This is a great and timely question, especially considering that most product/feature sets are evolving at an extremely rapid pace in a technology ecosystem becoming more expansive by the day as well (thanks, AI). One of the most important places to start is to consider what business objectives your product helps to serve, even if not considered critical to the customer's business. There's a reason your product is purchased across your customer base. What sets your product apart in the marketplace? Why are customers inclined to buy your product? How does your product drive business results in their organization - what is the value narrative? What happens when customers optimally use the product - what results do they see? Being able to effectively articulate this can allow you to then create measurable criteria to showcase progression against those objectives, thus proving customer ROI. Having a clear view into customer objectives also allows you to work with your product and marketing teams to align products and feature sets to these objectives, enabling your CS team to build success plans with customers anchored in these objectives, build strategies to drive product adoption/stickiness based on these use cases, and co-create a value narrative.

The best KPIs that I have seen include: * Net Revenue Retention * Gross Revenue Retention * QBRs completed * Health score impacted (e.g., number of customers who move from red to green) * Number of Account Plans created * Customer Success Qualified Leads generated * Multi-year contracts secured (if CSMs own renewal) * Price increases generated within contracts (again if CSM owns renewal) * NPS

Great question! I've fallen in this trap so I'm speaking from experience here. You need to lead the conversation here and find the right answer, and don't just take orders from the various departments on what they want CS to focus on. Being too responsive here (rather than proactive) is how we land in the camp of doing "all the things" and creating a ton of thrash on the CS team. My recommendation: * Start by understanding what customers need. Talk to them-- customers of all shapes and sizes. Understand where they struggle to learn about and adopt your product(s) and build a prioritized list of those things. Record your customer interviews and save them were others can learn from them too. * Work with your cross-functional partners to identify potential ways to serve the biggest customer needs. The answer to some of them may be a CSM, but challenge the business to find other solutions- whether supplemental to CSM or replacing a CSM answer. * If you have friendly customers, this is a good point to share some of the ideas and get their reactions. * Then you go back to the exec team with your point of view for where CSMs will focus and where they won't, and the other solutions that also need to exist. * Repeat the customer listening > CSM scope conversation periodically or as your business changes significantly.

While I have been at HubSpot for a long time (13+ years), many opportunities have come up over time that I have had to assess new opportunities. Here are the things I tend to look at when considering a role; * Market Evolution * Size and growth potential of the market the company plays in * Stage of evolution : is this a horizon that is in its late stages or on the cutting edge? * Potential : is this a single product/one trick pony or do * Product * Do customers love their product/service? * Who are their competitors and how does their solution stack up? * Are they a leader or laggard? Have they shown product/service innovation? * Leadership and Culture * Are they proud of their vision, values and culture, even if they are against the grain? * How visual/vocal is their executive leadership? * Do people love the company? Are they staying there or leaving after short periods of time? * How do they treat failure? * Skills and Growth * Does my past experience lend well to the role? * Are there opportunities for me to build new skills? * What is my potential for impact on the business priorities? * Does this role help me build skills for the next position I hope to achieve?

I’ll share 2 questions – one is behavioral based, and one is situational. One of our core values is Extreme Ownership. I ask candidates to “Tell me about a time when you had to convince someone to do something in order for you to meet a goal or deadline. Why did you need to convince them? What was the goal/deadline? What was the result?” What I like about this question is it embodies all things CS - accountability; influence (usually without authority; partnership and teamwork; creativity… I look for an answer that helps me understand the what, the how, and most importantly, the why. Influencing someone because you missed something and now are in a crunch is very different than your new leader assigning you a nebulous project with a clear deadline, but not much direction. One of the best answers I’ve gotten was around a ‘still in development' product that was sold to a customer prior to the CSM taking the account. The customer was frustrated with the length of time it was taking to go GA - and with 2 missed delivery dates already. was asking for specifics to bring to their senior leadership regarding the 3rd promised delivery date. The candidate talked about the challenge first of understanding what the use case was as well as what was promised in the sales process. The candidate had to help the customer define the use case and then went back to the AE to understand what was sold. They then went to the product team to understand the product functionality and engineering to get timelines, which were still a ways out. They went back to the customer with the updated information and the customer was extremely unhappy. The candidate held a cross functional meeting internally - they were able to get alignment internally to prioritize the product to get within 2 weeks of the 3rd deadline, which was much improved from 6 weeks. The customer was cautiously optimistic, and when the vendor was able to deliver on the newly agreed upon timeline and the product worked as expected, over a period of weeks the customer moved from a detractor in sentiment to a promoter. The other question I’ll talk about here is “If you were to join us, what would you do in the first 90 days to build trust with your peers, leadership, and cross functional team members? (NOT CUSTOMERS) What I am looking for here first is whether their instinct is to lead by process or by people. Some candidates say they schedule meetings to understand the product, and some say they want to know what makes the team tick. I also listen to see if they tend to ask for help or go it alone. Neither are right or wrong; it helps me understand how they tend to work. I then look for them to share specifics on ways they would engage, and if it would be different for each group or more of a cookie cutter approach. This is really important for us as all of our CSMs are fully remote, and they need to be able to work with a variety of people at different levels in different ways.

In my mind, I believe that it’s generally more beneficial to have the right soft skills when joining a new team, as I’ve seen it is often harder to teach than hard skills. Soft skills like communication, empathy, active listening, problem-solving, and adaptability are key to building relationships with customers and typically things that I try to get a good understanding of during interviews. Then once you have a solid foundation of soft skills, you can more easily learn the necessary hard skills, such as specific tools, processes, or product knowledge, because you’ll already know how to engage with customers effectively. That said, a balance is ideal when you’ve been on the team for a bit of time, as both sets of skills are important for success in the role. In fact, over time, some of the hard skills become a bit more important as I feel product knowledge from a tenured Customer Success Manager is extremely important.

Before implementing a Customer Success platform, renewals, expansion, and customer health can be tracked manually using spreadsheets, CRM reports, and regular check-ins. A structured renewal tracker with key details like contract dates, expansion opportunities, and risk indicators helps maintain visibility. Manual reporting works well for up to 50–100 accounts, though in my experience, my team has handled more, depending on complexity. However, as the business scales, manual tracking becomes a challenge, leading to data inconsistencies and missed opportunities. When tracking shifts from proactive to reactive or when automation can significantly improve insights and efficiency, it’s time to invest in a dedicated Customer Success platform. Building these processes manually also creates opportunities for team growth and career progression, allowing team members to develop problem-solving skills and operational expertise. Ultimately, empowering front-line teams with better tools and streamlined workflows drives greater efficiency and helps achieve business goals more effectively.

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. 

There are so many career paths for a Customer Success Manager! I don't view the CSM's path as necessarily linear, but a "typical" one might be: 1. Customer Success Associate 2. Customer Success Manager 3. Senior or Enterprise Customer Success Manager 4. Strategic Customer Success Manager 5. Manager of Customer Success 6. Director of Customer Success 7. Head of Customer Success That said, there are a lot of different specializations, such as Customer Success Operations, Renewal Management, or large-scale Customer Success (sometimes called 1:many or "digital"). These specializations are great goals for someone who has been in Customer Success for several years and would like to advance in paths that are not necessarily management. 

Customer Success is different in every organization. Some companies see CS as product experts or an extension of Support. I see Customer Success as Consultants and Change Agents and so I hire for the skill set that will ensure they succeed in a role at Salesloft. 3 main things I look for: Leadership & accountability: Leadership isn’t always leading a team. It’s ownership of your book of business and ownership of the success of your customers. It’s being able to coach a customer and push back or manage expectations, when it’s in their interest. And accountability falls into this too. Are you accountable for your customer’s success? Communication skills: This is imperative for anyone in Customer Success. Not just because we spend a lot of our time customer facing and we need to articulate key concepts in a succinct way, but because we need to understand how to adapt our communication style depending on the audience. CSMs need to understand what matters to a customer and then articulate their message in a way that will resonate. We also need to sometimes be able to deliver tough messages in a well thought-out way! Organization & prioritization: CSMs need to have a method of organizing and prioritizing their day. When you’re partnering with multiple customers who are in different phases of maturity or “health”, prioritizing where you spend your time becomes really important. You also then have multiple stakeholders within each customer, goals to hit, queries to answer….organization is key!