"客戶成功"軟件走紅 新奇客戶管理軟件熱力來襲

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.

在《華爾街日報》( Wall Street Journal)去年刊登的一篇評論中，著名投資人馬克o安德森指出了一個在硅谷衆所周知的常識：拜軟件技術所賜，建立一家公司再也不需要花費動輒數萬美元的資本。

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

Preact，一家總部設在舊金山的小公司，希望這樣一個教益也可以應用到客戶維繫(customer retention)流程。

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.

這家初創公司認爲，企業不應該花費一大把錢去爭取新客戶，這樣做過於昂貴。相反，企業應該花費相對較少的資金來維繫現有客戶的滿意度。

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.)

兩年前，Preact公司決定將這個流程自動化，並將其置於雲端。該公司聲稱，通過融合行爲科學、機器學習和大數據分析，它能夠基於客戶過去的行爲來預測他們是否會流失、續約或升級。【“不要被動反應(react)，”這家公司堅稱。“要提前行動起來(Preact)。”】當一位客戶停止使用一款軟件，掩藏在軟件背後的企業將被告知。當一位高級用戶提交支持請求，該操作將獲得額外的關注。（Preact軟件與Gmail、Salesforce、Zendesk和Marketo等軟件集成在一起。）

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.

Preact隸屬於一個名爲“客戶成功(customer success)”的軟件類別。每過一個月，這個軟件市場似乎就會變得更加擁擠一些。Gainsight公司可以說是該領域的主導廠商，以Bluenose和Totango爲代表的預測服務商也在奮力爭奪市場空間。就本質而言，通過對過去行爲的詳盡分析來預測未來表現，算不上特別新潮的實踐。但今天的不同之處在於，這個流程可以實現自動化，實時監控一家全球性企業的運營狀況。

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.”

Preact公司CEO邁克爾o蓋勒把Preact的自動化流程比作一個Nest智能恆溫器（譯註：Nest是一家從事智能家居業務的公司）。“從字面上看，你只需設置好它，它就會學習你們家的行爲模式，”他說。“它甚至有一個能夠探測家裏是否有人的傳感器。”

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.

雖然這個軟件市場看上去熱鬧非凡，但它仍然非常年輕。去年，Gainsight公司首次在舊金山舉辦了一個名爲Pulse Conference的年度會議，大約300名與會者就不斷增長的客戶成功軟件市場進行了討論。今年的會議吸引了900人，主講人是大名鼎鼎的馬爾科姆o格拉德威爾。

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.”

Gainsight公司營銷總監安東尼o肯納達表示，這場會議的目標之一就是嘗試着確定市場空間。當Gainsight公司開始運營時，“我們甚至無法讓人們理解‘客戶成功’究竟是什麼東西，”肯納達說。“人們對我們嗤之以鼻，認爲這只不過是一種賬單解決方案。”

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.

這種狀況正在改變。一些專家說，對於企業級軟件和中小型企業來說，客戶成功是下一件大事。“唯有運營一家企業大約兩到三年時間，你才能真正理解客戶成功的重要性，並且看到它能夠帶來多大的影響，”風暴投資(Storm Ventures)合夥人賈森o萊姆金說。風暴投資是一隻致力於創業早期階段投資的風投基金。

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.”

萊姆金說，在運營的頭兩年，大多數公司的收入和客戶羣都非常羸弱，進而無法準確預測客戶行爲。“但到了大約兩年半的時候，”他解釋說，“你就會開始在公司收入中看到一個模式。轉介和口口相傳頻頻出現，成爲你最大的客戶源泉。到了第三年，你終於擁有一個足夠大，能夠系統性成長的客戶羣。”

That’s where customer success companies enter the picture. Preact co-founder and chief product officer Christopher Gooley explains that many founders and CEOs have learned the costs of customer retention the hard way. “Companies are not just trying to support and sustain but accelerate growth,” he says. With customer success software, “we don’t try to forecast. We identify users who are very likely to upgrade if you influence them somehow.”

這就是客戶成功軟件公司進入畫面的切入點。Preact公司聯合創始人兼首席產品官克里斯托弗o古利解釋說，許多創始人和CEO以非常慘痛的方式認識到留住客戶的高昂成本。“公司不僅僅嘗試着支持和維繫現有客戶，它們還試圖促使客戶羣迅速成長，”他說。通過客戶成功軟件，“我們不會嘗試着預測客戶行爲，我們能夠確定那些如果施加一定影響就很可能升級的用戶。”

RJMetrics has used Preact for about a year. “Before Preact, our account managers had to spend a lot of time investigating each of their accounts to find out how they had been engaging with our product and team,” explains Jake Stein, co-founder and COO of RJMetrics. “Preact makes that process 25% more efficient, and more importantly, improves the quality of the information that the account management team sees so they can most effectively target their efforts.”

RJMetrics已經使用Preact軟件大約一年時間。“還沒有使用Preact的時候，我們的客戶經理不得不花費大量時間研究他們的每一個客戶，以便了解他們如何使用我們的產品，如何跟我們的團隊互動，”RJMetrics聯合創始人兼首席運營官傑克o斯坦解釋道。“Preact使得這項流程的效率提升了25%，更重要的是，它大大改善了客戶經理團隊獲得的信息質量，這樣他們就能夠最有效地確定自身努力的針對性。”

Investors are hoping to ride the wave of interest in customer success. In March, Gainsight closed $21.4 million in a Series B funding round led by Battery Ventures, Summit Partners, and Bain Capital Ventures. In April, Preact received $4.6 million in Series A financing led by Trinity Ventures.

投資者希望趕上這波客戶成功軟件熱潮。3月份，Gainsight完成了價值214萬美元的B輪融資，其主要投資人包括巴特利風投(Battery Ventures)、頂峯投資(Summit Partners)和貝恩資本(Bain Capital Ventures)。4月份，Preact獲得了三一風投(Trinity Ventures)爲首的投資團隊提供的460萬美元首輪融資。

Customer success will eventually become standard for measure health and activity for each individual user and account, Geller says.

客戶成功軟件最終將成爲每個用戶和客戶的健康和活躍程度的衡量標準，蓋勒說。

“Every user is a snowflake,” he says. “Every account is different.”

“每位用戶都是一片獨特的雪花，”他說。“每個客戶都是不一樣的。”