1. Customer Success Managers (CSMs) are grouped into segments based on either Product Type or Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). 2. Each CSM reports to a CS Director responsible for leading their respective segment. 3. CS Directors report to the VP of Customer Success, who manages all CSMs. 4. The VP of CS reports to the Chief Customer Officer (CCO), who oversees all post-sales teams, including Renewal Managers. 5. The CCO, in turn, reports to the CEO of the company

You have to look at what the business cares about and then work backwards to how Customer Success fits into those overall targets. For example, if the business has a retention problem, it's probably important to have a Gross Revenue Retention KPI. If, however, the business is more interested in price increases and cross-sell and upsell, then tie CSMs to Net Revenue Retention. At AlertMedia, there was a business-wide push to build out our Advocacy program so we incentivized CSMs to source advocates and add them to our pool. This dramatically increased the number of advocates we have to pull from going forward.

A successful first 90 days breaks down to focus across three key areas: (1) Deep learning and curiosity around the product and the experience of the customer within that product; relationship building, (2) Hypothesis based experimenting and feedback collection and (3) Planning and alignment of go-forward motions 30 days: * Dedicate ample time to learning about your product - both internally and directly with customers. Why do customers purchase the product? How does the product function within a larger tools ecosystem? What are the barriers to success in using the product? What's the value narrative or ROI in the customer's language? How does the product influence outcomes that customers care about? How is the product priced? How is it viewed in the competitive landscape? * Build relationships internally - meet with cross functional partners to orient yourself to their priorities and OKRs, and how their teams drive customer success (we all own this job collectively). Develop perspectives on how you can best partner with these cross functionals - how can your goals ladder to their goals, which ladder to customer goals and outcomes. * Consider how you will spend your time. Set initial and ongoing goals for time spent internally and with customers. Make it a priority to stay close to the customer either personally through customer advocacy or sponsorship programs, through customer call shadowing or listening strategies, or through skip level/team 1:1s. * Build a bi directional, prioritized relationship with sales. Understanding the organization's pre-sale strategy will be critical to building an effective post sales experience. * If leading an established CS function, assess current processes and measurement strategies 60 days: * Leverage learnings to begin building hypotheses around your ongoing strategy. If setting up a CS team from scratch - you might start building the customer journey and determining the most effective touchpoints for successful product optimization and adoption. If leading an established CS team, this may look like assessing where changes can be made to optimize customer and team outcomes. * Involve the team in priority setting or priority refinement - generate energy around shared goals * If possible, choose a 1-2 key areas of investment to test your perspectives and strategy * Gain buy in from critical cross functionals (sales, marketing, enablement, product/engineering) * Build perspective around a metrics and measurement strategy - how will you know the team is successful? Does the team have the right "skin in the game"? Are you influencing things both within the circle of control for a CS org (for example, team activity targets), but also extending beyond that into circle of influence metrics (customer use of product, value optimization)? 90 days: * Begin synthesizing your learnings from your ongoing internal and external engagements, coupled with anything you have piloted or tested. Refine your strategy across key areas: the customer journey, how other teams will contribute to this journey (marketing, digital teams, services teams), metrics and measurement for the CS org, team culture & morale * Focus on team morale and strategic alignment - host team conversations around how the CS strategy drives customer results, which in turn drives business results. Create clarity in R&R and how results will be measured * Spend time socializing how you are investing your time and focus - this can help to build trust with cross functionals and anchor initiatives to broader business goals (ex: retention, churn mitigation, customer ROI, etc)

The importance of KPIs might vary from organization to organization and between the respective goals or objectives. It makes more sense to have continued or enhanced metrics than just focusing on the initial level of evaluating a particular KPI. Usage / Number of Logins - It helps us delve into product adoption. However, it does not entirely reveal the depth and breadth of adoption. It definitely doesn't correlate with the business outcome. My suggestion is to depend on multiple measures, but the whole and sole represent adoption. CSAT - Some organizations consider CSAT a critical metric, but in my opinion, CSAT helps us explore a particular resolution or service and doesn't add to the long-term value quadrant. How about measuring the impact and working through mitigation risks for the longer-term value and loyalty? CES - Customer Effort Score helps us evaluate the effort minimized and is dedicated to that ONLY. How about you include a blend of experience/advocacy related to it? Combine NPS and CES for a broader context. Ultimately, always define meaningful metrics or KPIs that align with the organization's goals, keeping in mind the long-term value, and sustain them.

This answer is entirely dependent on the what field/product the CSM works with, who their target persona is and what resources are available based on company maturity. For someone dealing in cybersecurity, working mostly with CISOs, technical skills are more important. For someone in general CRM, maybe not so much. My feeling is that process experts > product experts. I find the best CSMs have strong business acumen, can step into a customer relationship and understand where there is opportunity to either (1) inject their product into existing process to create efficiency or (2) suggest a new process built around their product that drives better outcomes. That is less about deep technical knowledge and more about an ability to understand what value means to your customers and how your product can deliver that. Assuming that you have resources available to you that allows you or the customer to solve a technical issue when they arise, your true value is driving results vs. troubleshooting.

Breaking into the Customer Success straight from college is possible but there are things that you should focus on if you would like to go this route. My advice is to focus on developing transferable skills and building a strong foundation of knowledge for any industry or company that you’d like to work for. Even if you don’t have direct experience, emphasize internships, academic projects, or extracurricular activities that demonstrate teamwork, empathy, and a customer-centric mindset. Start working on these soft skills as these are essential in Customer Success: * Communication * Problem-solving * Relationship-building abilities As a bonus, I typically love seeing adaptability and a growth mindset from a candidate, so show you’re eager to learn and willing to embrace challenges. Networking is also crucial. Connect with Customer Success professionals on LinkedIn, attend industry events, and ask for informational interviews to learn more about the field. This will not only deepen your understanding but may open doors to opportunities. Lastly, consider taking courses or earning certifications in areas like Customer Success, project management, or data analysis to stand out as a candidate.

Question: You've got a brand new Enterprise customer starting tomorrow, $X ARR and X users. (Align the scenario to your business). You're walking home from work and you spot a lamp on the side of the road. You pick it up, rub it and a genie pops out. He says you can have 3 wishes that apply to this new customer and you can ask for anything in the world that you think will make this customer successful with you. What I'm looking for here: 1) How you handle having things thrown at you that you didn't expect :-) 2) What you focus on, in terms of what you think would lead to success. If you focus on training or product requests, you're not at the level of change management, project management or stakeholder alignment that I need.

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 top traits of an excellent Enterprise CSM are: * Communication so flawless C-level folks are pleased * A relationship builder with deep empathy and super high EQ * Obsession with value delivery so much so that they can leverage relationships to deliver hard messages * Able to take the long view of building ROI while attending to many details at the same time

As a customer success manager, one of the most important skills someone can develop is setting the right expectations and getting alignment between internal and external stakeholders. The biggest frustrations I've exeperienced come from when we haven't reached alignment. The best CSMs do this as part of their process whenever they work with someone new - internal or external. For example, a CSM's top priorities when being introduced to a client should be to set expectations about what they can offer the client in their working relationship (hint: a strategic, goal-oriented thought partner, not technical support), and to align on the client's business goals. When a CSM does this successfully they'll have meaningful interactions with the customer throughout the relationship and can line all the work they do together up to the client's business goals. When the CSM ties the value they and their product can provide directly to the customer's business goals, they prove the relationship to be important and ensure the renewal. What's frustrating is when they DON'T reach alignment. We've all had an experience similar to this one: you start the client meeting, introducing yourself and wanting to learn more about the customer's business, when suddenly the customer derails. He says something like, "hey, before we talk about that I was wondering, how do I pull a report from xyz product?" It puts the CSM in a difficult and frustrating position. On one hand, you want to be helpful. And let's be real, you're going to show them how to pull the report. On the other, you have so much more strategic value to offer the customer than providing technical Q&A. If you're not careful, you could spend the entire conversation answering tactical questions. What's worse is you will now have misalignment between the high level value you can provide and what the client will expect from your relationship, and you'll leave the meeting with no deeper insight into their business for the future. However, the best CSMs can use situations of misalignment as opportunities. "Oh! You'd like to pull a report on the weekly scheduler activities? I can definitely help with that. So that I make sure we do it in the best way, can you help me understand what you're going to do with the report?" Or, "the product doesn't currently have the ability to export that information, but we do have a lot of ways you can work with it. Can you help me understand what you'd like to do so we can work together on it?" The CSMs can then use their responses to dig deeper into the customer's goals and daily workflows, and be a partner in problem-solving and achieving business goals.