AMA: Gainsight Director, Enterprise Customer Success, Meenal Shukla on Developing Your Customer Success Career

Almost did not want to answer this question because it would give it away. Haha! I ask: Has it ever happened to you that a very red customer is moved to your portfolio? What's your first reaction when that happens? How do you solve for it? The answer to the first question tells me whether the CSM's current leadership trusts them enough to give a red-hot customer. Only the best CSMs get really risky customers because the leadership believes in the capability of the CSM to save the customer. The answer to the second question tells me about the attitude of the CSM. Did they like the challenge or did it seem overwhelming? What are the words they are using to describe their state of mind? The answer to the third question tells me about their rigor and the playbook they use to solve for tricky customer situations. People can fib in the first two questions, but the third question is what gives most people away. The best answer that I received was the following: 'I felt a sense of pride when my leadership gave me a customer who was about to churn. I know that I have earned the trust of my leaders and I was determined to rise up the occasion. Then the person described in detail the situation, tasks, blockers, how they circumvented objections, etc and finally the results. She completed turned this customer around. Best interview ever!

Growth opportunities abound for really effective and successful CSMs. * Jungle GYM: We have seen and heard of Customer Success Managers moving into literally every department - Training, Marketing, Product, Analytics, Operations, Consulting, Professional Services, HR and more. (Check out this link to know more about the Jungle Gym concept of career progression: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-career-jungle-gym-matters-now-more-than-ever-pattie-sellers/ * Individual Contributor progression: We have also seen CSMs, thrilled to remain ICs and become Principal CSMs or equivalent. Usually, these CSMs will super-specialize and are responsible for highest ARR and/or most strategic customers. * Management progression: Skilled people can advance quickly, especially when experienced CS professionals are in short supply. We even know a few people that have gone from CSM to CCO in a very short period (2-3 years). Inside the companies that have a successful CS practice, there is a growing level of attention that comes to the function, even to the individual CSM. If you are OKAY with a job where the CEO asks, in good or bad circumstances, 'Who is the CSM on that account?', you'll be just fine. Typical management path > CSM > Sr CSM > Manager of CS > Director of CS > VP of CS > CCO.

There are several ways to break into the tech industry as a customer success manager: 1. Look for growth opportunities in your existing organization: Even if you start in a different role, look for opportunities to take on more responsibilities related to customer success, and to demonstrate your skills and interest in the field. Shadow a CSM if you can for a day 2. Education: Pursue certification in a relevant field (Gainsight's Pulse+ as an example). Read resources available online on Customer Success and attend webinars that Gainsight and other organizations organize related to CS. 3. Networking: Attend industry events, meetups, and conferences to connect with professionals in the tech industry and learn about job openings. There are several meet up and online forums available. 4. Gain experience: Look for entry-level positions or internships in customer success or related fields to gain experience and build your resume. 5. Build a strong online presence: Create a LinkedIn profile and share relevant content and insights to showcase your expertise and interests in the tech industry. 6. Get a mentor: look for experienced people in the field who can guide and mentor you, this will help you get a better understanding of the industry, the role and the skills you need to be successful.

Metrics - Gross Retention of your book of business - Net retention of your book of business Leading indicators that you are doing your job well: - ROI delivered: We look at how many goals of the customers we have accomplished and how much percentage of customers do have an ROI delivered in the last 365 days. Note these goals are about value delivered to the customer and not the goal of your organization with the customer. - Higher Usage/Adoption (if reported and tracked) as compared to your segment - Stakeholder Alignment: Are you meeting your customers regularly and do you have a multi-threaded relationship Intangibles: - How do you run your EBRs? Are you well prepared? Are you making sure that the right people from both sides are joining and is it a good use of everyone's time? Is your EBR valuable or ticking the box? - Does your leadership trust you to give you the most demanding customers because they know you will turn them around? - Are you establishing trust with your customer? Are your customers vouching for you? - Do your sales counterparts vouch for you? Are you a good partner? - Do you have a clear plan for your customers? What will make them successful? - Are you able to call out organizational barriers that are stopping the customer from delivering value? - Are you an established expert in your field or are you making an attempt to get there with certifications, answering questions in your community, answering internal questions, etc?

Here are some core skills: - Being an established expert in your field or are you making an attempt to get there with certifications, answering questions in your community, answering internal questions, etc? - Being cross-functional with sales, services, support and product counterparts - Work in lock-step with your sales counterparts for renewals, upsells and cross-sells. Have your sales team vouch for you! - Thriving in the face of a challenge: Does your leadership trust you to give you the most demanding customers because they know you will turn them around? - Operational excellence: How do you stand out? Are you able to call out organizational barriers that are stopping the customer from delivering value? Are you helping your customers achieve ROI? - Process excellence: Are you following all the processes laid down by your leaders? - Metrics over-achievement: Are you over-achieving your metrics? - Team mentoring: Are you helping your immediate team members and your broader team in the face of a technical or strategic challenge? Do you take the time out for mentoring? Are you an established expert in your field or are you making an attempt to get there with certifications, answering questions in your community, answering internal questions, etc?

Weak leadership: A leadership that: * Does not establish clear RACI for the role * Do not have clearly defined metrics or a clear path to achieve them * Does not adequately staff CS operations team to help the CSM team * Does not invest in tooling to provide people with the right CS tools to do their job well * Does not remove organizational barriers for the CSM with cross-functional leaders such as services, support, products, sales etc. * Does not establish clear Rules of Engagement to work with other teams (sales, architects, implementation, services) so that the CSMs don't become a catch-all

Product: Is the product something I will be excited about? Ultimately, a CSM's role is to drive value through Product. If you are not convinced about the impact of the product, how will you convince others? Process: Are there tools and processes in place for the CS organization? Do they have a CCO or is CS under Sales, CFO, COO or Support? Having a CCO indicates that the CEO truly cares about CS and is invested long-term in the CS organization. Tools: Do I have the tools to do my job well? Do they have a CS solution or have they cobbled together a CS solution using Spreadsheets, chats and evernote? Just as you can't ask a legit sales rep to do their job without a CRM, you can't expect a CSM to deliver without a proper platform in place. Note, if this is a super early-stage startup, there will be no tooling and it is okay. However, it is a legitimate question to ask during your interview would be if they eventually plan to buy a CS platform. People: Your immediate leadership makes or breaks your experience in a company. What is their leadership style? Does it align with you? Do they exhibit empathy? Do they have a high bar but also provide high support? Ask your interviewers about their most hairy problems, how do they support their teams, and what the training and ramp-up program looks like. If you don't get a good answer, run!

1. Customer Success will become more and more metrics-driven. Without performance standards, it is very difficult to show the true value of CS to the organization. 2. Proactive experience and Personalization: believe the future of customer success will continue to focus on providing a personalized and proactive customer experience. This will involve using data and technology to gain a deep understanding of individual customer needs and preferences, and using that information to identify and address potential issues proactively. 3. Scale and Digitization: Built-in customer success within the product will likely explode in the next few years especially due to the emphasis on doing more with less. Take Slack, for example. Any important new feature is announced within the Slack platform. Same goes for user trainings. There is no CSM conducting training sessions every time Slack releases a new feature. 4. Collaboration with Sales and NRR: Given the economic headwinds, most of the new revenue will come from upselling/cross-selling to your existing install base. Relationships with sales and identifying CSQLs (Customer Success Qualified Leads) will become one of the core motions for CS. ions. 5. Product and Customer Success Collaboration: Any product team that is not listening to CS and building products in isolation is doing it wrong. CSMs are a wealth of information and feedback from customers, including sponsors, executives, and end-users. They are in a prime position to speak about which features are exciting to customers, which are being used frequently, and which miss the mark based on customers’ goals. 6. AI and Machine learning: If you have witnessed the power of ChatGPT in action, it will be apparent to you that the future of any product/business out there will have a component of AI and ML in it. Regenerative AI and analytic-driven AI will become an integral part of CS solutioning. AI tools such as ChatGPT can be trained to become a powerful tool that can be used to enhance the capabilities of customer success teams, by automating routine tasks, providing accurate and fast responses (through training on commonly asked questions), and uncovering valuable insights from customer interactions.

Operational Rigor: ‘The buck stops with me' * Understand, follow and contribute to processes * Deliver on metrics * Ownership of customer situations Problem-solving ability: 'I am knowledgeable about my business, my product and our use cases' * Product knowledge * Knowledge about your industry and best practices * Technical: Not many people agree to this but at the end of the day we are selling software in most cases as a CSM and therefore you need to be good in technical knowledge to answer level 1 questions. If you don't do that, you will become a glorified meeting scheduler Building Relationships with your customer and internal teams: ‘I am a trusted advisor for my customer and I know where to find help OR who to ask for help’ * Understand your customer’s business and build a plan to achieve success * Understand the functions and roles of your internal teams and foster relationships

Must-have hard skills for a customer success leader include: * Operationally rigorous and metrics-driven * Knowledge of customer success best practices and methodologies * Strong presentation and negotiation skills * Cross-functional and be able to remove organizational barriers to get stuff done * Strong communication and interpersonal skills * Problem-solving and analytical abilities * Project management and organizational skills * Being reasonably good with numbers Nice-to-have hard skills for a customer success leader include: * Sales, Consulting or business development experience * Technical aptitude and understanding of the company's product or service * Familiarity with customer relationship management (CRM) software * Knowledge of data analysis and reporting tools (or having someone reporting to them who is good with these) * Familiarity with industry-specific regulations and compliance requirements.

When CSMs are being asked to give the same updates to different people in different channels because: 1. Either there is no clear system of choice for the customer updates 2. If there is a system of choice, leadership is not enforcing its adoption, so people are doing their own thing 3. Leadership themselves are not in that system of choice If the leaders don't do what they preach and expect CSMs to update spreadsheets, slack channels, CRM, create PPTs, give 1:1 updates, etc, it is a sign of poor leadership and the CSMs suffer because of that dissonance. That way we can learn a lot from our sales counterparts. No legit CRO or VP of Sales will ask you to do updates in an excel sheet if you have a CRM like SFDC because they know that there needs to be one system to show progress, impact and monitor results.

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.

 I may be biased but Gainsight offers some of the top resources on Customer Success. We release at least 2-3 blogs a week and we are constantly releasing new content as fast as we are learning from our community. 1. https://www.gainsight.com/blog/ for Blogs 2. https://www.gainsight.com/events/ for webinars 3. Gainsight also offers Pulse+ certification which combines premium eLearning and industry-grade certifications with exclusive content and behind-the-scenes stories of brands and thought leaders. It is a paid resource but if you have been laid off or lost a job recently, you can make a request here to provide this certification material free of charge: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc9o4QIPfVMj42d_mBMwz7EEM3jmK0S7wxALqsAu8ZbYTNWog/viewform Other than Gainsight, being a part of the following online forums such as Modern CS helps.