With a self-serve product, you probably want to stay away from some of the more product-based KPIs (e.g., product adoption or health score if it's largely adoption driven) but retention, NPS, etc. are still critical metrics for Customer Success. The business has a value proposition for why it's investing in Customer Success despite the product being self-serve so it's incumbent to figure out what that investment thesis is and tie you and your team's KPIs around it.

Developing quarterly or annual customer success OKRs and tying them to individual projects involves a structured approach: 1. Understand Company Goals: Align OKRs with overall company goals. 2. Define Objectives: Set specific objectives for the team. 3. Identify Key Results: Establish measurable Key Results for each objective. 4. Align Projects: Assign individual projects that contribute to Key Results. 5. Assign Ownership: Specify ownership of projects to team members. 6. Set Milestones: Break down projects into milestones with timelines. 7. Monitor Progress: Regularly track progress and adjust as needed. 8. Iterate and Improve: Continuously refine the OKR process. 9. Communicate Effectively: Keep teams informed and engaged. This structured approach ensures alignment with company goals, accountability for outcomes, and effective project execution to drive success in customer success initiatives.

In my experience, in order to retain good Customer Success talent, here are things that you must offer: * Clear career growth opportunities * Invest in ongoing training and development * Foster a positive, inclusive team culture where achievements are recognized and employees feel valued * Encourage work-life balance by offering flexibility and supporting initiatives * Provide competitive compensation and benefits to ensure employees feel financially supported, which I feel we do a great job of at Zendesk.

I'm not directly facing that at the moment, but I do have some thoughts. Self-led onboarding is amazing if it's likely to succeed. Let's maximize your changes of that. Here are some things you can explore: * Is the person doing the onboarding highly motivated to get it done quickly? * If the buyer is delegating to someone else to implement, how can you set expectations for their effort and get the buyer to keep pressure on? * Consider aligning on the process and expectations in the sales process while you still have their attention. Provide the checklist/plan then and make sure the buyer sees it. * Provide progress reports to the buyer during the onboarding so they can keep pressure on and unblock issues * Bonus Points: Gamify the onboarding experience for the person doing it. Add little celebrations of confetti in your app, give them points toward something, give certificates or possibly even swag when they hit major milestones. * Does the customer have a high likelihood of success implementing themselves? If no, why not? * Product experience not intuitive enough: What in-app changes or guidance can be provided? Can you also provide short videos to help? * Customers have lots of questions: Can you educate them through online courses and/or a mix of live office hours or webinars. You can also have dedicated parts of your online community for this. * Can you offer a mix of self-led and moments where they really need a human to help? Give them a scheduling link for those human sessions to allow them to book at their own pace. * Consider using a customer portal to prescribe the steps they need to take, content they need to learn, and any important meetings they should book with you. * Consider formalizing self-led onboarding. If it works, put some resource behind making it more viable. You could also explore monetizing the higher-touch onboarding offerings.

To scale a Customer Success function effectively, it's crucial to demonstrate its financial impact and how additional headcount can amplify this effect. A simple method is to analyze renewal and expansion rates for accounts managed by Customer Success. By applying this financial model, you can determine the potential growth and retention value that an additional CSM could bring when engaging with currently uncovered accounts. This approach provides a clear rationale for expanding the team while showcasing the function's tangible contribution to the organization's bottom line.

On top of all the usual traits of being a great CSM, I think of 3 things when I think of great Enterprise CSMs: Stakeholder engagement: To me in Enterprise CS this is the ability to confidently communicate with the C*suite, the ability to multi-thread across an organisation and the ability to achieve the buy-in of multiple stakeholders towards a common objective. Change management: As an Enterprise CSM you're usually dealing with much bigger and more complex organisations, and so you can't take all the action items yourself. This means you've got to get out of the weeds and focus on the bigger picture; driving a change to meet the customer's objective. You've got to be much better at both holding your customer accountable to executing their actions AND guiding them through what they need to do to drive this change. Project management: Essentially, being great at tracking all the strategies and corresponding actions that need to be completed in order to achieve the customer's objective, as well as being able to communicate this in a clear and concise manner to the customer. Your goal here is to keep everyone on track.

The only standard metrics or KPIs I can provide to you for tracking success with enterprise clients are meta metrics and meta KPIs: how do you measure the value of your product? All metrics and KPIs should focus on how a customer will know the ROI in your solution is worth it. Tracking activity metrics or touchpoints serves you to know your staff isn't lazy... but it does NOT measure success if you are looking at success as answering these questions: what value has the customer received? what organizational goals are supported by our solution? are we making our customer a hero or a zero in their role?

It sounds like you’re asking about how you move from being an individual contributor to being a people manager. The first thing I’ll say is that people management is not for everyone! There are plenty of career growth opportunities in Customer Success as an IC. That said, some of the reasons you might want to be a manager in CS are: 1. You want to help others grow 2. You want to expand your impact 3. You want a new challenge As a hiring manager, I would focus on internal candidates first if I’m considering a first-time CS manager. With that in mind, here are some things I consider about in CSMs who want to move into people management: 1. Are you already acting like a leader? Does the team already see you as a leader? There are many opportunities to assume informal leadership roles in most CS orgs. Maybe there’s a project you can lead? Maybe there are some more junior team members you can mentor? I would actively seek out these types of opportunities to develop your leadership abilities and gain recognition. 2. Do you have an opinion on how you can improve the business? Do you have ideas on how you can drive improvement across your team? Proactively share these with your manager if you haven’t already. 3. How have you performed as a CSM? Are you on top of your metrics? Do you XFN peers have positive feedback? 4. Can you advocate for Customer Success? Are you able to effectively advocate for your customers and team across the business?

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. 

Scenario-based questions are my favorite but I especially like this one as it breaks the ice and allows the candidate to show their personality & you can have fun with the scenarios. Three emails hit your inbox, which do you answer first, second, and last and why? No wrong answers here! 1. You ordered lunch and the delivery person is running an hour behind and asks if you still want your order. (symbolizes a higher-value downgrade scenario) 2. Your friend wants to reschedule your plans for the evening and is asking for a confirmation (symbolizes a mid-value cancellation scenario) 3. You were given an Amazon gift card that needs to be claimed (symbolizes a lower-value upgrade scenario)