Reflections on 2023: Lessons Learned to Navigate 2024
By Kristen Hayer
Over the past few months, several companies have asked me for my predictions about what is going to happen next year in customer success. I started out answering a few but got a little discouraged by the whole exercise in December. The fact is none of us really know what is going to happen in 2024. There are so many variables at play both in the United States where I live, and globally, that it is tough to predict a month in advance, let alone what will be happening over the course of the year!
As I was thinking about what to write in this final blog post of 2023, I considered this past year and what I’ve learned that can help me as I move into 2024. So instead of sharing predictions, I’ll share what I’ve learned in the hopes that it can also help you next year.
Resilience
With a few exceptions, 2023 was not a great year for most companies. Most of our clients seemed to be struggling with higher-than-normal churn, low new business and expansion sales, limited capital, or all the above. Now at the end of the year both businesses and investors seem to be holding their breath and waiting to see what 2024 will bring.
Through this year, our team has had to make tough changes to how we work. We’ve had to rethink how we deliver our services and what we want to offer. It forced us to become very clear about what is important to our business, and what doesn’t bring as much value to the company or our customers. It made us consider what we want to spend our time and money on.
Our team has shown great resilience this year, and I feel like I’ve become more able to adapt to anything that comes our way. I know that the work we did to build this strength will carry us into 2024 and make the future easier to tackle, no matter what happens.
Creativity
Along with the resilience, our team had to get creative about how to do more with less. I stepped into some of the roles that I had stepped away from, like working directly with customers and building new programs. It cut into the time I was spending on sales and marketing, but also gave me a break and allowed me to consider whether our current approaches were really working.
Our team also creatively peeled back the layers of our CS Certification and CS Leadership programs and redefined how we wanted to teach those critical skills to our students. We ended up building an amazing lineup of classes that doubled the content we cover, while keeping each course tight and cost-effective. It was a ton of work to make the changes, but our excitement about the new approach kept us going.
Our team’s creativity helped us tackle the challenges of 2023 by looking at them with a fresh perspective and coming up with unique ways to approach our business. As we move into 2024, I know that strength will continue to be a big part of our team’s culture.
Asking for Help
This last one is personal. I absolutely, positively hate asking for help. I’m an oldest child, an A student, a high achiever, and all those things make me someone who is used to doing everything by themselves and at the highest possible level of excellence. Unfortunately, in 2023, the highest possible level of excellence was unattainable – at least for me. I knew that to make it through the year I would need some help.
I started slow, asking a few of my trusted colleagues and friends for advice on the business, situations on our team, and even my kid who is in college this year. Along with their smart advice, they gave me support, which turned out to be even more important than the advice. After this, I started to share more and ask for more help. I learned that people are incredibly generous and that my asks are not an imposition.
I am positive that I will continue to need help and advice going into 2024. If you were one of those lovely souls who gifted me with your advice: Thanks, and you’ll be hearing from me again next year!
So, to wrap this up, my 2024 prediction is more of a piece of advice to myself: keep up the resilience, creativity, and asking for help next year. And my message to all of you: Thanks for being a part of The Success League, and I hope you found this post useful in some way. Here’s to a wonderful and prosperous 2024 for us all!
The Success League is a global customer success consulting firm that offers a robust training program. Learners can attain certification as CSMs or CS Leaders. Additionally, we offer coaching for CS Leaders who are facing a variety of challenges. Reach out to us or visit TheSuccessLeague.io for more.
Kristen Hayer - Kristen founded The Success League in 2015 and currently serves as the company's CEO. Over the past 25 years Kristen has been a success, sales, and marketing executive, primarily working with growth-stage tech companies, and leading several award-winning customer success teams. She has written over 100 articles on customer success, and is the host of 3 podcasts about the field: Innovations in Leadership, CS Essentials with Gainsight, and Reading for Success. Kristen serves on the boards of the Customer Success Leadership Network, the Customer Success program at the University of San Francisco, and the Women in Leadership Program at UC Santa Barbara. She received her MBA from the University of Washington in Seattle, and now lives in San Francisco.
