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. 

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

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. 

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?

This is a tough one! In this situation, I would do my best to flex my diplomatic skills. Draft up communication that includes both Execs (with some other relevant stakeholders if possible) and do your best to lay out the pros and cons of both options, doing your best to appear as neutral as possible and then push these execs to make a decision one way or the other. If you feel very strongly that one option is the correct one, and you have facts to back this up, do not walk away from an opportunity to appear decisive and in control. I would much prefer to be fast and wrong (and then course correct) than taking too long to make a decision, or even worse never making one at all!

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.

As the first CS hire at a startup, here's how I'd prioritize KPI ownership: KPIs You Should Own: 1. Direct Customer Outcomes * Onboarding completion rates * Time to first value * Basic product adoption metrics * Meeting/QBR completion rates * Customer engagement rates 2. Early Warning Metrics (Track these but your compensation should not be based on these metrics) * At-risk customer identification * Basic usage trends * NPS KPIs You Should NOT Own (Yet): 1. Revenue Metrics: These typically need more infrastructure and team support * Net revenue retention * Churn rate * Expansion revenue 2. Advanced Product Analytics: Let product/data teams lead these initially * Detailed feature adoption * Complex usage patterns * Custom health scoring 3. Scale Operations: Wait until you have more team members * Response time SLAs * Coverage ratios * Team efficiency metrics Key Considerations: * Focus on establishing baseline metrics first * Build manual processes before automation * Keep metrics simple and actionable * Document what you learn for future hires * Partner with product/sales on shared metrics

Let's think bigger than just Sales here! Customer Success is the glue between all of the customer-impacting departments in your company (note: that's pretty much every department). Your job as a CS leader is to build partnerships with all of the business leaders that will drive the best outcomes for your customers and for your company as a result. Here are a few tips: * If your company has a framework for cross-departmental goals, make sure you study those. How does serving customers better impact the high-level company goals? How about each department's specific goal? * Craft your narrative for how your team's work impacts the other departments. Will you boost Sales productivity? Will you produce referenceable customers whom Marketing can leverage to grow the pipeline? Will you make the Customer to Product Management feedback cycle easier? Will you reduce the noise and burden of escalations on the Support and Engineering teams? * Sign up for goals that benefit both teams. An example we used recently was driving customers to use our new Support Portal rather than opening cases by email. CSMs talk to customers frequently so they were a natural choice to get customers registered and trained on how to use the new Portal. Both CSMs and Support benefit from the reduced email noise, and we strengthened our partnership with Support leadership as a result. KPIs for the sake of measurement are fun but useless. Zero in on the ones that are making a real impact to your company's top and bottom line and ask for partnership in helping to drive those. When you're establishing a new CS department, you might have the luxury to point to customers who are in the CS program vs. those who are not and compare churn and growth rates in those cohorts. Sales will perk up if you're showing them faster and larger expansions in the accounts managed by Customer Success. A real win I've had with Sales specifically was to have the Head of Sales add churn into the Sales Leader comp plans so a dollar saved was as good as a dollar earned (wildly unpopular with the sales leaders at first but it drove real change in the churn fight for our company).

Some of the things I would focus on to up level my CS career: Sales Skills - Developing your sales skills will really elevate you as a CSM. Your ability to influence and strategically drive a conversation to mutually beneficial outcomes is the key to your effectiveness as a CSM. Understand How You Are Measured - You need to fundamentally understand how your individual performance is measured and be able to effectively tie that into your day-to-day activities. Leadership Skills - Leadership skills are not just for formal managers! Your ability to lead others through your influence and expertise is key to your advancement in your career. Product Expertise - This goes beyond just understanding how the product works, but you should fully understand how the product solves your customer's problems. The better you understand both of these, the better you can advocate to the product team about the features or product changes you need. 

These are some of the most common reasons why a customer isn't adopting your product: 1. They find it difficult to use. 2. They do not have the service and support they require to be successful. 3. They are not seeing and/or do not understand the value it provides to their business. 4. The product is not evolving to fit their needs.