Top 10 Must Attend Conferences in 2020 for Customer Success Professionals

For those in Customer Success, it can sometimes seem that your schedule is constantly being taken up by back-to-back customer meetings (which might really be the case), but it’s important to take the time and come up for air…and sometimes the best way to do that is to get out of the office

I’m not talking about a vacation (although those days off are also oh so very important) but I’m talking about, stepping out of the office for a day or two to attend a conference.

Conferences, forums, and workshops are a great way to brush up on your skills, learn new ones and hear from thought leaders and experts in your industry. It’s also a great opportunity to meet and network with peers within the Customer Success community.

Below you’ll find the chronologically ordered top ten conferences Customer Success professionals should attend in 2020 to help grow their careers.

1.) SaaStr Annual 2020
Date: March 10 – 12, 2020
Location: San Francisco Bay Area

SaaStr is the largest community of SaaS executives, founders, and entrepreneurs in the world and they are brought together at their flagship event – SaaStr Annual. With 12,500 attendees, 250 speakers, 200 sponsors, their missions is to provide the SaaS community with unparalleled access to the top minds in SaaS.

While the majority of the attendee base are CEOs and C-level Marketing and Sales roles, Customer Success professionals make up 10% of the audience, and they have a track of sessions dedicated to the practice.

ChurnZero is proud to be a Gold sponsor of the event. If you are attending be sure to stop by the ChurnZero booth (#810) to say hi!

 

2.) Leading Customer Success Summit 2020
Date: April 8, 2020
Location: Portland, OR

The world’s only free, invitation only CS Leadership opportunity hosted by Aaaron Thompson the Founder and CEO of Portland Customer Success. This event takes a unique approach to getting your hands dirty, with workshop components like no other.

ChurnZero is excited to participate and have our Chief Customer Officer, Abby Hammer added to the speaker’s lineup.

3.) Pulse
Date: May 13 – 14 2020
Location: San Francisco, CA

Pulse is dedicated to providing in-depth education and networking for anybody working in a post-sale, customer-facing role. It brings together some of the top minds in business and has them share their insights over a multi-day event.

4.) SaaStr Europa
Date: June 17 – 18, 2020
Location:  Paris

In 2018 SaaStr brought their event overseas to Paris for their inaugural SaaStr Europa and in 2019 they had more than 2,000 SaaS leaders and founders attend to experience an immersive two-day event of content and networking.

And like their annual event in San Francisco their European event also has sessions dedicated to Customer Success, making this a must attend for CS professionals.

ChurnZero is excited to attend as a Gold sponsor so look for our booth to say – bonjour!

5.) SaaStock North America
Date: June 22-24, 2020
Location: San Francisco

After an awesome first annual in 2019 SaaStock is back in San Francisco this year for an even bigger and better event. SaaStock North America is an actionable conference for growth stage B2B SaaS founders, executives, and investors. They are expecting 1,000+ attendees at their event and 26+ exhibitors.

ChurnZero is looking forward to attending this event again and to be a Silver Sponsor. We will also be participating in a not to be missed panel session on implementing a ‘customer-first’ strategy for SaaS.

6.) INBOUND 2020
Date: August 18 – 21, 2020
Location: Boston, MA

Every year, tens of thousands of Marketers, Salespeople, and Customer Success pros converge in Boston for a week of learning, inspiration, and connection at INBOUND. Since 2012, the annual INBOUND event has grown to 26,000+ attendees from over 110 countries. INBOUND is one of the fastest-growing business events in the world because of the unmissable content.

The conference features a Customer Service track that focuses session content on Customer Success, Account Management, customer experience, customer feedback, customer loyalty, and customer retention.

If you attend this conference you are sure to walk away with loads of valuable and actionable insights.

7.) BIG RYG 2020
Date: October 8, 2020
Location: Washington, D.C.

ChurnZero is pumped to be hosting our inaugural industry and users conference this year, built for current and future leaders in Customer Success. We will be putting on a one-day event in D.C. on October 8^th. If you are a ChurnZero customer, there will also be a half-day of customer-only training the day before.

Many of you have already joined us at our RYG events that we have hosted in cities across North America. But for those that don’t know, RYG is an acronym for “Red, Yellow, Green” and represents a Customer Success team’s goal to create happy and successful customers and advocates. We want our RYG events to be industry events where smart and motivated professionals want to meet. Now that we are ready to do a bigger version of this, it just had to be called BIG RYG!

At ChurnZero we have a mantra on communications: Speak Simply, Be Real, and Challenge the Audience. We want to have fun but keep gimmicks to a minimum. BIG RYG will focus on the people and the content. And the content will not be about Silicon-Valley problems like “how we grew easily to ten gazillion dollars” or “how I magically hired 100 people in a month after raising $100M dollars”. It will be catered to those of us working hard to build growing strong and sustainable businesses, however we measure it.

This is sure to be a stellar event and we hope to see you in the Fall!

8.) SaaStock Dublin
Date: Oct 12 – 14, 2020
Location: Dublin, IE

SaaStock is returning to Dublin for their fifth annual SaaS festival and it’s set to be the biggest global gathering of SaaS in Europe this year.

Their mission is to help SaaS companies gain traction, grow an scale. And for 3 days in Dublin in October SaaStock will feature bootcamps, networking parties, powerful knowledge-sharing from SaaS trailblazers across 4 stages and the biggest SaaS expo in Europe.

We recommend you join the 4,000 other attendees to learn about SaaS and how Customer Success fits into the growth formula.

We are proud to be attending and sponsoring this event again this year and look forward to seeing you in Dublin!

 

9.) Technology & Services World
Date: October 21 – 23, 2020
Location: Las Vegas, NV

Technology & Services World is put on by Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) and is the only tech conference where executives and future leaders from across the technology and services industry attend to expand their professional networks and get actionable insights on the latest on the tech industry trends.

TSW is ideal for tech and service leaders responsible for Customer Success strategy, funding and monetizing a Customer Success function, and managing a team of Customer Success Managers (CSMs).

Combining TSIA’s Customer Success research and advisory with the expert knowledge of the industry’s top thought leaders, you’ll learn; how to monetize CS at scale, how to think digital first in CS engagement models, value realization and CS talent acquisition and management best practices.

We are looking forward to sponsoring and exhibiting at this event again this year.

10.) Dreamforce
Date: November 9 – 12, 2020
Location: San Francisco, California

Dreamforce has grown into so much more than a conference, it’s an experience like no other. From inspiring keynotes and sessions to visionary thinking to discovering the future of technology to actually change the work, it’s a truly empowering four days.

As far as event size goes, it doesn’t get much bigger than Dreamforce. Every year, over 170,000 people descend on San Francisco to learn, network, and have fun. This is another conference that isn’t completely dedicated to Customer Success, but attendees will find plenty of information on these topics in the 2,700+ keynote sessions, and hands-on workshops offered.

Or if traveling to a destination for a conference isn’t something that is in the cards for your budget or schedule, do not worry, we are hitting the road this year to come to you!

ChurnZero is planning on hosting twenty-four RYG Leadership Hour events in 2020. We will be hitting major metropolitan areas in North America to host these discussion-led happy hour events to bring together Customer Success leaders.

As you know Customer Success is still a newer discipline and standard best practices are not yet well-defined. RYG events are a great way for CS professionals to trade notes and talk shop and help nurture the growing discipline.

As we book these RYG events throughout the year we will publish them to our Events page on our website. So, be sure to check out our upcoming event locations and register when we are coming to your area.

See you out on the road!

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