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Conor Holmes

AMA: Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA, Conor Holmes on Customer Success Soft and Hard Skills

February 23 @ 9:00AM PT

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  1. What hard skills are must haves to be a customer success leader? What are nice to haves?

    Conor Holmes
    Conor Holmes

    Confluent Senior Director of CS & Account Management • 3y

    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 happening. Within this area, cohort analysis is fundamental. Understanding customer cohorts allows you to segment the customer base into a distinct grouping that shares specific attributes and behaviour, al ...Read More

    3,247 Views
    2 requests

  2. As a hiring manager, what do the best customer success candidates have in common?

    Conor Holmes
    Conor Holmes

    Confluent Senior Director of CS & Account Management • 3y

    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 interview process is an excellent way to understand how a candidate unpacks a brief. It's always telling how much research and preparation they have done for the presentation round. One common trait of suc ...Read More

    1,635 Views
    1 request

  3. How do you retain good customer success talent?

    Conor Holmes
    Conor Holmes

    Confluent Senior Director of CS & Account Management • 3y

    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 good talent is ensuring that you have a team that has signed up to go on that journey with you. I operate from a position of transparency, which builds trust. If your team trusts that you are lobbying fo ...Read More

    1,420 Views
    2 requests

  4. What are the most important customer success skills or perspectives that others inside an organization could benefit from that would improve their day to day work?

    Conor Holmes
    Conor Holmes

    Confluent Senior Director of CS & Account Management • 3y

    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. Having a view of the end-to-end customer journey and a strong understanding of the motions that drive customer value is a perspective that can benefit most areas of the business. 

    1,515 Views
    2 requests

  5. What made you decide to choose customer success over sales?

    Conor Holmes
    Conor Holmes

    Confluent Senior Director of CS & Account Management • 3y

    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 I see my strengths and get my most energy from, and it's working with existing customers to make them wildly successful!

    1,315 Views
    1 request

  6. What advice do you have for recent graduates that want to go straight into customer success?

    Conor Holmes
    Conor Holmes

    Confluent Senior Director of CS & Account Management • 3y

    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

    https://www.customersuccess.community/feed

    https://gaingrowretain.com/

    https://hub.practicalcsm.com/

    https://catalyst.io/community/community-home

    https://community.gainsight.com/

    https://userpilot.com/blog/customer-success-courses/

    1,299 Views
    1 request

  7. When joining a new team, is it better to have the right soft skills and have to learn the hard skills of the job? Or vice versa?

    Conor Holmes
    Conor Holmes

    Confluent Senior Director of CS & Account Management • 3y

    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 primarily be trained on the job. However, there is a significant dependency on your company's stage and goals. For example, if the company is an early-stage B2B tech software company, you may want a profile that has been there and ...Read More

    1,751 Views
    4 requests