand why some software companies prioritize sales. Growth metrics like monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and customer acquisition numbers are often key performance indicators in early-stage funding conversations.
But this short-term mindset can backfire.
Over-investing in sales while underinvesting in customer success can undermine the long-term business case. Why? Because SaaS success is built on lifetime value (LTV) — how long a customer stays and how much value they bring over time.
When customers churn early due to lack of onboarding support, unresolved issues, or unmet expectations, your cost of acquisition increases, and profitability suffers. This makes scaling expensive and unsustainable.
Focusing on customer success from the beginning isn't just a feel-good strategy, it’s a smart financial decision. Supporting users throughout their journey helps you:
In other words, a strong customer success function supports a more profitable and scalable business model.
For software companies, customer success shouldn’t be an afterthought or a department you build once you’ve scaled. It should be part of the foundation. The earlier you start investing in it, the more insights you'll gain, the more loyalty you'll build, and the stronger your product-market fit will become.
If you’re building a SaaS company, ask yourself: are you truly helping your users succeed? If not, it might be time to shift the focus.
