Get answers from customer success leaders
Stephen O'Keefe
HubSpot Senior Director, Customer Success • February 21
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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Christine Vienna Knific
mParticle Senior Director, Customer Success - North America • January 17
The best metrics to use to justify a pay raise are those that tie to revenue and direct value impact (internally and customer-facing). I like to keep a private list (for example, Asana) of the projects I've worked on and my contributions to them so I can refer to it during performance reviews, promotion advocacy, etc. Revenue metrics - must be quatifiable: * Net Revenue Retention in my portfolio * Expansion revenue * Renewal win rate (this is a ratio or percentage, not a $ amount) * CSQLs provided to sales (Customer Success Qualified Leads) Value Impact: * Significant contributions of customer advocacy events, including customer speakers / event participation, referencability, creation of case studies * Creation of 1:many customer-facing value drivers, such as webinars, podcasts, training series, enablement materials
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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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Brett Milstein
Narvar Director, Customer Success • February 7
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 17
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!
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Michael Maday
Gainsight Senior Director, Customer Success • February 15
This is a tough one! In this situation, I would do my best to flex my diplomatic skills. Draft up communication that includes both Execs (with some other relevant stakeholders if possible) and do your best to lay out the pros and cons of both options, doing your best to appear as neutral as possible and then push these execs to make a decision one way or the other. If you feel very strongly that one option is the correct one, and you have facts to back this up, do not walk away from an opportunity to appear decisive and in control. I would much prefer to be fast and wrong (and then course correct) than taking too long to make a decision, or even worse never making one at all!
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Conor Holmes
Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA • May 18
I would suggest that this is done in two ways. 1. Organically by the CSM team - ensure your team understands what success looks like outside standard metrics. Examples could include a meeting where the team engaged with a new senior stakeholder, successful joint marketing activity with a customer, identification of new use cases or value drivers, a successful customer on-site etc. Then, encourage your team to share these smaller wins internally to demonstrate progress. 2. Align with the formal company readouts, or if they don't exist, create a forum bringing in cross-functional representatives to provide a readout of what's worked and what hasn't in the previous period (I would recommend this to be monthly or quarterly).
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Caoimhe Carlos
Udemy Vice President Global Customer Success • February 13
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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Jeff Beaumont
Customer Success Consultant • May 30
Your plan must be concise, strategic in nature, and has a high ROI. The other piece here is frequent communication. Make sure they hear from you, know you, and trust your judgment. Relationships help them know that you've already thought it through, have a plan, and are determined to execute and see it through. 1. Concise: As with most things, you must have the details but save them for later. Give the very very high level summary. Think just a few sentences up front and then the appendix can have the details. It should be like a mullet: short in the front, long in the back. 2. Strategic in nature: This is where a lot of us get tripped up when we use the word "strategy". My best reference is the book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. "Strategy" is a list of actions in response to challenges. With that, whatever you are proposing cannot be in a vacuum, and it must be a significant challenge that is important to the company. Easier said than done. An example could be: 1. Challenge: Renewal rates have been low due to macroeconomic events and the layoffs within the tech sector 2. Coherent set of actions: We will ___________ (improve onboarding, better sales handoff, improve our qualification...) 3. High ROI: 1. High. It's one thing to have a return on investment, but the risk must pan out. Meaning, it can't just be a 2-3x ROI. But don't make stuff up, either! 2. ROI. Think of what their return on investment will be. If they say yes to you, how much money do they need to spend over how long and when will they see their return? How safe is it? Is this a sure thing, a complete guess (then it's an experiment). It's okay if it is an experiment, but frame it as such. And then help them understand what it will mean for them, the business overall, and the long term valuation of the company
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Wynne Brown
RocketReach VP of Sales & Customer Success • August 30
When we think about turning around at-risk Customers, the first step is to create categories that allow you to run plays against the risk. This seems obvious but often teams get paranoid and worried... and worry is not actionable. Throw into the mix that it is 2023, and it feels like so many more customers than usual are at-risk. Likely you think a customer is at-risk because usage has dropped off. The best defense against this is early intervention; have their priorities changed? Their strategies? You need to get to the root cause of the drop off. Implementing a Customer Success Platform early and thoroughly will help you have visibility into your customer base. Without a CSP you will not have time to act. In 2023, decreasing budgets and layoffs are causing churn left and right. Often the best defense about churn is actually focusing on logo retention vs dollar retention. Everyone is running on tighter budgets so it is a win to keep the account so that in better times it can grow back as hiring and budgets bounce back.
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