As a hiring manager, what do the best customer success candidates have in common?

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.

I find the best CSMs are:

• Curious - they want to understand “why”. This translates well with customers as it means they have an innate desire to understand their business. It also means that they are likely to find the CSM role very rewarding.
• Builders - especially in the early days.
• Empathetic - Empathy has 2 components as a CSM: 1) it helps build a personal connection 2) it allows a CSM to more successfully advocate on a customer's behalf internally.

Customer Success is different in every organization. Some companies see CS as product experts or an extension of Support. I see Customer Success as Consultants and Change Agents and so I hire for the skill set that will ensure they succeed in a role at Salesloft. 3 main things I look for:

Leadership & accountability: Leadership isn’t always leading a team. It’s ownership of your book of business and ownership of the success of your customers. It’s being able to coach a customer and push back or manage expectations, when it’s in their interest. And accountability falls into this too. Are you accountable for your customer’s success?

Communication skills: This is imperative for anyone in Customer Success. Not just because we spend a lot of our time customer facing and we need to articulate key concepts in a succinct way, but because we need to understand how to adapt our communication style depending on the audience. CSMs need to understand what matters to a customer and then articulate their message in a way that will resonate. We also need to sometimes be able to deliver tough messages in a well thought-out way!

Organization & prioritization: CSMs need to have a method of organizing and prioritizing their day. When you’re partnering with multiple customers who are in different phases of maturity or “health”, prioritizing where you spend your time becomes really important. You also then have multiple stakeholders within each customer, goals to hit, queries to answer….organization is key!

The best candidates can relate their experience to how they will be successful in the role. They will have thought about scenario-based questions and be ready to describe how they have tackled specific problems and scenarios. I have found that having a reasonably open presentation brief in the interview process is an excellent way to understand how a candidate unpacks a brief. It's always telling how much research and preparation they have done for the presentation round. One common trait of successful candidates is whether they have used their connections to research the company and the role. If they have no other connections to the company, they ask for the opportunity before the presentation round. If your company is public, you will want to ask questions about the annual report or the latest earnings call. 

So, in summary, preparation and clarity in relating their experience to the role are good indicators of successful candidates. 

The best customer success candidates possess the following traits:

• Relationship Building Skills. The ability to develop positive, trust-based relationships while adding value to the client and team.
• Intellectual Capability & Curiosity. The desire to proactively seek out and learn about the unfamiliar or unknown.
• Communication Skills. The ability to express themselves clearly and engage others verbally and in writing; can determine the effective means and frequency of communication to keep all parties on the same page.

As a hiring manager, when evaluating candidates for a customer success role, there are several characteristics and traits I would ideally look for. The best customer success candidates often have these in common:

1. Operational Rigor: The idea that irrespective of how many customers one has, a CSM can’t afford to take their eyes off the ball at any point. On any given day, one must: follow that 24-hour service level agreement (SLA), write that stakeholder ghost email, reach out to the engineers for technology insight, track metrics, provide risk updates, read those product release notes, and create a documented path to success for all your customers. A CSM role includes bringing together both short-term and long-term goals to paint a complete picture of what is going on with their customer. That means we have a checklist running for every customer, the discipline to adhere to the checklist without fail, and a willingness to iterate this checklist for continuous improvement. To put it concisely, It is about bringing discipline, thoroughness, consistency, and conscientiousness in everything we do. It is also about taking the end-to-end ownership of your customer experience.

2. Problem-Solving Skills: The best customer success candidates can quickly understand a problem, think critically, and come up with effective solutions.

3. Customer-Centric Mindset: They genuinely care about customer satisfaction and are committed to providing the best customer experience possible.

4. Empathy and Active Listening: Top candidates are able to understand and empathize with customers' issues. They're great listeners, and they're adept at interpreting the needs and feelings of the customer, even when they're not explicitly stated.

5. Strong Interpersonal Skills: Building and maintaining relationships is a key aspect of customer success, so strong interpersonal skills are a must. They should be able to interact effectively with a variety of individuals and groups.

6. Resilience and Patience: Working in customer success can sometimes be challenging, with difficult customers or issues. The best candidates are resilient, patient, and able to maintain their composure in challenging situations.

7. Organizational Skills: Customer success managers often juggle multiple tasks, accounts, or issues at once. Excellent organizational skills, including the ability to prioritize tasks effectively, are crucial.

8. Product/Industry Knowledge: Understanding the product/service and the industry is important in order to solve customers' problems effectively and to provide insightful advice.

9. Proactive Attitude: The best candidates don't just wait for problems to arise, but actively work on preventing potential issues and looking for opportunities to improve the customer experience.

Remember that not all great candidates will tick all these boxes, and it's also important to consider their potential to grow and develop in the role.

When interviewing new Customer Success Managers, I prioritize strong communication skills and professionalism as fundamental requirements for the role. Additionally, I seek evidence of their proven track record in essential role-related skills. I also inquire about instances where they've demonstrated "Extreme Ownership" of accounts and situations, along with lessons learned from past missteps, whether internal or with customers.

The intangibles: assertiveness, strong sense of ownership, business acumen, very strong communication at the exec level, soft-sales experience, technical acumen (at a high level), 

All of these are important, but honestly without assertiveness & sense of ownership - the others just relegate the CSM down the stack in terms of customer engagement - i.e. at the admin level. Sales will not let you at the exec level of customer engagement unless you can really lean in and demonstrate business value to the customer.

These are the top-5 characteristics I look for and interview around! I've also found these traits to be useful and necessary for any CX role, giving your team member optionality if they want to pivot their career down the road:

1. They’re owners. They feel ownership of the customer & product and treat their domain as their own business. They follow through on commitments with the agility to change priorities when circumstances change.

2. They’re assertive. They regularly train and lead customers to an outcome and do so with empathy, not aggression.

3. They’re emotionally intelligent. They read the room. Beyond small talk and finding common ground, they align their messages with identified needs and wants and build the right relationship.

4. They’re perceptive. They filter product and operational changes using perceptive skills to recognize how the changes will affect the customer.

5. They have social stamina. They have strong social fortitude and actually like working with people. They have a positive outlook and authentic concern for others. 

Fundamentally I look for a positive attitude , aptitude (growth mindset) and values alignment. Then to expand further I see the following traits as common among the nest CSM candidates that I shortlist;

1. Excellent communication skills: The best candidates have a natural ability to build rapport with key stakeholder at all levels, articulate their thoughts clearly, and adapt their communication style to fit the situation.

2. Customer-centric mindset: The best customer success candidates are obsessed with delivering value to customers. They have a deep understanding of customer needs and are committed to helping them achieve their goals. The come across as trusted advisors and customer advocates.

3. Results-driven: Customer success managers are accountable for the outcomes they deliver. The best candidates are motivated by results and are always looking for ways to improve their performance. They are accountable and dependable.

4. Team player: Customer success is a team effort, and the best candidates are collaborative and supportive of their colleagues. They work well in cross-functional teams and are willing to share knowledge and best practices.

5. Strategic thinking and business accuman: Customer success is more than just reactive problem-solving; it requires a strategic approach. The best candidates can think critically, develop long-term plans, and execute on them to drive business growth. Customer success managers with strong business acumen have a deep understanding of their customers' industries, markets, and business models, as well as the broader economic and competitive landscape. They use this knowledge to develop and implement strategies that align with their customers' business objectives, while also driving revenue growth and profitability for their own organization.

Fundamentally I look for a positive attitude , aptitude (growth mindset) and values alignment. Then to expand further I see the following traits as common among the nest CSM candidates that I shortlist;

1. Excellent communication skills: The best candidates have a natural ability to build rapport with key stakeholder at all levels, articulate their thoughts clearly, and adapt their communication style to fit the situation.

2. Customer-centric mindset: The best customer success candidates are obsessed with delivering value to customers. They have a deep understanding of customer needs and are committed to helping them achieve their goals. The come across as trusted advisors and customer advocates.

3. Results-driven: Customer success managers are accountable for the outcomes they deliver. The best candidates are motivated by results and are always looking for ways to improve their performance. They are accountable and dependable.

4. Team player: Customer success is a team effort, and the best candidates are collaborative and supportive of their colleagues. They work well in cross-functional teams and are willing to share knowledge and best practices.

5. Strategic thinking and business accuman: Customer success is more than just reactive problem-solving; it requires a strategic approach. The best candidates can think critically, develop long-term plans, and execute on them to drive business growth. Customer success managers with strong business acumen have a deep understanding of their customers' industries, markets, and business models, as well as the broader economic and competitive landscape. They use this knowledge to develop and implement strategies that align with their customers' business objectives, while also driving revenue growth and profitability for their own organization.

I love when the candidate is smiling and have friendly energy. That tells me if he/she is making me feel comfortable, it is highly probable that he/she will do the same with the customers.

These are a few skills I like to look at:

1. Empathy and customer focus

2. Analytical

3. Tech Savvy

4. Resilence

5. Comfortable wearing different hats

6. Think out of the box

7. Eager to learn ** This is very important**

If they come to the interview very prepared about the company and how their skills or experience can add value. In that case, it shows a genuine interest in being part of your company, plus shows passion about what they would be doing.