AMA: Oracle VP Customer Success & Solution Architect, Manil Vasantha on Customer Success Soft and Hard Skills

Even fresh graduates come with some set of soft skills. A good communicator who worked in small groups on projects or even played on a team comes with valuable soft skills. Hard skills can be learned on the job and over time. Great question. However, it gives little room for new graduates. You either come in as a seasoned CSM or a fresh graduate/newbie CSA (Associate). Some are born with soft skills or are often on a debate team, drama, business classes, etc. But you typically pick these skills up during school/college. Soft skills like communication, teamwork and working inter-department help navigate any work environment. Relation building is a critical soft skill you must develop quickly when joining any new team. This also helps you hone in a critical skill, leadership. When you start a new role, Hard skills are not an expectation for CSMs. Domain knowledge would be nice to have. For example, SaaS Security products may require Security knowledge. If you are an excellent communicator, you can set expectations that you will follow up on a question. Customers are very understanding and don’t expect you to know all the answers. The other skills that I would classify as hard skills are Interpersonal skills and the ability to work within a team. Problem-solving skills, if you have a technical support background, this would be second nature. Else, this may be an essential skill to learn. Shadow the support team and add this to your training plan. Time management, I have twin boys ready to go to college. Each of them is working on their college apps. One proactively submitted them by the 2nd week of December. The other wanted to test if 11:59:59 breaks the bank. No matter your style, I am not asking you to change it, but the rule of thumb, MEET or EXCEED expectations, ALWAYS. This is how you develop a relationship with your customers and earn their respect. Finally - being well-organized is another critical skill you need to get on board quickly. Else this is not a role for you. Nutshell, Customer Success is an excellent role for any college graduate with a suitable talent set. This sets a path to a great career in Product Marketing/Product Management/Inside Sales/Sales.

Communication and mental fortitude are essential soft skills, and Product and Industry knowledge are essential hard skills one must have as a core strength. Customer Success Associates/Customer Success Managers/Director Customer Success - all need to have or eventually have some essential soft skills. • Communication: (both skills of speaking and active listing) • Verbal: the ability to communicate clearly in an individual or group setting. • Non-Verbal: In conversation with the customer - 1:1 or group setting- non-verbal cues play an essential role: body language, Facial expression, and Vocal tone. • Witten: the ability to communicate Cleary in any written communication. • Listening: There is a reason why we have two ears and one month. We need to listen twice as much. • Interpersonal: Build and maintain relationships with diverse folks from different cultures and countries. • Emotional intelligence: We are often told to put ourselves in the customer’s shoes. Understanding and managing emotions in oneself and others is crucial for effective conflict resolution, active listening, and building trust. • Mental-fortitude: Innate, ingrained desire to help others unconditionally. We may have a crisis on hand - production outage, DevOPS, Engineering, and Customer pulling their hair - the sky is falling, and indeed, financial loss - YOU are the calmest person in the room. • Navigation skills: You need to be a master negotiator. You will not win every battle, nor can or should you expect PM to accept all your ER to be approved; there are other CSMs and new logos that will take precedence. What do you do, you bring your charm to work—your negotiation skills. • Adaptability: Today’s world is changing. Change is the ONLY constant. The ability to adjust to changing customer needs and priorities and to be flexible in finding solutions. • Problem-solving skills: No one, including the customer, expects you to have all the answers. The ability to quickly and effectively identify and resolve customer issues is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term engagement. • Assertiveness and Persistence - the customer is NOT ignoring you. They are just busy and have other priorities. Being persistent and assertive - get your attention WHEN required. Remember - the customer is not available cannot be an excuse. • Knowledge of Tools (soft and hard skills): CRM (Jira/SFDC/HubSpot/Zoho etc.), Salesforce.com, Gainsight. Analytical Tools like Tableau, SAS/ PowerBI, and Google Analytics. You should get some training as part of your onboarding; however, self-help is the best help. As for hard skills, some key areas that customer success managers should focus on include: • Product knowledge: a deep understanding of the product or service can help customer success managers troubleshoot and provide solutions to customer issues. This is tactical. But CSMs must also engage very closely with Product Management and Product Marketing. They must be up to speed on new products in the pipeline. Identify both very and horizontals of the product suite. Pick the impacted “diamond” customer and bring them into the steering meeting to help influence product direction. This is sure to keep the customer engaged and a promoter. • Technical skills: navigating technical tools and software used in customer support and engagement. This is still tactical, but engaging with TS and moving your customers’ cases will be an excellent tool to help alleviate any relationship issue. • Analytical skills/Data analysis: the ability to analyze customer data and metrics to identify trends and opportunities for improvement. Data should contain how customers utilize every channel offered as part of their QBR. • Project management: the ability to manage customer projects and initiatives effectively to ensure timely delivery and customer satisfaction. • Industry knowledge: the ability to stay current on industry developments and trends, as well as an understanding of best practices in customer success management. Remember, change occurs faster than we can handle - which means we need to be up to speed on the nature of the customer’s business - educate him even on what the competition offers and how you differentiate. Progressive Insurance model, if giving their insurance quote and their competition quote, clearly shows how they differentiate themselves from the competition. And also demonstrates their superior service.

Some essential hard skills that are considered must-haves for a customer success leader include: (must have does not necessarily mean now - you can and should be trained on the job) • Analytical skills: the ability to analyze customer data and metrics to identify trends and opportunities for improvement, as well as a deep understanding of customer behavior and the ability to create actionable insights from that data. • Project management skills: managing customer projects and initiatives effectively to ensure timely delivery and customer satisfaction. • Technical skills: navigating technical tools and software used in customer support and engagement. • Product knowledge: a deep understanding of the product or service can help customer success leaders effectively troubleshoot and provide solutions to customer issues. • Problem-solving skills: the ability to quickly and effectively identify and resolve customer issues is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty. • Knowledge of Tools (soft and hard skills): CRM (Jira/SFDC/HubSpot/Zoho etc.), CSM (Gainsight, Einstein, Totango, ChurnZero), and Analytical Tools like (Tableau, SAS/ PowerBI, and Google Analytics). You should get some training as part of your onboarding; however, self-help is the best help. As for nice-to-haves skills: • Industry knowledge: the ability to stay current on industry developments and trends, as well as an understanding of best practices in customer success management. • Financial analysis skills: the ability to evaluate and analyze financial data, such as customer revenue, churn rate, and lifetime value, to identify opportunities for growth and improvement. • Business Acumen: the ability to understand the company's goals and align customer success strategies. • Leadership skills: the ability to inspire, motivate and lead a team of customer success managers and associates to achieve their goals. • Communication skills: the ability to clearly and effectively communicate and collaborate with customers and other stakeholders/inter-department and intra-department are essential for building and maintaining positive relationships.

Retaining talent is a challenge for any company at any point in time. Customer Success is only a piece of the puzzle. Employees quit because they are unhappy with the culture, compensation, growth, and manager. Let us start with culture, specifically around Customer Success. To see a company’s customers succeed, it must be goal mandated top-down. The CEO and the e-staff aim to enable and empower the Customer Success team to create a holistic positive customer experience. Without this - there does not exist a customer-first mentality within the company. When this happens - Customer Success is the first of a few teams in the firing line. Besides this, overall work culture is also essential. Overall compensation is a huge criterion I am not too concerned about as the industry has been recognizing this, and I have seen compensation now up to industry standard. There is still debate on whether a CSM should be comped on renewals. That should be slated for a more extended debate. The recognition and reward mechanism is more important than base/bonus comp. Does your manager have clear KPIs for stretch goals? Is there a monetary reward tied to it? How is it celebrated? Instantaneous recognition and reward mechanisms work best among groups. Growth - As part of success - our job is to create a roadmap for our customers and their growth. What has your manager done for you lately, for your growth? Employees are often more likely to stay with a company that provides career advancement and skill development opportunities. As you contribute your skills to the company, the company should invest in you to develop new skills. You need to be in a constant state of ‘learning.’ You stop ‘working’ when you stop ‘learning.’ Flexibility - Working from home is a significant initiative. Bring your pets or kids to work day. Every day a celebration day - is a day you want to come to work! Last but certainly not least - is the Manager. Empowering and enabling Customer Success Team to deliver top-notch service is essential. Does your manager enable you, and is your manager available when you need them? Simple things weekly 1:1. Does your manager listen and do something about your suggestions? Do they value it or respect it? Do they treat you like you want to be treated or make you uncomfortable or out of place? Ultimately, retaining top talent requires a combination of strategies that focus on providing employees with competitive compensation, opportunities for growth and development, a positive work culture, recognition, and a sense of ownership over their work. This requires constant investment, even in the best employee. That individual focus where the employee is not the most crucial asset in the company will put the company on a pedestal and thus put the customers on a pedestal. The bottom line, you always have options!

Core skills are a combination of both soft and hard skills. Communication skills, analytical skills, problem-solving skills, product knowledge, and inter-departmental and intra-departmental relationship building. Emotional intelligence is something you must have and believe at your core. This is the only thing that will bail you out when all else fails - your gut! Trust it! Adaptability, as I said, change is the only constant. Be fluid and nimble to customers changing landscape. Empathy puts you in the customer’s shoes. Active listening skills do give you an edge tom building trust. If you are new to your job, even more so. Remember, two ears and one mouth for a reason. Live in the zone, a customer-centric culture. You may need to play an instrumental part in influencing this change within the company.

For me personally, the decision was easy. I moved from technical support to Customer Success. They combine in what we deliver called Customer Experience—transitioning a customer from pre-sales to post-sales and then a steady state followed by expansion. It is called the customer journey or roadmap. Influencing a ‘Promoter’ and a reference customer is a powerful and exciting feeling. This roadmap is driving thru an effective success program. It is essential to ensure that the customer journey ties directly to the growth of the customer. ‘What is in it for me’ and ‘Why should I do it.’ Historically there were package software products where we shipped diskettes and CDs to the customer. Today there is instant gratification via SaaS and Cloud delivery methodologies. Selling both have changed in many ways, and yet not so much. Changed from potentially selling shelf-ware to more value-based selling. However, the sales comp structure is different. Sales are often compensated based on new logs and new revenue. They stay engaged (sometimes)if there is a continued source of revenue, aka Beachhead or a potential large reference client. In some ways, sales and customer acquisition become a quarterly agenda and tactical focus. Customer Success, on the other hand, fills in this very important air gap. Success builds a long-term relationship with the customer. They map a customer’s journey from onboarding to go-live to additional use cases/verticals and adoption. Remember, Success in no way - Support. Support is ticket based reactive. Success is a program-based future roadmap for the customer. Success focuses on long-term relationships and building intrinsic value. Building and growing through nurturing a customer throughout their lifetime. In many ways, Success plays the most crucial role in the company because they retain customers and create value. The more value they create, the more sticker they are. The bottom line is that Wall Street is happy! Nutshell, a fundamental company structure, can only be built with these three pillars, Sales/Success/Support.

While it takes many qualities to be a good Customer Success individual, it takes a lot less to become one. You can transition into a Customer Success role from any role. In my career, I have seen many folks transition into Customer Success roles. Not because they were in a dead-end job but because they wanted to seek a different challenge. If you currently have a customer-facing job and managing some customer-centric projects. You should be able to pick any soft/hard skills required for the job. It would help if you were given the opportunity. As far as education requirements, it depends on the company that is hiring. Transitioning or a career shift can be challenging, not for the faint of heart. It will have its ups and down, and you need to have that end goal in mind and chase it. Persistency pays!

For recent graduates who are interested in entering the field of customer success, there are a few critical pieces of advice to keep in mind: • Gaining relevant experience: Look for opportunities to gain experience in customer-facing roles, such as internships or entry-level positions in customer service or support. This will help you develop the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in a customer role. Or you could also apply to more junior roles, such as success associate, and learn on the job. • Develop your soft skills: Strong communication, problem-solving, and customer service skills - some of this can be obtained by shadowing senior Success folks, Support folks. • Build your industry knowledge - Understand the industry’s products, services, and customers. Talk to Product Management, Product Marketing. • Gaining technical skills: Acquire technical skills (if required) such as product knowledge, data analysis, and project management. • Be open to learning and be persistent. This is the hard part. Don’t give up! Overall, it's essential to be proactive in seeking opportunities to gain experience, develop relevant skills, and network with professionals in the field. You can do it!

The best customer success candidates: • Communication skills: The ability to communicate with customers and all stakeholders clearly and effectively. • Customer-centric mindset: The ability to put oneself in the customer's shoes and understand their needs, pain points, and goals. A genuine passion for helping customers succeed and a strong sense of ownership over their success. • Adaptability: The ability to adjust to changing customer needs and priorities and to be flexible in finding solutions. • Empathy and active listening: Managing emotions is crucial for effective conflict resolution, active listening, and building trust. • Project management skills: Managing customer projects and initiatives effectively to ensure timely delivery and customer satisfaction. • Industry knowledge: Understanding industry trends, best practices, and competitive landscape. • Analytical skills: The ability to analyze customer data and metrics to identify trends and opportunities for improvement. • Product knowledge: A deep understanding of the product or service. • Problem-solving skills: The ability to identify and resolve customer issues quickly and effectively. • Team player: The ability to work well with others and a willingness to collaborate with other teams and stakeholders to achieve customer success and effectively communicate and collaborate with other teams and departments within the organization. I put this in order of my personal preference. For a mid-level CSR/CSM, I expect the top five. Industry knowledge will be a great asset and a nice to have. Rest, I expect them to pick up on the job.