Get answers from customer success leaders
Stephen O'Keefe
HubSpot Senior Director, Customer Success • February 22
I've found two KPIs to be difficult to commit to: 1. Customer Health. If you have a robust algorithm to measure customer health (influenced by a number of inputs ), it can be hard commit to a certain outcome. To frame this another way, I've often observed customer health scores as being a bit of a black box where it's hard to tie the actions you take to specific outcomes when there could be a number of variables outside of your control that influence the ultimate score. I much prefer to commit to lead measures that are directly within the control of the team. KPIs related to customer engagement are a good example of things that are more directly within the team's control. 2. Upgrade rate. Many CSM teams are measured on Net Revenue Retention. As part of this, your CSMs may be responsible for identifying growth opportunities within the install base of customers. I find it's effective to measure the team on how many growth opportunities the team identifies but not the close rate or upgrade rate, especially if the Sales or Account Management team owns the closing motion.
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Georgia Glanville Harrison
Braze VP Customer Success, EMEA • January 26
Technical Support response targets! We’ve all been there, and being the first Success Hire is super exciting. You get to wear many hats, get involved all the way through the customer lifecycle and be scrappy to get customers what they need. For us at the beginning, that meant taking on a lot of Technical Support tickets for our EMEA customers, especially in the morning before our then US-based tech support team was online. On the one hand, this gives you a lot of valuable product knowledge that can help you be an impactful CSM, but on the other hand, it can mask the business need to expand technical support teams and can hurt your focus in the long term. If you can, explain early the difference between CS and Tech support KPIs and ensure that anything you take on is temporary!
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Brett Milstein
Narvar Director, Customer Success • February 8
In my experience there are a few characteristics/skillsets that the best CSMs I have hired all have in common: 1. Organizational skills - This is #1#1 for me. I have never seen a CSM who was not organized be successful. As a CSM requests are being thrown at you left and right, and you are being pulled in a million different directions. The best CSMs are organized/proactive and know exactly what action items they need to complete and how to prioritize them. 2. Ability to showcase value - This one might sound simple but I can promise you it is not. A large part of a CSMs role is to retain customers and to do that, they need to articulate and justify the price of the service. This is challenging for two reasons. 1. Not all customers justify value in the same way, so a CSM needs to make sure they truly understand how the customer is determining this. 2. The majority of the time the day-to-day contact is not the ultimate decision maker. Therefore, the CSM needs to articulate the value in a way that the day-to-day contact will be able easily to go back and relay this to their boss (or decision maker). If a CSM is having a tough time explaining the value, it's going to be even more difficult for the day-to-day contact to explain it. 3. Charisma - Customer Success is all about relationship building. CSMs spend a ton of their time on zoom calls with their customers and valuable/engaging conversations are what help build strong and trusting partnerships. The CSMs I typically see with the most success (especially regarding renewals and upsells) are the ones who have built the best relationships with their partners.
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Rebecca Warren
Eightfold Director, Customer Success • April 18
Our current path goes CSM - Sr. CSM - Principal CSM - Mgr, CSM - Dir, CSM - Sr Dir, CSM. I think there are options along the way as well to move into or come from pre-sales, sales, marketing, product, ops, or talent acquisition, depending on how your organization is set up.
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Christine Vienna Knific
mParticle Senior Director, Customer Success - North America • January 18
The most important things to consider when assessing a new opportunity with a different company are: * The company's trajectory. Is there a viable path to success for the organization, and are you comfortable with that path? (i.e. are they profitable? If not, what level of ambiguity works for you?) * The definition of Customer Success at the company. With Customer Success being a relatively new field, the term can be used in a lot of different ways. It's really important to make sure the company's definition of CS lines up with yours. * The company's definition of success in the role and as an organization. What metrics do they use? What does "good" look like?
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Manil Vasantha
Information Technology Consultant • January 18
Core skills are a combination of both soft and hard skills. Communication skills, analytical skills, problem-solving skills, product knowledge, and inter-departmental and intra-departmental relationship building. Emotional intelligence is something you must have and believe at your core. This is the only thing that will bail you out when all else fails - your gut! Trust it! Adaptability, as I said, change is the only constant. Be fluid and nimble to customers changing landscape. Empathy puts you in the customer’s shoes. Active listening skills do give you an edge tom building trust. If you are new to your job, even more so. Remember, two ears and one mouth for a reason. Live in the zone, a customer-centric culture. You may need to play an instrumental part in influencing this change within the company.
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Jeff Beaumont
Customer Success Consultant • May 31
My first career was in public accounting. I theoretically had 9 different partners that could give me work at any time. Those 7 years taught me how to navigate disagreements, especially in the middle of tax season when everyone was at their wits' end. A few suggestions come to mind: 1. It's not binary. Don't get stuck thinking it's either A or B. Is there a third way? Chip and Dan Heath in their book Decisive talk about "narrow framing". We often get ourselves riled up because we only see two forks in the road. Sometimes that means you need to reverse course and look for another way. 2. Understand the needs, desires, and fears of the execs. Sometimes we just need to be heard. When someone "knows" me and can speak up on my behalf, I will feel better and relax a bit. Know your execs and ask, "What is that you're wanting out of this?" They may still not get it, but so often we just want to be heard. 3. Give it time. While that's happening, ask yourself if there's a chance it can get resolved within days, weeks, or months. If weeks, ask yourself "what does this make possible?" and see if you can work on another project that got pushed to the back burner. NOTE: this is sometimes wishful thinking because if two execs are locked in disagreement, it's often a critical project and you cannot afford to "waste" time. 4. Phone a friend. Talk to a friend or someone outside your company. Try to explain what's going on. Because you have to translate it out of your company's speak, it causes you to tell the situation in a different way. It helps you better understand the situation and also your friend can ask you basic and probing questions. 5. BATNA. BATNA is a negotiation technique which stands for Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement. What would be the best alternative? While you don't want to compromise your values, who you or, or build an ugly product that has a little bit of everything for everyone (pleasing no one!), what are the alternatives that you can consider? 6. Go on a run or walk. Psychologists have helped us understand that when we're stuck, we need to do the unintuitive thing: get up and go do something fun, go on a walk, call up an old friend. While you're away, your subconscious can process the information. 7. Look for a mediator. While I wouldn't jump to this, but if you're really stuck, consider if there's a third or fourth person to break a tie or help mediate. Don't make this your first choice because it could get worse. 8. Look for a new job. If it's really really bad, you may need to move on — either for a new project or job. Hopefully not!
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Wynne Brown
RocketReach VP of Sales & Customer Success • August 31
As you grow, the fear is that the quality of what you deliver will degrade. The question here is how to keep it consistent... but I pose that as your customer base grows, your customer experience should improve. The more data, the more insights, the more you should be able to more rapidly adapt to what is working and what is not. Here are the foundational components that you need to set up and that constantly improve as you get more and more data via a growing customer base: 1) Customer journey: what are the milestones that matter in pre-sales messaging and the sales process and then in the implementation-adoption-value journey? 2) Staff excellence: every communication with prospects and customers should be flawless and resonate. Use an email system that allows you to see what content is resonating with your prospects and customers and always share templates so standards are kept high. 3) Usage data: you gotta see what people are using in your solution, and that evolves over time. As other integrated systems evolve, you might have a tool that needs to evolve with them. Identify and then obsessively watch the key functionality of your solution to glean insights. 4) Customer advisory board: this can be informal or formal, but the essential thing here is that you aren't guessing about what your customers think or that you fall back solely on usage data. Talking directly with the humans on the other side of the table will never be replaced.
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Caoimhe Carlos
Udemy Vice President Global Customer Success • February 14
The tech industry is broad and the role of a CSM can vary widely depending on the type of role or company you are interested in however below are some tips which may be helpful: * Focus on skills - review job postings to determine the skill set your target companies are looking for in their CSMs. Previous experience and titles are less important that the right skill set - many of the best CSMs I have worked with did not come from CS or tech backgrounds; however they all had the right skill set that was directly transferable to the role. Identify the skills the company is looking for in a CSM and then make sure those skills are apparent on your resume and you are capable of speaking to them in the interview. * Do your research - make sure you have an understanding of the industry or sub section of the industry you are interested in before you start applying. Learn about the market, the key players the current trends and the emerging themes and technologies, look at both short term and long term prospects and leverage online resources such as Linkedin, Glassdoor, Crunchbase, AngelList, Forbes Tech Council, the Deloitte Fast 500 and Product Hunt to gain a deeper understanding of the companies you are interested in. This will help you slim down your target roles and companies and will benefit you when it comes to applying and interviewing. * Apply strategically - CS roles can vary broadly, some are heavily relationship management or commercially focused, others lean more towards product specialist or technical support. Before you start applying to CS roles make sure you have a clear understanding of which type of CS role you are most interested in and what companies have this kind of model. * Leverage certifications or training programs where appropriate - there are a number of industry certifications which you can take that demonstrate an interest in and commitment to the field, similarly depending on the tech company you are applying to there may be product specific certifications which you can obtain which would benefit you in an interview process e.g. Google analytics certifications, AWS certifications, SFDC certifications etc * Networking - get to know other tech industry or CS professionals in your existing network, ask them for advice or introductions where it makes sense. Join industry associations and professional bodies and attend industry events and networking groups where you can.
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Natasha Evans
Hook Head of Customer • October 30
On top of all the usual traits of being a great CSM, I think of 3 things when I think of great Enterprise CSMs: Stakeholder engagement: To me in Enterprise CS this is the ability to confidently communicate with the C*suite, the ability to multi-thread across an organisation and the ability to achieve the buy-in of multiple stakeholders towards a common objective. Change management: As an Enterprise CSM you're usually dealing with much bigger and more complex organisations, and so you can't take all the action items yourself. This means you've got to get out of the weeds and focus on the bigger picture; driving a change to meet the customer's objective. You've got to be much better at both holding your customer accountable to executing their actions AND guiding them through what they need to do to drive this change. Project management: Essentially, being great at tracking all the strategies and corresponding actions that need to be completed in order to achieve the customer's objective, as well as being able to communicate this in a clear and concise manner to the customer. Your goal here is to keep everyone on track.
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