AMA: mParticle Director, Customer Success Operations, Christine Vienna Knific on Developing Your Customer Success Career

Question: What does customer success mean to you? What is it, what is it not? Why it's good: It's open-ended, and gives the candidate a big opportunity to talk about CS as a field, the success of a customer on an individual basis, and more. Example of a great answer: "To me, Customer Success is the driving of client business outcomes by providing value through our product and services." From there, the best candidates talk about being able to do this at scale (do more with less!), using technology and data to drive results, and give examples of how they actually prove ROI to customers. 

The best metrics to use to justify a pay raise are those that tie to revenue and direct value impact (internally and customer-facing). I like to keep a private list (for example, Asana) of the projects I've worked on and my contributions to them so I can refer to it during performance reviews, promotion advocacy, etc. Revenue metrics - must be quatifiable: * Net Revenue Retention in my portfolio * Expansion revenue * Renewal win rate (this is a ratio or percentage, not a $ amount) * CSQLs provided to sales (Customer Success Qualified Leads) Value Impact: * Significant contributions of customer advocacy events, including customer speakers / event participation, referencability, creation of case studies * Creation of 1:many customer-facing value drivers, such as webinars, podcasts, training series, enablement materials

As a customer success manager, one of the most important skills someone can develop is setting the right expectations and getting alignment between internal and external stakeholders. The biggest frustrations I've exeperienced come from when we haven't reached alignment. The best CSMs do this as part of their process whenever they work with someone new - internal or external. For example, a CSM's top priorities when being introduced to a client should be to set expectations about what they can offer the client in their working relationship (hint: a strategic, goal-oriented thought partner, not technical support), and to align on the client's business goals. When a CSM does this successfully they'll have meaningful interactions with the customer throughout the relationship and can line all the work they do together up to the client's business goals. When the CSM ties the value they and their product can provide directly to the customer's business goals, they prove the relationship to be important and ensure the renewal. What's frustrating is when they DON'T reach alignment. We've all had an experience similar to this one: you start the client meeting, introducing yourself and wanting to learn more about the customer's business, when suddenly the customer derails. He says something like, "hey, before we talk about that I was wondering, how do I pull a report from xyz product?" It puts the CSM in a difficult and frustrating position. On one hand, you want to be helpful. And let's be real, you're going to show them how to pull the report. On the other, you have so much more strategic value to offer the customer than providing technical Q&A. If you're not careful, you could spend the entire conversation answering tactical questions. What's worse is you will now have misalignment between the high level value you can provide and what the client will expect from your relationship, and you'll leave the meeting with no deeper insight into their business for the future. However, the best CSMs can use situations of misalignment as opportunities. "Oh! You'd like to pull a report on the weekly scheduler activities? I can definitely help with that. So that I make sure we do it in the best way, can you help me understand what you're going to do with the report?" Or, "the product doesn't currently have the ability to export that information, but we do have a lot of ways you can work with it. Can you help me understand what you'd like to do so we can work together on it?" The CSMs can then use their responses to dig deeper into the customer's goals and daily workflows, and be a partner in problem-solving and achieving business goals. 

The most important things to consider when assessing a new opportunity with a different company are: * The company's trajectory. Is there a viable path to success for the organization, and are you comfortable with that path? (i.e. are they profitable? If not, what level of ambiguity works for you?) * The definition of Customer Success at the company. With Customer Success being a relatively new field, the term can be used in a lot of different ways. It's really important to make sure the company's definition of CS lines up with yours. * The company's definition of success in the role and as an organization. What metrics do they use? What does "good" look like?

The most important skills for a Customer Success Manager are: * Ability to conduct discovery with a customer. In sales, we've heard the phrase "Always be closing." In Customer Success, we should Always be Discovering. This means that every conversation a CSM has with a customer is an opportunity to ask why, learn how, and dig deeper into the customer's business goals. The more we know about the client's goals and business, the more valuable we bcome. * Setting expectations early and often. CSMs must be able to (tactifully!) set expectations with customers, and set expectations with internal cross-functional partners. * Objection Handling. Most Customer Success Managers are, by nature, people-pleasers. We want to make customers happy and solve their problems, and when everything goes according to plan, that's easy to do! What's more difficult is when everything doesn't go perfectly, the product doesn't actually answer all of their needs, when the price is too high, when there's a breaking defect... the list goes on. A CSM has to be able to handle objections with grace and prove value even in difficult circumstances. * Presentation and Interpersonal Skills. CSMs have to be ready at all times to address talking points of an agenda, lead conversations in a personable way, and present new ideas. Customer Success Managers must be comfortable giving presentations and leading the relationship with the customer.

There are so many career paths for a Customer Success Manager! I don't view the CSM's path as necessarily linear, but a "typical" one might be: 1. Customer Success Associate 2. Customer Success Manager 3. Senior or Enterprise Customer Success Manager 4. Strategic Customer Success Manager 5. Manager of Customer Success 6. Director of Customer Success 7. Head of Customer Success That said, there are a lot of different specializations, such as Customer Success Operations, Renewal Management, or large-scale Customer Success (sometimes called 1:many or "digital"). These specializations are great goals for someone who has been in Customer Success for several years and would like to advance in paths that are not necessarily management.