AMA: RocketReach Senior Director, Customer Success & Sales, Wynne Brown on Customer Success Interviews

This is a great question because autonomy is such a key trait for a CSM. And since CSMs come from a variety of backgrounds, getting a clear take on someone's autonomy is critical. Prompt the candidate to tell you about their autonomy by asking them directly: can you tell me about a work situation where you owned an outcome? What you're looking for here is their sense that they are responsible for driving outcomes - that ownership of outcomes is the autonomy you're looking for since they owe the Customer an answer or solution. But within the autonomy of being the responsible party, you need to also hear that they collaborate effectively. CSMs always have to rely on the contributions of others from sales, to account management, to product to support. Your best gauge is specificity. Is the story vibrant? Told in a clear way with a beginning, middle and end? If the answer sounds mushy, it is.

A red flag that worries me is a lack of detail and variety in the stories about your work. If you are a great candidate, you will have detailed stories that show collaboration and have a beginning, middle and end... and more than one story! It doesn't mean that you have to have direct experience with relationship management but any experience you have should showcase the key traits necessary to be a great CSM: 1. collaboration with various colleagues 2. focus on understanding the challenge and how to orchestrate a solution 3. what you learned, how you would do it better/faster/stronger in the future 4. not lean on just one story across the whole interview panel which then makes it seem like you are a one-trick pony

The most successful CSMs have these things in common: 1. Human-centric: a real level of caring and interest in helping others succeed 2. Curiosity: only a curious mind can lead to the best answers, not just the ones that are already created 3. Tenacity: an inability to let go until things are complete I firmly believe that most folks can learn any content, software, system or process. What cannot be taught is how a person is wired: what they're innately good at, how they think, their passion for collaboration and results.

The best way to improve your interviewing skills is good old-fashioned practice. And it is key to practice with another human so you can get feedback on how you are telling your stories. Customer Success is all about humans, so practicing in a vacuum won't give you what you need to improve. I love this expression: "Practice until you get it right; then practice until you can't get it wrong." You will want to have stories ready to showcase: 1. Your curiosity and aptitude for learning new things 2. An illustration about how you collaborate with others 3. Specific stories (beginning, middle, conclusion) about your work

What problem have you solved in your work that you are most proud of? This is a great question for a few reasons: 1. If they fumble for an answer, they haven't been reflecting on their experience and professional journey so that is an easy red flag to spot 2. Their answer tells you a great deal about their real values - what is really important to them - and lets you get to know them more deeply. If they've said they value collaboration but then their story is all about them solving a problem on their own with zero collaboration, they don't practice what they preach. 3. Do they light up when they tell you the story? If not, they aren't a "dig it" for solving problems. 4. Does the story have a beginning, middle and end? The organization of their answer tells you a great deal about how they communicate and how their mind works. There isn't one best answer that stands out, but the common traits of great answers are specificity, logical telling in the order of events, and that they tell the story with a big smile on their face because their delight just can't be dampened.

The most common mistake I see candidates make during an interview for a customer success position is a lack of direct and specific "data" whether that is literal data ("I managed a book of business that consisted of 100 customers. These 100 customers had an ACV of $55k and an average of 12 users.") or story data (describe the customer journey, a problem spotted in that journey, who I collaborated with to solve on what timeline with what milestones and how we knew we succeeded).

Here are the key questions I will cover with candidates. Typically I will meet with candidates in the first round for thirty minutes to cover the basic "wiring" - are they collaborative? are they human-centric? are they curious? - and the rest in a final round when we have a few finalists. There is no proper answer except an authentic one. What is the best customer relationship you built? What is the worst customer relationship you built? How do you think about measuring customer success? What is your favorite thing you’ve taught somebody? When have you innovated a solution for a customer? What is your proudest achievement with a customer? What was your worst failure with a customer? What is the area you need to work on most to be a world class CSM? What are your questions for me?

The best resources are research on the folks interviewing you and the company itself. If someone shows up without understanding our history as people and as a company, that is a huge red flag for me. As far as general interview resources, practice with yourself out loud or with a friend. Only by practicing out loud will you know if you're giving good answers. The answer in your head isn't always the best to say! Practice! Redundant with another question, here is my list of questions I will cover: What is the best customer relationship you built? What is the worst customer relationship you built? How do you think about measuring customer success? What is your favorite thing you’ve taught somebody? When have you innovated a solution for a customer? What is your proudest achievement with a customer? What was your worst failure with a customer? What is the are you need to work on most to be a world class CSM? What are your questions for me?

The phrasing of this question is interesting to me since I can't know what the asker's definition of 'above and beyond' is... so let me just say that there is a level of commitment in preparation that should always be fulfilled. However, if you go beyond this level, it can get weird (e.g. don't get weird with a hyperlevel of detail about my life as portrayed on LinkedIn, for example). The professional level of preparation for interviews: 1. Research who you are meeting with. Notice their experience, where they've worked, major topics they post about. Do mention things that you are curious about or would like to learn more about. Don't be performative to basically name drop them to themselves. 2. Research the company. Search news, the CEO's posts, anything you can find, if you can trial the product then do that for sure. If they're public, read their quarterly filings to get a sense of their major corporate initiatives. This includes gleaning what you can from LinkedIn re: structure of teams, who reports to whom, etc. 3. Be organized for how you will manage your job pipeline. Have a tracking sheet with data points for each opportunity so you stay really organized. Prepare the questions you will ask across all interviews so you can compare each opportunity apples-to-apples. 4. Follow up after your interviews. Thank each interviewer and include something substantive: what you learned from them, the questions they answered that were important to you, emphasize how you see this as a mutual fit.