AMA: SurveyMonkey Sr Director of Customer Success, Cormac Kelly on Customer Success Leadership

One of the initiatives I'm most proud of, has been the creation and evolution of the Customer Success Qualified Lead (CSQL) motion. In SurveyMonkey, CSMs have responsibilities around expansion and NRR - which in my opinion is a critical element to the CS role - value selling applies to both retention and expansion. As we partner with our sales team to expand customers footprint in the product, the Success team are in an incredible position to truly understand how the customer uses the product, a ...Read More

There are tons! I think it can be summarized by the fact that we live in constant change, so to be a CS leader (or maybe just work in tech?) you have to be way to the right on that change curve, as its up to you to help lead your team through changes. Sometimes you have insight to and can plan for the changes(*strategy, org changes, product releases) sometimes not (market conditions, customer changes, etc) and you have no control over what is happening. Therefore, its crucial to keep change mana ...Read More

I love this question - because this is a hard one to get right, and to be honest, its something that needs to be constantly worked on. The place I like to start from is that there needs to be a shared understanding of priorities and goals, and a realization that sometimes these goals will overlap nicely, but sometimes they will not. If you take the example of customer success and sales, sales want to expand a customer, but customer success sometimes feel that to keep the customer at any costs is ...Read More

My leadership philosophy at its core values remains the same but with regards to how I apply it, has changed over time. My clear values as a leader are A = Accountability - for you as a leader and your team C = Consistency - the best businesses have structure as to how they are run T = Teamwork - customer engagement is a team sportI constantly work on how I communicate to my team, that's always the area thats most important. And I go through ups and downs on that - when your busy or in times of ...Read More

Customer success is an amazing discipline, because it exposes you to so many elements within your business, while keeping you close to the customer, and the product. This can set you up for so many opportunities to grow. Some tips I have when you want to be a Excel at what you do right now. The best leaders need to show that what they do and how they do it is important Be conscious of being a strong collaborator or partner - leaders are in a constant state of collaboration/conflict and need to b ...Read More