I think the most frustrating thing about Customer Success is that without agreement across the organization about the importance and role of Customer Success, it can become a catch-all. As the quarterback of the customer relationship, that means all things can fall to the CSM. If there are not very clear swim lanes, paths of escalation and role definition, this means the CSM may soon find themselves as; * Customer Support * Collections Specialist * Renewal/Contract Manager * IB seller * Product Specialist * Escalations Manager While a great CSM possesses skills that can help in each of those categories, they cant be all of those things without burning out quickly.

In my experience, in order to retain good Customer Success talent, here are things that you must offer: * Clear career growth opportunities * Invest in ongoing training and development * Foster a positive, inclusive team culture where achievements are recognized and employees feel valued * Encourage work-life balance by offering flexibility and supporting initiatives * Provide competitive compensation and benefits to ensure employees feel financially supported, which I feel we do a great job of at Zendesk.

If you enjoy what you do and why you do it, you’ll do it better and you’ll do better. Here are some questions to ask yourself when consider a new role: 1. Do I feel good about what I would be doing in this role? Do I feel good about the company I would be working for? Maybe it’s in an industry that you’re interested in, or maybe it’s something that helps shape the sort of world you want to live in - whatever it is, make sure you feel good about it. If you believe in the company you are working for, you will have much more energy at work and in your life. 2. Can you feel good about who you’re working with? What are the leaders and peers at the company like? Did you feel good during the interview cycle? Do the publicly stated values of the company align with yours? You’re going to spend a lot of time with these people and it needs to feel like a good fit. 3. What is the product like? If the product is weak, CSMs, almost more than any other role, are exposed to this. Will you be spending most of your time dealing with product issues to retain your customers, or will you have a chance to be more strategic? An early or imperfect product is fine, but I would try to validate what the short to medium term prospects are. Is the company early-stage and rapidly improving the product or is the product imperfect because it’s not being invested in properly? 4. What are the business prospects like? What is the industry or business space like? Is the industry growing or are its best days in the past? It can be very hard to retain your customers if there are macro economic issues at play.

I want to first understand which activities or metrics correlate to churn, renewal and expansion. Then I know how to target my CS team and which activities to track off the back of that, as well as which metrics I need to keep a close eye on. So I don't think there's an easy one size fits all answer here. But I certainly think that broad strokes I will be tracking Health/adoption,GRR and NRR wherever I am, as well as understanding where you're losing WHY and WHO you're losing - is it specific company types, sizes, tenure etc.

Given the cost-cutting and economic headwinds facing so many companies right now, many roles are collapsing into single roles - and there is a definite trend to have CS leaders hold responsibility for outcomes AND revenue (renewals, expansion). And it is a touch chicken or the egg: is it better to have a CS leader add to their plate revenue responsibility or have a Sales leader add outcomes to their plate? I - no surprise! - favor adding revenue to the CS plate. Why? Being customer-centric and understanding the leading indicators of outcomes and value delivery are a much better foundation for driving revenue as the lagging indicator than vice versa. The best ways to get adept enough to handle managing revenue targets: 1. Find courses in sales management you can take. You need to understand how to run forecasting, how to set standards for deal progression, get smart about any potential contract renegotiations, create a bag of tricks when it comes to expansion sales plays. 2. Find and cultivate a mentor who is a VP of Sales. The edge cases are where they get ya... you want to have a mentor who can warn you what to watch for, and to act as a sounding board when weird things happen in deals. There are very few leaders out there who have experience with both CS outcomes and Account Management leadership with revenue responsibility. So you want to be the candidate who can demonstrate the knowledge that you can bring the goods, even if you haven't done it before.

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. 

Question: What does customer success mean to you? What is it, what is it not? Why it's good: It's open-ended, and gives the candidate a big opportunity to talk about CS as a field, the success of a customer on an individual basis, and more. Example of a great answer: "To me, Customer Success is the driving of client business outcomes by providing value through our product and services." From there, the best candidates talk about being able to do this at scale (do more with less!), using technology and data to drive results, and give examples of how they actually prove ROI to customers. 

The two areas I would recommend are 1) Sharpening your Sales skills and 2) Adopting some Product Manager mindsets. When working with customers and the further upmarket you go, the more enriched these conversations need to be and the immediate areas for many customers are to understand their contracts, how they can scale with your product, value alignment, and ROI. Supplementing this, customers want to know how your product will be evolving and how their feedback can influence the roadmap. Being able to cut right to the value of a product, requirements, outcomes, and how those align with the customer's values will set your customer and Product teams up for mutual success!

These might be more generic than what you are looking for, but in your first 3 months, there is so much to learn, and every organization is different. Some of the best advice given to me by previous leaders when I tried to do all the things right when I started – “you can’t boil the ocean. Breathe. Listen.” Remember, quick wins might be for you, your team, your organization, or your clients! My thoughts: * Build relationships with your stakeholders – inside your team and cross-functionally * Set a # of internal meetings per week – summarize your learnings * See how you can get involved in the organization – be a team player * Listen in on as many client meetings as you can – really listen and take notes! * Share your thoughts a client issue or concern by working through current leaders – there will be plenty of time in the future to be the “hero” * Help others win – built trust and partnerships * Listen, repeat back, ask, listen, repeat back, ask * Set regular 1:1s with your manager, others on your team, and cross-functional partners to listen and ask questions * ·Reflect each month on what you know now that you didn’t when you started

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!