Trim Size: 6in x 9in  Mehta572763 c01.tex V1-04/03/2020 11:45pm Page 9 Customer Success: What It Is and Why It Affects Everything 9 availability of options has changed the way customers think about vendors, and it has upended the way you have to act if you want to retain your customers. If you’re not operating from a customer-centric playbook, you will lose. Your strategy should help you make sure your customers are actually using what they bought from you, that you are giving them the sort of customer service they demand, that you are expanding the relationship, and in the course of all of this, making your customers your advocates. Doall this and you’ll join the companies that are growing most rapidly through Customer Success. Shrug it off and we can guarantee you the market will pass you by. So Why Do You Need This Book? Our first book, Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue, laid out the basics of the Customer Success approach to business. If you read our first book, you’re probably wondering why—or even if—you need another book on the same subject.  Newfieldschangealot.RememberhowwethoughtabouttheInternet  in 1999 versus now? Besides cat pictures, pretty much everything else is different. In the same vein, Customer Success is evolving rapidly. Think of our first book, Customer Success, as the foundation of Customer Success practices. ButwhathasfundamentallyshiftedisCustomerSuccesshasgonefromajob function to a company-widemovement.Wepredictedthisinthefirstbook, and in this edition we’ll share many examples of the idea becoming reality. Andinthis book we are going to argue that that movement is changing the nature of our economy overall. Customer Success and the Economy That’s a pretty bold claim, we admit. But what’s happening in this third wave of the economy is that the power is fundamentally shifting to customers. If you think about it, power is all about who has the upper hand. In the first phase of the economy (“making stuff”), products were novel. Think about Henry Ford coming to your town and driving by everyone else on horses and buggies. The product itself was novel.