Can ETRM Vendors Survive Without Better Customer Success Strategies
The Hard Truth: Your Tech Isn’t Enough
ETRM vendors love to talk about their cutting-edge features, superior analytics, and next-gen automation. But here’s the reality: Technology alone doesn’t win markets—customer success does.
If you think your software’s capabilities will keep clients locked in, think again. Poor onboarding, half-baked support, and mismanaged implementations are driving customers straight into the arms of your competitors.
The real question isn’t whether your ETRM platform is powerful enough—it’s whether your customers can actually use it effectively.
1. The Customer Success Gap Is Killing Retention
Market Reality:
- 63% of enterprise software customers cite poor user adoption as the primary reason for churn.
- The cost of acquiring a new ETRM customer is 5x higher than retaining an existing one.
- 72% of trading firms say they need more than a year to fully integrate a new ETRM system.
Translation: ETRM vendors aren’t losing deals because of missing features—they’re losing because clients can’t justify the operational headache of staying onboard.
If your platform has a steep learning curve, slow response times, or half-hearted training programs, you’re bleeding revenue.
2. Poor Onboarding = Fast Churn
Here’s What’s Happening:
- Sales teams promise seamless implementation.
- The reality? Delayed rollouts, half-trained users, and frustrated risk teams.
- By the time the platform is fully functional, key internal champions have lost patience—or worse, moved on.
Winning Play: Onboarding isn’t a one-time handoff—it’s a sustained engagement.
Best Practices:
- Assign dedicated Customer Success Managers (CSMs) who understand the client’s trading workflows.
- Set clear go-live benchmarks—with penalties if vendors don’t hit them.
- Provide high-impact training & documentation that actually gets used—not just dumped in a shared drive.
The vendors who make onboarding frictionless and ROI-driven will own the market. The rest? Good luck with churn.
3. The “Set It & Forget It” Model Is Dead
What’s Broken:
- Most ETRM vendors treat customer success as a reactive support function.
- Clients only get help when something goes wrong.
- Vendors focus on selling new modules instead of ensuring adoption of what’s already there.
The Fix: Proactive Account Management
- Predict customer pain points before they escalate.
- Quarterly business reviews to align on goals and value realization.
- Embedded usage analytics to track engagement and flag underutilized features.
The more value clients extract from your platform, the longer they’ll stay. Simple.
4. If You’re Not Solving Problems, You’re Replaceable
Reality Check: The fastest-growing ETRM vendors aren’t just selling software; they’re selling outcomes.
What Customers Want:
- Faster decision-making support, not just raw data.
- AI-driven insights, not just compliance checklists.
- Seamless integration with existing systems, not IT bottlenecks.
What This Means for Vendors:
- Stop assuming customers will “figure it out”—be their partner in success.
- Hire Customer Success teams that think like traders, not just tech support reps.
- Shift from “contract renewals” to continuous value delivery.
If your platform isn’t actively solving day-to-day problems, why should clients stick around?
Final Thought: Customer Success = Market Domination
ETRM vendors obsess over functionality, scalability, and AI roadmaps—but customer success will be the real differentiator in the next five years.
Where to Start:
- Fix onboarding—make adoption effortless.
- Embed proactive support—don’t wait for problems to escalate.
- Focus on real business outcomes, not just feature rollouts.
Because if your clients can’t see the value in your system every single day, they won’t stick around for long.
Let’s Talk.
Need the right talent to build a world-class Customer Success team?
At Ocean Red Partners, we help ETRM vendors recruit top-tier Customer Success pros who drive retention, adoption, and real market impact.