You run a subscription software (SaaS) company in Quito. Your team celebrates every new sale, but recurring revenue is eroding: customers who signed and then never used the product, never saw value, and didn't renew. In SaaS, the sale is the beginning, not the end: revenue lives in renewal and expansion, and both depend on the customer achieving the outcome they were after. That's why you need a proactive customer success function —onboarding, adoption, account health— that drives usage and value. Gainsight defined the category; HubSpot built its own customer success function.
The situation
In a subscription model, the economics don't live in the initial sale but in retention and expansion: renewing year after year and growing within each account. And both depend on the customer adopting the product and realizing the value they were after. That's why post-sale can't be reactive. A proactive customer success function —guided onboarding, adoption measurement, health scores, proactive outreach before the customer goes cold— drives adoption, cuts churn, and opens expansion. Gainsight created the customer success category; HubSpot built a function dedicated to the customer achieving outcomes, not just resolving tickets.
Here's the trap, in two directions. Relying on reactive support —waiting for tickets to arrive and putting out fires— isn't enough: customers who don't adopt don't complain, they simply don't renew; churn creeps in silently while you think "there are no problems." And leaving post-sale to sales or product —having sales use the account only to sell more, or trusting the product to explain itself— leaves adoption ownerless: nobody accompanies the customer to value, and whoever doesn't realize it leaves. The defensible move is to build a proactive customer success function centered on customer adoption and outcomes.