Get answers from customer success leaders
Stephen O'Keefe
HubSpot Senior Director, Customer Success • February 22
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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Georgia Glanville Harrison
Braze VP Customer Success, EMEA • January 26
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!
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Rebecca Warren
Eightfold Director, Customer Success • January 18
I’ve been at Eightfold for just over 2 years now, moving over to customer success from a 20+ year career in Talent Acquisition, so remember that my experience is unique vs. a traditional CS career path. I was the first CSM to join the EF team, reporting into a leader who had created the group from scratch. I moved from senior leadership position in my previous position to an individual contributor role with similar compensation. I was concerned that I might be taking a step back, but I knew I had a lot to learn. We then added several other experienced professionals from different areas that would complement our expertise. As we grew, we created more levels, adding Sr. CSM and CS Associate roles. We also created Director roles and promoted internally (I took one of those roles, just about a year after I started). We also looked internally to add to the team, so brought over someone from Talent Acquisition as well as someone from our Professional Services department. In hindsight, I am so glad I took the role as an individual contributor, as I learned so much, which I was able to bring to my role in leadership. To summarize, what worked best for us was to bring on very experienced people with a variety of backgrounds at first, and then develop the structure as we grew.
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Brett Milstein
Narvar Director, Customer Success • February 8
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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Manil Vasantha
Information Technology Consultant • January 18
Communication and mental fortitude are essential soft skills, and Product and Industry knowledge are essential hard skills one must have as a core strength. Customer Success Associates/Customer Success Managers/Director Customer Success - all need to have or eventually have some essential soft skills. • Communication: (both skills of speaking and active listing) • Verbal: the ability to communicate clearly in an individual or group setting. • Non-Verbal: In conversation with the customer - 1:1 or group setting- non-verbal cues play an essential role: body language, Facial expression, and Vocal tone. • Witten: the ability to communicate Cleary in any written communication. • Listening: There is a reason why we have two ears and one month. We need to listen twice as much. • Interpersonal: Build and maintain relationships with diverse folks from different cultures and countries. • Emotional intelligence: We are often told to put ourselves in the customer’s shoes. Understanding and managing emotions in oneself and others is crucial for effective conflict resolution, active listening, and building trust. • Mental-fortitude: Innate, ingrained desire to help others unconditionally. We may have a crisis on hand - production outage, DevOPS, Engineering, and Customer pulling their hair - the sky is falling, and indeed, financial loss - YOU are the calmest person in the room. • Navigation skills: You need to be a master negotiator. You will not win every battle, nor can or should you expect PM to accept all your ER to be approved; there are other CSMs and new logos that will take precedence. What do you do, you bring your charm to work—your negotiation skills. • Adaptability: Today’s world is changing. Change is the ONLY constant. The ability to adjust to changing customer needs and priorities and to be flexible in finding solutions. • Problem-solving skills: No one, including the customer, expects you to have all the answers. The ability to quickly and effectively identify and resolve customer issues is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term engagement. • Assertiveness and Persistence - the customer is NOT ignoring you. They are just busy and have other priorities. Being persistent and assertive - get your attention WHEN required. Remember - the customer is not available cannot be an excuse. • Knowledge of Tools (soft and hard skills): CRM (Jira/SFDC/HubSpot/Zoho etc.), Salesforce.com, Gainsight. Analytical Tools like Tableau, SAS/ PowerBI, and Google Analytics. You should get some training as part of your onboarding; however, self-help is the best help. As for hard skills, some key areas that customer success managers should focus on include: • Product knowledge: a deep understanding of the product or service can help customer success managers troubleshoot and provide solutions to customer issues. This is tactical. But CSMs must also engage very closely with Product Management and Product Marketing. They must be up to speed on new products in the pipeline. Identify both very and horizontals of the product suite. Pick the impacted “diamond” customer and bring them into the steering meeting to help influence product direction. This is sure to keep the customer engaged and a promoter. • Technical skills: navigating technical tools and software used in customer support and engagement. This is still tactical, but engaging with TS and moving your customers’ cases will be an excellent tool to help alleviate any relationship issue. • Analytical skills/Data analysis: the ability to analyze customer data and metrics to identify trends and opportunities for improvement. Data should contain how customers utilize every channel offered as part of their QBR. • Project management: the ability to manage customer projects and initiatives effectively to ensure timely delivery and customer satisfaction. • Industry knowledge: the ability to stay current on industry developments and trends, as well as an understanding of best practices in customer success management. Remember, change occurs faster than we can handle - which means we need to be up to speed on the nature of the customer’s business - educate him even on what the competition offers and how you differentiate. Progressive Insurance model, if giving their insurance quote and their competition quote, clearly shows how they differentiate themselves from the competition. And also demonstrates their superior service.
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Conor Holmes
Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA • February 24
Generally, when hiring CS team members, for me, it's all about soft skills; * Deep customer empathy * Great communication skills * Strategic thinking * Time and project management * Active listening * Problem-solving The hard skills are more related to domain knowledge, which can primarily be trained on the job. However, there is a significant dependency on your company's stage and goals. For example, if the company is an early-stage B2B tech software company, you may want a profile that has been there and done that for the first hire. If not in the specific domain, you will need someone who has worked with a similar customer type at a similar scale for the new hire to be productive as fast as possible. Arguably the earlier the stage, the less time you will have for the person to be successful in their role.
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Amara Okoli
MURAL Director of Customer Success • March 22
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.
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Jeff Beaumont
Customer Success Consultant • September 7
Before I start, know this is a difficult question to answer. Here is how I approach it: 1. Review the job description and make sure I understand it 2. Review it with my manager to ensure we're aligned. The point of this is uncovering any gaps between you and your manager 1. Note: if there are others involved, you should make sure they're aligned too! 3. Establish a priority list. I prefer Google Sheets/Excel so they can be stack ranked with health status (red, yellow, green) 1. Other fields 1. Description (in 1-2 sentences, what is this) 2. Status (New, in progress, completed...etc.) 3. Ownership (who owns this) 4. Notes 5. Due date / estimated completion date 2. Optional fields 1. Success Metric/goal 2. Exit criteria (what will exist when this is complete) 3. Monthly update fields (what was done during this month) The priority list may be overkill for some, so start small with just the title, description, status (RYG), and notes. I have found having a document like this helps everyone stay abreast of what's happening, knowing where to go with questions, and feeling confident that it is effectively managed.
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Michael Maday
Gainsight Senior Director, Customer Success • February 17
In this current economic landscape, the only teams that are going to be allocated resources are the ones that are able to show and substantial return on investment (ROI) to the organization. For example, Customer Success teams must be able to project how adding resources or technology will positively impact Retention Rates, Drives Expansion, or Reduces churn. Additionally, these requests must be as data-driven as possible and not hypothetical scenarios. Be critical in your assessment and if your ask is not going to bring a 5x-10x return, it will not be accepted.
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Caoimhe Carlos
Udemy Vice President Global Customer Success • February 14
One of my favourite CS interview questions is some variation of "Can you share a time when you received constructive feedback from a peer, manager, or cross-functional partner in your previous role as a Customer Success Manager? How did you deal with it, and how did it impact your actions after the fact?" The reason I like this question is that the way the candidate answers it tells me a lot about their self awareness, intelligence, their ability to handle difficult situations with maturity, humility and professionalism, their communication skills and their growth mindset, all of which are skills that are valuable in your role as a CSM and also make someone a great colleague and team member. The best answers I have heard to this question have been thoughtful, honest, clear and have all resulted in genuine impact for the person in terms of how they have grown and developed.
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