.png)
About us
Upgrading to 2.0
About us
It all started when our CEO, Dana Soza, noticed a gap during the height of COVID—SaaS companies needed experienced customer success talent, but the available talent often lacked the necessary expertise. This led to the creation of our firm to bridge that gap.
​
Today, we specialize in growth-focused, post-sales services for B2B SaaS companies, particularly those that are venture-backed or seeking investment. Our focus spans from growth-stage to enterprise-level organizations, with an emphasis on Series C, D, and beyond—all to help you reach your next stage of growth.
​
Using our proprietary C.S.A.T. Growth Engine Tool we identify and address your strategic and operational gaps across Charter, Strategy, Analytics, and Talent. We then apply customer success best practices to help you advance, including change management, organizational restructuring, customer metrics & analysis, customer segmentation & engagement, customer journey mapping, cohesive GTM strategies, and developing top-tier customer success talent.
​
Whether through turnkey or customized implementation, we help you reach your next stage of maturity and growth by leveraging your greatest asset: Your Customers. That’s what sets us apart.
Our mission, vision, and values
What we do
It's simple. We provide coaching, consulting and training solutions. We provide them in both custom and turnkey formats. And we specialize in the field of customer success.
​​
Who we serve
CS NEWBIES
​If you’re customer success professional, aka CSP, who wants to kill it on-the-job, work toward a promotion, or find your next gig, then you’re a CS Climber. ​​
​​​​
​​
You Often Say:
I’m ready for a promotion, I want to be a better/more effective leader, I want to do a great job, I want to improve, I need CS guidance, I need more CS knowledge, I need to know what to focus on, I want to think more strategically, I need a mentor, etc.​​
​​
You Need:
Coaching options, resources, and advice.
​
​​
Check Out Our:
CS Career Climber Plan, AMA Hour, eBooks, Blog, CS Breakfast Club series, CS Economy BookShop, and Dana's Advice & Insights
CS CLIMBERS
​If you’re customer success professional, aka CSP, who wants to kill it on-the-job, work toward a promotion, or find your next gig, then you’re a CS Climber. ​​
​​​​
​​
You Often Say:
I’m ready for a promotion, I want to be a better/more effective leader, I want to do a great job, I want to improve, I need CS guidance, I need more CS knowledge, I need to know what to focus on, I want to think more strategically, I need a mentor, etc.​​
​
You Need:
Coaching options, resources, and advice.
​
​​
Check Out Our:
CS Career Climber Plan, AMA Hour, eBooks, Blog, CS Breakfast Club series, CS Economy BookShop, and Dana's Advice & Insights
CS CRUSHERS
If you're an experienced customer success leader who leads teams, builds programs, rolls out initiatives, and manages the customer success group's needs, then you're a CS Crusher.​
​
​
You Often Say:
I need a sounding board and/or brainstorming partner, I want to create a world-class CS org, I want to create fee-based CS services, I need to increase our NRR/GRR, I need to optimize our team and delivery, etc. ​
​
​
​
You Need:
​
Coaching, consulting, and advice.
​
​
Check Out Our:
AMA Hour, Kickstarter, Optimizer, Customizer, CS Economy BookShop, and Dana's Advice & Insights
AND BEYOND...
If you influence, make decisions for, or collaborate with the Customer Success Mgmt Group--like Founders, C-Suite, SLT, HR, Marketing, Training, Sales, Product, PS...and beyond--then this is you.
​
You Often Say:
We need to increase revenue, understand our customer base, improve our business performance,
create processes & efficiencies post-sale, improve our customer’s experience, align better across functions, provide more value to our customers, etc.​
​
You Need:
Consulting and training solutions.​
​​
Check Out Our:
Kickstarter, Optimizer, Customizer, and Training options.
Our founder
Dana Soza is a globally recognized, multi-award-winning customer success professional, including Top 100 Customer Success Strategist, Top 50 Women Leaders in Customer Success, Top 10 Women Leaders in Customer Experience, 2021's Kindest Leaders in Customer Success, and LinkedIn’s Top SaaS Voice.
She's CEO and CCO of Customer Everything Solutions and Dana Soza Customer Solutions. She's had an award-winning 20+ year career as a sales executive, certified educator, and recognized customer success thought leader, and she's just getting started. Dana is committed to revolutionizing the field of customer success.
​
She is a contributor to the Customer Success Associations first-ever CSM Competency Standards, an author of How to Land and Succeed in the Customer Success Profession: a success playbook for your employment journey, a regular guest on customer success podcasts, a speaker at multiple Gainsight Pulse conferences. She’s the creator of several signature programs including her CS Economy BookShop in collaboration with Gainsight, Signature Customer Success Framework, CS Unlocked LinkedIn podcast series, her Signature C.S.A.T Growth-Engine Tool that propels B2B SaaS companies towards their next stage of growth.
In Her Own Words
My Life 1.0
I’m a California girl. There is something about the title that elicits the idea of sunshine, fun, and bold personalities. I even had a “Killer Dana” bumper sticker on my car back in the day. It came from the iconic Killer Dana Surf Shop in nearby Dana Point, California. I used it to bluff myself and others into thinking I was part of the “cool kids’ group.” It was my anchor to generate self-confidence and show the world that I belonged.
​
In truth, I was shunned as a misfit and ridiculed every single day from elementary school to high school graduation. I did not understand why I was targeted, but I wanted to learn what was “wrong” with me and loved digging into the human psyche. So, ten years after high school, I gained enough self-confidence and the means to go to college.
​
To my surprise—having never excelled in school—I graduated Cum Laude, earning a Bachelor’s degree in psychology. I also made the university’s President’s List, became a member of several Honor Societies, and learned to make myself marketable by minoring in Marketing. My educational path fortuitously set me up for a career in Customer Success. Whether I realized it or not, it taught me the psychological drivers and marketing strategies that can lead to success around customer adoption, retention, expansion, and advocacy. But that was not the only part of my educational journey.
Turning Point
CATASTROPHIC CAR ACCIDENT
For about a year and a half, I was an outside account executive for Groupon. While traveling on the job, I was involved in a catastrophic car accident, T-boned across a small highway by what felt like a Mack Truck. This tragedy left me hospitalized, suffering from PTSD, and in long-term physical therapy.
​
It led to the loss of my relationship with my significant other, my apartment, and the ability to drive. While in recovery, I was trying to figure out what I would do with my life. A girlfriend motivated me to teach English abroad, joking, “If my life blew up in smoke and nothing held me back, I’d go. Go so that I can live vicariously through you!”
So, I did! I went to Madrid, Spain, with a new teaching credential under my belt and all my earthly belongings in two suitcases.
My Aha! Moment
LIFE IN MADRID
Less than a year after moving to Madrid, I ran a successful English teaching practice, coaching professional Madrilenos who worked for the Ministry of Health, United Nations, Europol, Mars, L’oreal, Eli Lilly, JCDecaux, KPMG, Conde Nast, Telefonica International, Allianz, and Real Madrid Club de Futbol.
​
After a particularly memorable private English lesson with a student whom I enjoyed teaching, I posted this on Facebook:
CREATED TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
That was my “Aha!” moment, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I discovered two things. First, I was never built to sell. I was created to make a difference. I recognized that the “turn ‘em and burn ‘em” and “buyers are liars” mentality that many of my employers fed me was soul-crushing. It was only after I did the meaningful work of teaching and leading others to knowledge that I understood I finally belonged. I saw how my students needed me, and teaching them gave me purpose. I also realized that if I can run a successful teaching business in a foreign country, I can run one anywhere.
Upgrading to 2.0
My Life 2.0
With my new life’s purpose metaphorically in tow, I asked myself, “Where should I go next?” I chose South Korea. Why not? However, life had other plans. During the application process to my newly chosen destination, I received a call.
It was a former customer named Dave, whom I had known ten years prior when I worked in Artist Relations and Sales at a professional audio equipment company.
His conversation and offer transformed my life yet again.
Let’s call it Dana’s Life 2.0.
And it led to the most significant “Aha!” moment of them all.
Here's the abbreviated version of that wacky conversation I had with Dave:
💬DAVE: “I built a software-as-a-service platform, and I’ve always had you in mind to be my Director of Customer Success. I can finally bring you aboard. Are you interested?”
​
ðŸ’ME: “You built a what? I live in Spain. You want me to move back to the States? And what is Customer Success?”
​
(After that, all I remember was…)
​
💬DAVE: “Dana, it’s what you’ve been doing your entire life.”
​
(mic drop)
​
My Customer Success Transformation
TRIAL BY FIRE
His convincing conversation motivated me to leave Madrid, move back to the U.S., and pursue the customer success profession. After over six years of working in the customer success field, I found myself doing diverse work. I was part of foundational teams that...
900%
24%
100%
Built and operated a bootstrapped little-engine-that-could SaaS startup that scaled by 900%
Lead post-sale expansion efforts of a recently acquired growth-stage SaaS business with average MRR growth of 24%
Delivered revenue expansion increases of 5-20%, 78-98% adoption, and 98-100% and 8.1-8.5 retention and NPS scores, respectively.
...by unearthing and improving operational gaps for some of the heaviest hitters in business like:
Dun & Bradstreet: A $2B public-to-private-to-public data and analytics giant
​
​
GE Digital: The household name and IoT software provider (eventually spun-off into ServiceMax)
​
​
IFS: A $700M Netherlands-based multinational SaaS, Cloud, and On-Prem enterprise software provider
Since then, I have come full circle in my journey and proved my previous customer, Dave, right. Now, I want to bring others along on the adventure of customer success.
​
The subscription economy is making customer success an imperative, because the one-and-done sales cycle is becoming obsolete. So, companies and individuals realize they need and want it, but don’t know where to start. Don’t worry. I do. Check out My Services so we can get started.