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AMA: Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA, Conor Holmes on Customer Success Soft and Hard Skills
February 23 @ 9:00AM PST
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Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA, Conor Holmes on Customer Success Soft and Hard Skills
Top Questions
Conor Holmes
Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA • February 23
As a CS leader, it's critical to have the ability to analyse, interpret and understand data. Most organisations have various data sources to understand what is happening in the customer base. What's important for a CS leader is to combine these data sources to get a complete picture of what's hap......Read More
1611 Views
2 requests
Conor Holmes
Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA • February 23
Generally, when hiring CS team members, for me, it's all about soft skills; * Deep customer empathy * Great communication skills * Strategic thinking * Time and project management * Active listening * Problem-solving The hard skills are more related to domain knowledge, which can primaril......Read More
872 Views
4 requests
Conor Holmes
Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA • February 23
Every company is on some form of journey. Whether you are at an early-stage start-up or have been around for decades, your team needs to understand how what they do daily relates to the journey the company is on and how their daily interactions contribute to the company's goals. For me retaining ......Read More
693 Views
2 requests
Conor Holmes
Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA • February 23
What I enjoy most about the customer success role is the lens of seeing customers grow from their initial commitment to successful renewals and expansions where the customer achieves their goals. Throughout this journey, many teams often engage and work with the customer to support this motion. H......Read More
696 Views
2 requests
Conor Holmes
Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA • February 23
1. Learn about the role. I have included some links below that can help with this. 2. Network (don't be afraid, I've found the majority of people are more than willing to offer guidance and advice) 3. Ask for a mentor 4. Look for internships https://www.csinfocus.com/community htt......Read More
618 Views
1 request
Conor Holmes
Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA • February 23
The best candidates can relate their experience to how they will be successful in the role. They will have thought about scenario-based questions and be ready to describe how they have tackled specific problems and scenarios. I have found that having a reasonably open presentation brief in the in......Read More
847 Views
1 request
Conor Holmes
Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA • February 23
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 ......Read More
592 Views
1 request