Get answers from customer success leaders
Stephen O'Keefe
Stephen O'Keefe
HubSpot Senior Director, Customer SuccessFebruary 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
Georgia Glanville Harrison
Braze VP Customer Success, EMEAJanuary 26
Unlike a lot of Customer Success departments, we’ve chosen to align our team to customer KPIs rather than commercial/upsell targets. As such, we have less overlap in goals between CS and Sales. Of course, we’re both targeting Gross Renewal Rate and ensuring we maintain the customer base, but we don’t extend that to upsell targets in the same way as commission-based CS teams. Currently, we’re focused on exploring how we can share “time spent” efficiency and reach KPIs to help keep us accountable for spending as much face time with our customers, tech, and agency partners as we can over the course of many key city hubs whilst being mindful of the cost of trips.
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Brett Milstein
Brett Milstein
Narvar Director, Customer SuccessFebruary 8
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. 
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Jessica Haas
Jessica Haas
Appcues Chief of Staff & VP of CXApril 27
The two areas I would recommend are 1) Sharpening your Sales skills and 2) Adopting some Product Manager mindsets. When working with customers and the further upmarket you go, the more enriched these conversations need to be and the immediate areas for many customers are to understand their contracts, how they can scale with your product, value alignment, and ROI. Supplementing this, customers want to know how your product will be evolving and how their feedback can influence the roadmap. Being able to cut right to the value of a product, requirements, outcomes, and how those align with the customer's values will set your customer and Product teams up for mutual success!
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Rebecca Warren
Rebecca Warren
Eightfold Director, Customer SuccessJanuary 18
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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Jessica Broderick
Jessica Broderick
Asana Head of Vertical Solutions EngineeringApril 13
The best customer success candidates possess the following traits: * Relationship Building Skills. The ability to develop positive, trust-based relationships while adding value to the client and team. * Intellectual Capability & Curiosity. The desire to proactively seek out and learn about the unfamiliar or unknown. * Communication Skills. The ability to express themselves clearly and engage others verbally and in writing; can determine the effective means and frequency of communication to keep all parties on the same page.
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Christine Vienna Knific
Christine Vienna Knific
mParticle Senior Director, Customer Success - North AmericaMay 3
To gauge autonomy of Customer Success Manager candidates, I like to ask: * Describe what role the CSM plays with the customer, in your experience? This helps me see the candidate's willingness to be strategic or tactical (hopefully both, when necessary!), how they work with internal cross-functional teams, and how they view ownership of commercial responsibilities. * Provide an example of a customer escalation and how you turned it around. In this question, I'm looking for a candidate to both show ownership over the ultimate resolution of the issue and the ability to navigate difficult internal and external situations. The best answers are those that demonstrate collaboration and use of resources without placing blame on others or an over-reliance on executives. * How do you work with the support team for defects or other issues? Success of the customer is a team sport, with CS driving proactive results and support working to resolve problems when they arise. The best CSMs understand that one doesn't work without the other and demonstrate that in the answer to this question. * What are some things you've done to drive success that aren't directly related to your book of business? In other words, I want to learn about the other projects a CSM has done in the past to keep the business moving forward. Some examples I've seen in my own experience are working with marketing to create an industry-related podcast, driving a customer advocacy and review program, and creating shared materials to save time and help the business scale.
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Conor Holmes
Conor Holmes
Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEAFebruary 24
I greatly respect the sales role, and CS and sales must work well together to drive successful customer outcomes. I have been in sales at various times throughout my career within multiple functions, be it expanding customers or working on net new logo acquisition. I have been honest about where I see my strengths and get my most energy from, and it's working with existing customers to make them wildly successful!
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Natasha Evans
Natasha Evans
Hook Head of CustomerApril 26
Great question! Retaining great CS talent is the same as retaining any good talent, but I do think that there are a few extra things to consider... The role of a CSM can often be high pressure when things go wrong and little recognition when things go really right. So I would always go out of my way to recognise great talent at every opportunity. That could be everything from nominating them for High Achiever's Club and shouting them out at company meetings, all the way to dropping them a meaningful message to thank them for something they did. I also think that more often than not, CSMs love the variety of the job and the variety in skills that goes with it. Which means they often want to learn and grow. So clear PDPs with each CSM and helping them develop in new areas is key. Finally, CSMs want achievable targets and they want to be rewarded for all the hard work that they put in. So design an incentive plan that does just that.
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Caoimhe Carlos
Caoimhe Carlos
Udemy Vice President Global Customer SuccessFebruary 14
There are a number of key skills that will assist in making the transition from Senior CS Manager to Director+, that range from strategic thinking and decision making to leadership and critical thinking however I will elaborate on three of the core soft skills which have a high propensity to positively impact career development in the context of CS. * Change management - change is constant and effective change management is a highly valuable skill for leaders at any level and especially for senior leaders who are responsible for large teams or departments. Yet despite this many leaders struggle in this area. Leaning into change management and investing in building your skills set here is worthwhile investment. You can gain change management experience by offering to work on strategic change initiatives or projects across the business or within your current team or department and can also develop your skillset through more targeted learning such as this great Udemy course . * Cross functional alignment and collaboration - Building great cross functional relationships may seem like an obvious skill for any role however it is critical in customer success as the quality of customer experience is largely dependant on how effectively internal teams and stakeholders collaborate and work together. Stretching your cross functional collaboration muscle allows you to build your network, gives you a more holistic understanding of how the business works and ultimately enables you to have greater impact and influence. * Growth Mindset - Cultivating a growth mindset allows you to embrace challenges as opportunities as opposed to obstacles, to seek feedback and learn from others regularly which is critical as you progress in your career and to maintain a high level of adaptability - developing growth mindset as a skill is quite broad and requires a combination of attitude shift, behaviour change and regular practices that together build the capability. Some tactics that have helped me personally with growth mindset are approaching situations with curiosity first and flipping the narrative on setbacks or failures so that I view them as learning opportunities and something which fuels growth.
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