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Meenal Shukla

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

January 19 @ 9:00AM PST
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Gainsight Director, Enterprise Customer Success, Meenal Shukla on Developing Your Customer Success Career
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Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
Almost did not want to answer this question because it would give it away. Haha! I ask: Has it ever happened to you if 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 C......Read More
1282 Views
1 request
Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
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......Read More
909 Views
1 request
Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
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 demons......Read More
745 Views
1 request
Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
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 th......Read More
703 Views
1 request
Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
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......Read More
1013 Views
2 requests
Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
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 t......Read More
747 Views
1 request
Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
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......Read More
611 Views
1 request
Where do you see the future of customer success heading?
What skills will a future customer success manager need that he/she doesn't have today?
Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
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 personaliz......Read More
898 Views
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Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
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 ind......Read More
723 Views
2 requests
Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
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......Read More
1434 Views
1 request
Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
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. Leader......Read More
992 Views
1 request
Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
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 segme......Read More
1083 Views
1 request
Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Director of Customer SuccessJanuary 20
 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/ ......Read More
896 Views
1 request