Awesome Customer Success

A curated list of the best resources about Customer Success for CS leaders, Chief Customer Officers, CROs, and SaaS executives.

Inspired by awesome lists. Maintained by Rework.

In subscription businesses, the sale is just the beginning. Net revenue retention — what you keep and expand after the contract is signed — is the real measure of a healthy SaaS business. Customer success teams drive NRR by ensuring customers achieve outcomes, not just log in. But CS is still one of the youngest functions in B2B, and most teams are still figuring out how to scale it without losing the human touch. These resources cover the full CS playbook, from health scoring and QBRs to digital CS at scale.

Contents

Articles

Books

Videos & Talks

Tools & Software

  • Gainsight - Market-leading enterprise CS platform for health scoring, playbooks, QBRs, and renewal management.
  • ChurnZero - Real-time CS platform with automation, health scoring, and in-app engagement for mid-market teams.
  • Totango - CS platform with prebuilt playbooks and out-of-the-box templates for fast deployment.
  • Planhat - Highly customizable CS platform with flexible revenue management and health tracking modules.
  • Vitally - Fast-to-deploy CS platform with health scoring, playbooks, and CRM integrations.
  • Catalyst - CS platform built for sales-led organizations focused on expansion and renewal revenue.
  • CustomerSuccessBox - AI-powered CS platform for SaaS companies reducing churn and driving NRR.

Templates & Frameworks

Case Studies & Real-World Examples

  • Salesforce - Salesforce built its customer success function before "customer success" was a named discipline, assigning dedicated CSMs to every enterprise account after discovering that customers who didn't adopt the product within 90 days churned at 3x the rate of those who did. By making adoption — not just license renewals — the CSM's primary KPI, Salesforce drove its enterprise renewal rate above 90% and created the template that most SaaS CS organizations still follow today. Source

  • Box - Box's CS team documented a case study showing how proactive health scoring prevented churn on a $1.2 million enterprise account. A health score drop triggered a CSM outreach 60 days before renewal; the CSM discovered that only 12% of licensed users were active. Rather than lose the account, they ran an internal adoption campaign that brought utilization to 67% in six weeks and secured a renewal with a 15% expansion. Without the health score, the team wouldn't have known until the cancellation call. Source

  • Zendesk - Zendesk's CS organization scaled from 200 to 1,400 customers per CSM in its SMB segment by shifting to a digital CS model using in-app triggers, automated health plays, and self-service QBRs. Despite the 7x increase in account coverage, Zendesk's SMB NRR stayed above 100% because high-touch interventions were reserved for accounts showing genuine churn signals rather than being applied uniformly. The digital CS model saved an estimated $4 million annually in CSM headcount. Source

  • HubSpot - HubSpot's customer success team published data showing that customers who completed their onboarding checklist within 30 days retained at an 89% rate in year two, compared to 61% for those who didn't. This single data point drove a complete redesign of the HubSpot onboarding experience, including in-app prompts, CSM-led kickoffs for mid-market accounts, and a 30-day success milestone email sequence that became a model for the broader SaaS industry. Source

  • Cisco - Cisco's enterprise CS organization runs one of the most sophisticated QBR (executive business review) programs in tech, with EBRs tied to named business outcomes rather than feature reviews. Internal research showed that accounts with at least two EBRs per year expanded at 2.8x the rate of accounts with zero EBRs, and renewed at a 94% vs. 71% rate. Cisco now mandates EBRs for all accounts over $500,000 ACV and trains CSMs specifically in outcome-based conversation frameworks. Source

  • Intercom - Intercom's CS leadership published research showing that customers who had a dedicated success plan — a documented set of 90-day goals shared between the CSM and the customer champion — expanded their contracts at 40% higher rates than those without one. The company made success plans mandatory for all Enterprise customers and built success plan creation directly into its own product, creating a flywheel where using Intercom made customers more likely to succeed with Intercom. Source

Communities & Newsletters

  • Gainsight Community - Official Gainsight user community for CS practitioners sharing playbooks, metrics, and strategies.
  • Customer Success Collective - Independent CS community with newsletters, events, and resources for CS professionals at all levels.
  • Success Hacker - Community and training resource focused on CS skills development and career advancement.

Rework Resources

Explore more content on the Rework blog:

Contributing

Know a great Customer Success resource that should be on this list? Let us know.