Get answers from customer success leaders
Stephen O'Keefe
HubSpot Senior Director, Customer Success • February 21
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.
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Christine Vienna Knific
mParticle Senior Director, Customer Success - North America • January 17
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
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Ben Terrill
Brex Senior Director, Customer Success • January 18
I find the best CSMs are: * Curious - they want to understand “why”. This translates well with customers as it means they have an innate desire to understand their business. It also means that they are likely to find the CSM role very rewarding. * Builders - especially in the early days. * Empathetic - Empathy has 2 components as a CSM: 1) it helps build a personal connection 2) it allows a CSM to more successfully advocate on a customer's behalf internally.
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Brett Milstein
Narvar Director, Customer Success • February 7
There are two questions I always like to ask during an initial interview with a candidate: 1. Tell me about a problem you have worked on and how you solved it? - In full transparency, I actually borrowed this question from an article I read about Elon Musk's interview questions. I found the reasoning behind this question to be extremely interesting. First, you gain insight into the types of challenges the candidate has come across and their thought process for overcoming those challenges. Second, Musk says that this question shows him if the candidate truly worked on resolving this problem. Someone who was integral in the solution of a problem will know all the details and be able to explain in length what they were thinking was during the process. I have found a lot of success in asking this question. 2. I ask candidates to share with me a time they had to articulate value of their product/solution to a customer. As I mentioned in another question, showcasing your company's value is one of the most important responsibilities of a CSM. If a candidate does not have experience with this, how can I expect them to articulate value to our customers?
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Rebecca Warren
Eightfold Director, Customer Success • January 17
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!
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John Brunkard
Sitecore Vice President of Customer Success APJ | Formerly Red Hat, Symantec, Blue Coat, Intel, Dell, Dialogic • April 29
I am assuming this question is about career progression and movement to the next grade level. You should have a growth mindset and a desire to continuously improve, develop and learn. Here are some areas to consider focussing on. 1. Focus on results that matter for your current role (OKRs / MBOs) and look to exceed expectations on KPIs. Demonstrate the positive impact you are having for your company in what you do. 2. Develop a deep understanding of your customers, understand their goals and pain points and articulate how your company is helping them to achieve outcomes and obtain value. Be highly engaged with the right stakeholders in your customer base and be advocating on their behalf 3. Develop your leadership skills: To move to a higher level, your leadership skills will become more important. Take the initiative to lead projects (the more visible and impactful the better). Be available to mentor / coach others on your team. Have a clear understanding of your team's strengths and weaknesses and work to improve their performance. Step up to own areas that need improvement and drive change. 4. Expand your knowledge and skills: As the customer success function evolves, so must your knowledge and skills. Keep up to date with industry trends and best practices, and seek out opportunities to learn new skills. Apply what you have learned to improve your team / department / function.
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Jessica Haas
Appcues Chief of Staff & VP of CX • April 26
You're going to want a well-rounded set of knowledge and tools to set you up for success in Success. These include the practice of Customer Success, business metrics, core components of Customer Success, and supplementary industry knowledge. Below are some of my favorites that I've treasured over the years: Community Seekers - Success Coaching If you want to network and learn alongside others, Success Coaching is an excellent place to start in your CS career or level up as you grow. https://successcoaching.co/ For the DIY’er - The Gainsight Blogs & CSM Certifications This content speaks all the love languages of Customer Success professionals and every post is relevant and insightful. https://www.gainsight.com/blog/ A MUST-have for all CSMs - Value-first Onboarding, the Product Adoption Academy Onboarding is crucial for the success of all customers and there is a refined art to crafting & measuring this experience for CSMs. Don’t skimp on this topic! https://academy.appcues.com/courses/value-first-onboarding CS & Business Metrics - Crash Course in Customer Success and SaaS Metrics Hands down, the main questions I hear from new CSMs are around business metrics. Dave Kellog is the LeBron James of SaaS metrics and will explain everything you need to know. Excellent video, grab a notebook! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8hKPfH1q88 Separate yourself from the pack - Jeanne Bliss Understanding business metrics and a product will get you far but what separates you from others is heart and no one on earth does this better than Jeanne Bliss. She has worked with the best customer-first companies and never lets you forget why we’re here…humanity in business. https://www.customerbliss.com/ Staying on top of industry changes - Dave Kellog & Tomasz Tunguz Being aware of what’s happening in Tech will be a massive advantage for you. There are so many great blogs and resources to help you stay on top of what’s happening in the tech world so find what speaks to you! What speaks to me are the Dave Kellog & Tomasz Tunguz blogs...I swear, they're fortunetellers. Dave Kellog - https://kellblog.com/ Tomasz Tunguz - https://tomtunguz.com/
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Nicole Alrubaiy
Jellyfish Senior Vice President, Customer Success • February 28
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).
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Manil Vasantha
Information Technology Consultant • January 17
While it takes many qualities to be a good Customer Success individual, it takes a lot less to become one. You can transition into a Customer Success role from any role. In my career, I have seen many folks transition into Customer Success roles. Not because they were in a dead-end job but because they wanted to seek a different challenge. If you currently have a customer-facing job and managing some customer-centric projects. You should be able to pick any soft/hard skills required for the job. It would help if you were given the opportunity. As far as education requirements, it depends on the company that is hiring. Transitioning or a career shift can be challenging, not for the faint of heart. It will have its ups and down, and you need to have that end goal in mind and chase it. Persistency pays!
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Caoimhe Carlos
Udemy Vice President Global Customer Success • February 13
The future for customer success is incredibly bright! The role of CS is becoming increasingly important both for organisations and for customers. Customer retention and loyalty are the lifeblood of healthy organisations and CS directly drives these outcomes through making sure customers derive value from their investment. Exceptional customer success can act as a core differentiator in market and by investing in CS, organisations can realise benefits not only in terms of retention and engagement but also in terms of expansion and net new customer sales as superior service can be a compelling reason to buy. For the organisation this means CS is pivotal to both revenue growth and customer experience. On the customer side customer success often acts as they key conduit for customer feedback and insight, this data informs product development decisions, continuous improvement investments and improves the organisations ability to anticipate customer needs. Customer success can also be powerful partners in terms of sharing industry best practice, connecting customers with one another and ensuring the customer achieves their outcomes and can demonstrate ROI fro their investment. The advancements in AI should also free up time for CSMs to add additional value to their customers through automation and efficiency gains in administrative tasks.
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