The important thing is to start measuring items. Your initial 'goal' may be off, but you won't know that until you start measuring it and having your team work towards a KPI. Be open with them that this is a trial period that nobody's performance will be managed based on if they hit the number out of the gate. And then adjust from there -- if people are overachieving, up the target; if people are consistently struggling to hit, lower the bar. Once you've found the sweet spot, then you can add compensation, performance management, etc. on top.

This is a great and timely question, especially considering that most product/feature sets are evolving at an extremely rapid pace in a technology ecosystem becoming more expansive by the day as well (thanks, AI). One of the most important places to start is to consider what business objectives your product helps to serve, even if not considered critical to the customer's business. There's a reason your product is purchased across your customer base. What sets your product apart in the marketplace? Why are customers inclined to buy your product? How does your product drive business results in their organization - what is the value narrative? What happens when customers optimally use the product - what results do they see? Being able to effectively articulate this can allow you to then create measurable criteria to showcase progression against those objectives, thus proving customer ROI. Having a clear view into customer objectives also allows you to work with your product and marketing teams to align products and feature sets to these objectives, enabling your CS team to build success plans with customers anchored in these objectives, build strategies to drive product adoption/stickiness based on these use cases, and co-create a value narrative.

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.

I’ll share 2 questions – one is behavioral based, and one is situational. One of our core values is Extreme Ownership. I ask candidates to “Tell me about a time when you had to convince someone to do something in order for you to meet a goal or deadline. Why did you need to convince them? What was the goal/deadline? What was the result?” What I like about this question is it embodies all things CS - accountability; influence (usually without authority; partnership and teamwork; creativity… I look for an answer that helps me understand the what, the how, and most importantly, the why. Influencing someone because you missed something and now are in a crunch is very different than your new leader assigning you a nebulous project with a clear deadline, but not much direction. One of the best answers I’ve gotten was around a ‘still in development' product that was sold to a customer prior to the CSM taking the account. The customer was frustrated with the length of time it was taking to go GA - and with 2 missed delivery dates already. was asking for specifics to bring to their senior leadership regarding the 3rd promised delivery date. The candidate talked about the challenge first of understanding what the use case was as well as what was promised in the sales process. The candidate had to help the customer define the use case and then went back to the AE to understand what was sold. They then went to the product team to understand the product functionality and engineering to get timelines, which were still a ways out. They went back to the customer with the updated information and the customer was extremely unhappy. The candidate held a cross functional meeting internally - they were able to get alignment internally to prioritize the product to get within 2 weeks of the 3rd deadline, which was much improved from 6 weeks. The customer was cautiously optimistic, and when the vendor was able to deliver on the newly agreed upon timeline and the product worked as expected, over a period of weeks the customer moved from a detractor in sentiment to a promoter. The other question I’ll talk about here is “If you were to join us, what would you do in the first 90 days to build trust with your peers, leadership, and cross functional team members? (NOT CUSTOMERS) What I am looking for here first is whether their instinct is to lead by process or by people. Some candidates say they schedule meetings to understand the product, and some say they want to know what makes the team tick. I also listen to see if they tend to ask for help or go it alone. Neither are right or wrong; it helps me understand how they tend to work. I then look for them to share specifics on ways they would engage, and if it would be different for each group or more of a cookie cutter approach. This is really important for us as all of our CSMs are fully remote, and they need to be able to work with a variety of people at different levels in different ways.

Driving product adoption is all about helping users achieve their desired outcomes with your SaaS product. Here are some effective strategies I've used: 1. Align Adoption with Customer Goals: Uncover Objectives: During onboarding, understand each customer's unique goals and challenges. Align product features to their specific needs. Outcomes Over Features: Focus on the outcomes your product will deliver – how it will help them achieve their goals – rather than just listing features. 2. Personalize the Onboarding Journey: Segment Users: Group users based on needs and roles. Tailor onboarding experiences with relevant content, tutorials, and support. Dynamic Onboarding: Use user data to personalize the onboarding flow, highlighting features that directly address their needs. 3. The Power of Storytelling: Customer Success Stories: Showcase real-world examples of customers who achieved success using your product. This resonates with users and builds trust. Goal-Oriented Scenarios: Create narratives that mirror user goals. Show them how your product helps them overcome challenges and achieve success. 4. Deliver Value Early - Quick Wins Matter: Focus on Core Features: Prioritize features that deliver immediate value and address user pain points. Low-Hanging Fruit: Identify easy-to-use features that generate quick wins. This fosters early engagement and motivates continued use. 5. Golden Feature Focus: High-Impact Features: Identify a small set of "golden features" that deliver significant value to a large portion of your user base. Targeted Promotion: Promote these features heavily during onboarding and through product tours. Ensure users understand their benefits. 6. Identify and Empower Champions: Internal Champions: Empower internal customer-facing teams to become product adoption champions. They can advocate for the product and guide users. Customer Champions: Identify enthusiastic users who excel at using your product. Leverage their expertise through case studies, testimonials, or peer mentoring programs. I believe that by Implementing these strategies, you can create a product adoption plan that feels personal and valuable to each customer. This combination of user-centricity and clear value proposition will drive successful adoption and long-term engagement with your product.

In my mind, I believe that it’s generally more beneficial to have the right soft skills when joining a new team, as I’ve seen it is often harder to teach than hard skills. Soft skills like communication, empathy, active listening, problem-solving, and adaptability are key to building relationships with customers and typically things that I try to get a good understanding of during interviews. Then once you have a solid foundation of soft skills, you can more easily learn the necessary hard skills, such as specific tools, processes, or product knowledge, because you’ll already know how to engage with customers effectively. That said, a balance is ideal when you’ve been on the team for a bit of time, as both sets of skills are important for success in the role. In fact, over time, some of the hard skills become a bit more important as I feel product knowledge from a tenured Customer Success Manager is extremely important.

Before implementing a Customer Success platform, renewals, expansion, and customer health can be tracked manually using spreadsheets, CRM reports, and regular check-ins. A structured renewal tracker with key details like contract dates, expansion opportunities, and risk indicators helps maintain visibility. Manual reporting works well for up to 50–100 accounts, though in my experience, my team has handled more, depending on complexity. However, as the business scales, manual tracking becomes a challenge, leading to data inconsistencies and missed opportunities. When tracking shifts from proactive to reactive or when automation can significantly improve insights and efficiency, it’s time to invest in a dedicated Customer Success platform. Building these processes manually also creates opportunities for team growth and career progression, allowing team members to develop problem-solving skills and operational expertise. Ultimately, empowering front-line teams with better tools and streamlined workflows drives greater efficiency and helps achieve business goals more effectively.

Relationship management is where Customer Success and Sales meet in the middle, but I liked the other skills that I'd develop in CS like project management and change management as well as that more consultative focus.

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. 

The best metrics to use to justify a pay raise are those that tie to revenue and direct value impact (internally and customer-facing). I like to keep a private list (for example, Asana) of the projects I've worked on and my contributions to them so I can refer to it during performance reviews, promotion advocacy, etc. Revenue metrics - must be quatifiable: * Net Revenue Retention in my portfolio * Expansion revenue * Renewal win rate (this is a ratio or percentage, not a $ amount) * CSQLs provided to sales (Customer Success Qualified Leads) Value Impact: * Significant contributions of customer advocacy events, including customer speakers / event participation, referencability, creation of case studies * Creation of 1:many customer-facing value drivers, such as webinars, podcasts, training series, enablement materials