AMA: Udemy Vice President Global Customer Success , Caoimhe Carlos on Developing Your Customer Success Career

One of my favourite CS interview questions is some variation of "Can you share a time when you received constructive feedback from a peer, manager, or cross-functional partner in your previous role as a Customer Success Manager? How did you deal with it, and how did it impact your actions after the fact?" The reason I like this question is that the way the candidate answers it tells me a lot about their self awareness, intelligence, their ability to handle difficult situations with maturity, hum ...Read More

The biggest frustration for me as a customer success manager was the lack of a shared success plan with my customer. My objective was always to make the customer as successful as possible and ensure they felt their investment was worthwhile and directly contributed to the company achieving its goals. Not having clarity on what that success looked like for the customer made it challenging to deliver on this and so I had to invest heavily in building the relationship, asking effective open ended q ...Read More

No technical skills are not always necessary to be an effective CSM, however having a basic understanding of technical concepts can he helpful particularly if working in certain subsegments of the tech industry. The level technical skill required is also to a degree dependent on the company and the scope of the role. Some CS roles in deeply technical companies may require you to have a level of familiarity with technical concepts however for many CS roles this is not the case. However in either ...Read More

The future for customer success is incredibly bright! The role of CS is becoming increasingly important both for organisations and for customers. Customer retention and loyalty are the lifeblood of healthy organisations and CS directly drives these outcomes through making sure customers derive value from their investment. Exceptional customer success can act as a core differentiator in market and by investing in CS, organisations can realise benefits not only in terms of retention and engagement ...Read More

There are a number of key skills that will assist in making the transition from Senior CS Manager to Director+, that range from strategic thinking and decision making to leadership and critical thinking however I will elaborate on three of the core soft skills which have a high propensity to positively impact career development in the context of CS. Change management - change is constant and effective change management is a highly valuable skill for leaders at any level and especially for senior ...Read More

The tech industry is broad and the role of a CSM can vary widely depending on the type of role or company you are interested in however below are some tips which may be helpful: Focus on skills - review job postings to determine the skill set your target companies are looking for in their CSMs. Previous experience and titles are less important that the right skill set - many of the best CSMs I have worked with did not come from CS or tech backgrounds; however they all had the right skill set tha ...Read More