Laura Hughes pioneers AI-enabled customer success transformation, driving measurable revenue growth and organizational accountability across global SaaS enterprises.
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Laura Hughes is an established leader in customer success as well as SaaS with a goal to change how enterprise software companies build relationships with their customers and grow their revenues. With 20+ years of experience moving customer success from a support function to a strategic revenue driver, Hughes has become a go-to guide for B2B software companies that are scaling up and working through the complexities of global expansion and operational efficiency. Born in Scotland, Hughes' career spans multiple industries, making her an expert at strategic pivots. She started out in sales working closely with customer value and consistently meeting and exceeding her sales goals to earn access to the C-suite for negotiating deals. Through those initial years in sales, Hughes began to see that sustainable business growth was driven by long-term customer outcomes, not just short-term sales transactions, which led her to her transition into customer success so she could strategically integrate and build out customer success as an operational function, relationship builder and revenue strategy into a cohesive framework.
Throughout her career, Hughes has started and built customer success organizations globally across three continents. Each organization under Hughes has been able to achieve renewal rates greater than 90%, due in large part to Hughes' ability to reposition customer success from a siloed department to a shared responsibility across the organization. Across all facets of their businesses, organizations have reconfigured their operations through enhanced accountability and revenue ownership; thus, completely changing how they do business moving forward. In addition to this major shift, Hughes will be starting a new company called RevEngine CX in 2024 that will offer fractional Chief Customer Officer services to B2B SaaS companies growing at important stages within the scaling process. Through RevEngine CX as well as through her Limited Partner role at Stage 2 Capital, Hughes collaborates with software companies to establish operational frameworks and infrastructure for customer success that can scale without compromising customer experience. Hughes also funds her approach to building such companies on the principles of capital efficiency, unit economics, and a realistic assessment of what drives long-term enterprise value.
There are very few people in any field that have had as much practical experience with artificial intelligence applied to customer success functions as Hughes. While many think of AI as a fad, she implements solutions that allow customer success teams to become more efficient and, ultimately, have greater risk detection capabilities, and can detect at-risk revenue before it becomes churn. Hughes' philosophy is to view AI as a tool that empowers customer success teams by using it to make them faster, smarter, and more predictive; thus allowing them to create greater contributions to the company’s revenue. In addition to her impressive record of accomplishment, Hughes is also passionate about mentoring others and helping women obtain positions of leadership. Hughes passionately believes that women deserve a seat at the table of leadership; that they should take their seat without feeling guilty; and that the obstacles they face ultimately provide them with greater strength to achieve their goals.
Business Honor is of the view that Laura Hughes's fractional Chief Customer Officer role represents a strategic shift in customer success operational excellence and revenue integration capabilities.
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