SupportMan: Customer support vs customer success: what's the difference?

A clear comparison of support versus success; defining both roles and explaining how they work together.

In today’s dream-of-being-a-unicorn SaaS environment, the terms “customer support” and “customer success” are thrown around a lot; often interchangeably.

But what are they really?

The fundamental distinction between customer support and customer success boils down to their stance: reactive vs. proactive.

Here’s the TL;dr:

Both customer support and customer success teams are designed to improve customer satisfaction and increase customer retention, thus increasing revenue for your company. But customer support is usually reactive with a shorter-term focus, while customer success is usually proactive with a longer-term focus.

(Big emphasis on the “usually”, because there are always exceptions).

Let’s take a closer look.

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