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. 

We have our Customer Success organization broken into 2 groups - Strategic Customer Success and Scaled Customer Success. In the Strategic Customer Success group I have managers who are responsible for a team of CSMs and also serve as the DRI on customer success for one or more products. CSMs need to have a strong understanding of multiple products because we only have one CSM per customer, and customers ideally use more than one product. Each manager coaches and supports their CSM team, and they provide leadership and guidance where they are the DRI across the entire team. In Scaled Customer Success, we have managers who oversee a group of Scaled CSMs. Rather than own a customer, our scaled CSMs own a product or customer lifecycle stage. For example, we may have a Scaled CSM who only owns churn mitigation for one product line.

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!

The best KPIs that I have seen include: * Net Revenue Retention * Gross Revenue Retention * QBRs completed * Health score impacted (e.g., number of customers who move from red to green) * Number of Account Plans created * Customer Success Qualified Leads generated * Multi-year contracts secured (if CSMs own renewal) * Price increases generated within contracts (again if CSM owns renewal) * NPS

This question is a bit subjective as going "above and beyond" can mean different things to different people. If a candidate truly wants a role, in my opinion, they should do whatever they feel puts them in the best position to receive an offer. I cannot remember ever walking out of an interview and thinking to myself "that candidate was overprepared." With that said, there are a few areas, I would recommend a candidate focus on: 1. Know the company/product: I highly recommend learning everything you can on a company. Some examples include reviewing their product offering, reading case studies and watching a demo on their website. 2. Know the role you are interviewing for: You should know the job description inside and out. Understand the experience the company is looking for and the day-to-day responsibilities of the position. Practice speaking about your background and how it is a fit for this role. 3. Learn about your interviewer: It can never hurt to know more about or find something in common with the person interviewing you. For example, learn about their previous companies/positions, where they went to college or some of their interests. Most of this information can be found on Linkedin or on the company website. Find a way to work this into the interview as it can make for a much better conversation and shows the interviewer you have done your research. 4. Prepare questions for the interviewer ahead of time. If you are not good at coming up with questions on the spot, it is best to have 3-4 questions written down ahead of time. Asking questions shows the interviewer you are interested in the position and want to learn more. Any candidate truly interested in joining a new company should have plenty of questions to ask. 

As with any time you join a new company, listen, listen, listen, and THEN ask, ask, ask! I highly suggest driving those 1:1s if they aren’t already scheduled for you, and then spend time understanding the internal processes (and why they were built the way they are). I would stay away from “well, in my former company we did xxx and xxx and it worked great” – instead ask “do you know why this is done this way?”. Get all the info on interactions with clients that you can as well – your internal folks, especially implementation teams, usually have quite a bit of “behind the scenes” information that can help you as you start interacting with clients!

No technical skills are not always necessary to be an effective CSM, however having a basic understanding of technical concepts can he helpful particularly if working in certain subsegments of the tech industry. The level technical skill required is also to a degree dependent on the company and the scope of the role. Some CS roles in deeply technical companies may require you to have a level of familiarity with technical concepts however for many CS roles this is not the case. However in either scenario familiarity with the product or service being supported can be beneficial as as a CSM while you may not be responsible for technical troubleshooting you will be required to have a good understanding of the product offering and will need to be capable having conversations with customers about the products features, functions and capabilities.

It's important to understand the goals of your company and your part in them. Only then can you really have a well-thought and engaging interaction with a C-level leader regarding the business. I sometimes see folks early in their career eager to share new ideas, but without the relevance to the business. We want ideas, but make sure they're tightly aligned to the goals of your organization and well-vetted. Get feedback on your idea from others and test it out in a small way if possible before going to the top. First things first though: be really good at your job as a CSM. Manage your customers well, advocate for them within the business at your level, and make sure you're feeding accurate information back into the business. If you engage with executives on the specific accounts, make sure you're preparing them thoughtfully and thoroughly. This will create a strong brand for you and help get you the visibility you're seeking.

As CSMs we are expected to be trusted advisors to our customers. We gain trust by helping our customers address their challenges and achieve their business objectives. We become advisors when we learn to anticipate questions or concerns and we guide our customers toward successful outcomes. To gain credibility, our communication with the C-Suite must be concise, assertive, and informative. If you can explain the how and confidently tell me what to do next, that's incredibly valuable. 1. How are we doing? 1. Help me see that you understand my business, our mission, and our goals. When given the opportunity, don’t simply present adoption metrics, help me understand what they mean relative to what my business goals are and ask for clarification where needed. If we have achieved significant time to value and you have saved my business significant money or time, those are wins I’d love to know. If things are stalling, help me understand why with concrete examples and ask for my help with clear actions for me or a member of my team to take. 2. Were there any serious challenges we faced? What role did you play? Let’s face it, things don’t always go as we’d like. However, if you can keep the C-Suite informed and updated, you will earn their trust in a way that will influence how they view you as a key trusted vendor, in many cases even more so than when things go well. 2. How are we doing relative to similar customers? 1. The C-Suite regularly reviews industry and analyst reports (Ex: Gartner, Forrester) as well as intel to understand market trends and maintain a competitive edge. By regularly reviewing the same resources and providing thought leadership, you could help influence decision making throughout their organization 2. As you support customers in similar industries or business segments or share anecdotes with peers, you’ll start to see certain similarities and differences. If your customer is operating in a more innovative manner that you believe has helped them realize value with your software and supported their business goals, definitely let the C-Suite know 3. What are other things we could be doing to achieve the outcomes we desire? 1. Once you have gained credibility with your customer by supporting them through a few milestones, you have earned the right to ask for a deeper partnership. So think deeply about what this new partnership will look like. How might integrating your solution with another one of their key business tools help them operate efficiently? How might using another module of your software help them save costs from a duplicate solution? If you can hone in on a few high-impact actions your customer can take and assert your position as to why these actions will help, your C-Suite might offer the sponsorship you need to make this a reality.