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. 

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.

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!

One example of a Customer Success Operations framework is the "Customer Success Management Framework" developed by Gainsight. The framework includes five key components: 1. Strategy: This component includes defining the overall customer success strategy, including identifying customer segments, defining key performance indicators (KPIs), and setting goals for customer retention and growth. 2. People: This component includes building and managing a customer success team, including roles and responsibilities, hiring and training, and ongoing performance management. Note that people go beyond just CSMs. People should also include CS ops, digital CS, enablement and training. 3. Process: This component includes creating and implementing customer success processes, including onboarding, risk management, digital success customer health monitoring, and renewal/upsell processes. 4. Technology: This component includes selecting and implementing customer success technology, such as customer relationship management (CRM) and customer success platforms, to support the overall strategy and processes. 5. Data: This component includes tracking and analyzing customer data, including usage data, engagement with your team, customer feedback, and financial data, to measure the success of the overall strategy and processes and make informed decisions. It is worth noting that the framework is flexible and it can be adapted to different business models, industry, and company size. It also should be aligned with the overall company strategy and business goals.

There are many signals of potential churn; at scale, that's the inherent problem with data points; there are so many. Nothing replaces speaking to your customers regularly and digging into what's happening in their environment. Yet as a guide, you could look at the signals/question below, put a score against each and create a simple weighted risk or engagement score against each customer to identify where you need to focus, i.e. healthy vs at risk. There are CS tools out there to optimise this, but it can be done in-house manually without investing in a tool if you want to quickly get something off the ground. * Has there been a successful onboarding? * Has a ticket been submitted in the last x amount of days? * Is the customer expanding? * Are they using specific features? * Has there been a portal login during the last month? * Was there QBR or value-driven engagement held in the previous three months? * Is there an upcoming meeting scheduled with the customer? * Has the champion changed in the last six months? * Has the customer confirmed (verbally or in writing) that they are receiving value from their investment?

* What does "Customer Success" mean to you? Customer Success as a field and profession is relatively new, and the term can mean different things to different people. A candidate's answer helps me assess their whether their experience is aligned to a proactive vs reactive approach, what kinds of customers they've worked with in the past, how they think about the customer experience, and more. * If you were constructing a CS team from scratch, what metrics would you use to gauge success? Both internally and customer-facing? While this is a highly debatable topic, the key is that metrics described cannot only be financial. Yes, at the end of the day (... or, quarter) we are all working towards financial outcomes. But Revenue Retention is a lagging indicator, and it's important to understand that leading indicators such as product usage, presence of risk factors, and engagement are critical for proactive customer success. * How do you know a customer is successful? The best candidates use this as an opportunity to talk about aligning the value a company's product and services drive to the customer's business goals. I'm looking for CSMs who focus on a customer's business-level outcomes at a strategic level, rather than those who focus on getting their customers to adopt our product or services.

Retaining talent is a challenge for any company at any point in time. Customer Success is only a piece of the puzzle. Employees quit because they are unhappy with the culture, compensation, growth, and manager. Let us start with culture, specifically around Customer Success. To see a company’s customers succeed, it must be goal mandated top-down. The CEO and the e-staff aim to enable and empower the Customer Success team to create a holistic positive customer experience. Without this - there does not exist a customer-first mentality within the company. When this happens - Customer Success is the first of a few teams in the firing line. Besides this, overall work culture is also essential. Overall compensation is a huge criterion I am not too concerned about as the industry has been recognizing this, and I have seen compensation now up to industry standard. There is still debate on whether a CSM should be comped on renewals. That should be slated for a more extended debate. The recognition and reward mechanism is more important than base/bonus comp. Does your manager have clear KPIs for stretch goals? Is there a monetary reward tied to it? How is it celebrated? Instantaneous recognition and reward mechanisms work best among groups. Growth - As part of success - our job is to create a roadmap for our customers and their growth. What has your manager done for you lately, for your growth? Employees are often more likely to stay with a company that provides career advancement and skill development opportunities. As you contribute your skills to the company, the company should invest in you to develop new skills. You need to be in a constant state of ‘learning.’ You stop ‘working’ when you stop ‘learning.’ Flexibility - Working from home is a significant initiative. Bring your pets or kids to work day. Every day a celebration day - is a day you want to come to work! Last but certainly not least - is the Manager. Empowering and enabling Customer Success Team to deliver top-notch service is essential. Does your manager enable you, and is your manager available when you need them? Simple things weekly 1:1. Does your manager listen and do something about your suggestions? Do they value it or respect it? Do they treat you like you want to be treated or make you uncomfortable or out of place? Ultimately, retaining top talent requires a combination of strategies that focus on providing employees with competitive compensation, opportunities for growth and development, a positive work culture, recognition, and a sense of ownership over their work. This requires constant investment, even in the best employee. That individual focus where the employee is not the most crucial asset in the company will put the company on a pedestal and thus put the customers on a pedestal. The bottom line, you always have options!

Yes! In the past, we had various approaches to driving adoption in our accounts that would cause temporary boosts but didn't result in sustained adoption. Now we have a motion that's working! First things first: you have to understand why users do/don't adopt to move the needle on this. When/where do the users get value from using your product (things that would make them come back)? How easy is it for them to pick the product up and use it without instruction? What use cases are easiest to start with? For us, we learned that users do best when their leaders are setting the tone: why they purchased the product, when/how they should use it, and what metrics the organization will start to rally around from the product. We are leaning into that with a motion of Rollout and Adoption planning (which is a flavor of success planning) which was actually invented by some members of our CSM team: * Identify key user groups and use cases that align to the outcomes our customers want to achieve. This is done through a focused conversation with our executive/champion in the account. * Prescribe use cases (simple to advanced) that align to those outcomes. * Provide the customer with templates to communicate those to their users about Why, When, How to use the platform. * Orient user training (both online and live) around those key use cases and help train the users. * Measure results, discuss them with the customer * Rinse and Repeat

The most important aspect of communicating customer success activities to the company is identifying what each department cares about. The update provided to a Sales team looks very different than what would be delivered to a Product team. This ensures the updates have value to the people consuming them. Once you've determined what each department cares about, you then decide on the method of delivery. I prefer to provide updates in a meeting forum to allow for discussion and better understanding. Many other teams may opt for an email or newsletter that goes out on a specific cadence. A lot of this depends on the size of the company and the importance of the updates. Lastly, don't forget to ask for feedback! If something isn't working or could be better, make sure to iterate.

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.