AMA: GitLab Senior Director Customer Success Operations, Jeff Beaumont on Scaling a Customer Success Team

We've used several methods, depending on the size and type of the company. 1. Roadshows. One of the more effective yet costly in terms of time and useful for larger changes. We share a slide deck, explain the process, and run an AMA 2. Join team calls and/or join leadership calls to walk them through the changes, collect feedback, and share learnings 3. A monthly (or quarterly) "team update" doc that is shared in company standard mediums (e.g., Slack, email, message board...). This is usually a collection of everything that has happened and/or will happen 4. A dedicated slack channel that is read-only for asynchronous updates (generally smaller, non-critical updates)

The most important part: do not be single-threaded. Make sure you build connections with multiple people at the organization. Ask your champion who else you should talk with. If you struggle to get the champion to divulge that, share tidbits, insights, and other recommendations so your champion wants to carry those into the organization. From there, run EBRs with your champion and slowly, over time, build the trust to ask for other contacts. Ask again. During the renewal cycle, get in front of procurement, other executives, and users. As a CSM, you can also try to network with power users as another way to get involved in the company — reach out to them and solicit their feedback and product requests! From there, try to get connected with the champion, decision maker, and executive sponsor — that could be the same person or multiple persons.

Do things that scale. I had a CEO who said the perfect sized organization was an org of exactly one. Once you went beyond that, communication became critical because you had to share information and gain alignment between two people, then three, then four... So when going to multiple people, establish: 1. Consistency: concern yourself with areas such as playbooks, how/when you reach out to customers 2. Operations: ensure there's an agreed-upon funnel or customer journey that everyone uses (again, for consistency) 3. Trust: make sure that each person trusts one another, is an advocate for each other, and is willing to ask questions when they don't know the answer 4. Insights/analytics: more functional than above, but with more people you need reporting and insights to know how and when to connect with customers. Also, what metrics/KPIs are we aligned to and targeting? 5. Team lead/ownership: when questions arise, is there someone who makes the final call? Is it decision by committee? Voting? 6. Planning/direction: as individuals, we need direction. We need to know where we are going and what we need to do. Paint the future, establish the plan

Expectations will likely be tricky for you and leadership as you both may be figuring it out together. This highlights many opportunities and risks. 1. Understand if the role expects you to be primarily a technical CSM, a customer advocate (share feedback internally), expand CSM (more like an account manager to grow/renew accounts), a renewal manager, or other focus. This will significantly help you understand what the job is explicitly or implicitly stating 2. Continue to check in with leadership on expectations. Don't know go with what was stated at the beginning as you're in a more fluid dynamic 3. Ensure you have a written job description and return to that from time to time, and review with leadership at least quarterly for your first year. Ask questions like, "are these responsibilities still accurate? Would you make any changes?" This may seem silly, but having it written down helps highlight gaps and differences of opinion 4. Network! Network with other CSMs and CSM managers about their expectations and how they work and expect to work 5. Attend webinars, in person gatherings (if feasible), and other events to understand how others interpret CSM

This can vary wildly. Areas It depends… 1. CSM/Pooled CSM 2. Digital 3. Renewals 4. Support 5. Professional Services 6. Implementation 7. Education 8. Operations/strategy 9. Enablement So when you look at all those, a CS org structure could be complex even with a small team! My recommendation is to start small, ensure your definition of success and annual strategy is clear for where you need to go based on your product/service, is aligned with other teams, avoids the errors of 1) being overly complex, 2) being non-ambitious (thinking small), and 3) shooting for the moon and demoralizing yourself and the team. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to: 1. Establish your long term strategy 2. Seek wise counsel around you for what you should pursue and how to organize it given your long term strategy If you're looking for general org structures, there are many images on the internet that you can use to get started.

Before I start, know this is a difficult question to answer. Here is how I approach it: 1. Review the job description and make sure I understand it 2. Review it with my manager to ensure we're aligned. The point of this is uncovering any gaps between you and your manager 1. Note: if there are others involved, you should make sure they're aligned too! 3. Establish a priority list. I prefer Google Sheets/Excel so they can be stack ranked with health status (red, yellow, green) 1. Other fields 1. Description (in 1-2 sentences, what is this) 2. Status (New, in progress, completed...etc.) 3. Ownership (who owns this) 4. Notes 5. Due date / estimated completion date 2. Optional fields 1. Success Metric/goal 2. Exit criteria (what will exist when this is complete) 3. Monthly update fields (what was done during this month) The priority list may be overkill for some, so start small with just the title, description, status (RYG), and notes. I have found having a document like this helps everyone stay abreast of what's happening, knowing where to go with questions, and feeling confident that it is effectively managed.