This quote on the latest Bootstrapped Web (a podcast I really enjoy!) by Jordan struck a nerve with me

Do you hire for the least important things or least impactful things like customer support and customer success. Or do you actually hire for the most strategic things like content marketing, email marketing.

I'm not trying to call Jordan out for an off hand comment on a podcast, but I do think this is a good jumping off point to discuss how I believe people should view customer support in SaaS. To me, customer success teams are the most important part of a SaaS business. There's nothing more strategic than top notch support.

Without a great customer success team all the work of every other department is wasted. Customer Success is the glue that ties marketing and product development to revenue.

New customers are expensive to get, keeping existing ones is cheap and far far more profitable. This is doubly so in SaaS where you don't get all the money up front, but generally must wait years to earn the majority of the customers lifetime value.

How SaaS causes this alignment between the customer and the developers best interest is one of its greatest strengths. To make this work though you have to realize the pressing importance of the customer success team. Great customer success hires generate revenue.