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

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 su ...Read More

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 ha ...Read More

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 a ...Read More

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 segm ...Read More

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 te ...Read More

 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 lead ...Read More

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 th ...Read More

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 questio ...Read More

One example of a Customer Success Operations framework is the "Customer Success Management Framework" developed by Gainsight. The framework includes five key components: 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. People: This component includes building and managing a customer success team, including roles and responsibil ...Read More

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 addr ...Read More

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 poo ...Read More

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 mo ...Read More

There are several ways to break into the tech industry as a customer success manager: 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 Education: Pursue certification in a relevant field (Gainsight's Pulse+ as an example). Read resources available online on Customer Succe ...Read More