Question Page

What are some common challenges you face as a customer success leader, and how do you overcome them?

John Brunkard
Sitecore Vice President of Customer Success APJ | Formerly Red Hat, Symantec, Blue Coat, Intel, Dell, DialogicNovember 3
  • Churn: Retaining existing customers, ensuring they achieve their desired outcomes, and receive value.

    • Proactively engage with customers to identify potential issues.

    • Regularly assess customer health and usage patterns.

    • Provide personalized recommendations and resources to address customer needs.

    • Implement a customer success plan with clear goals and milestones.

  • Downsell in Tough Economic Environments:

    • Highlight the cost-effectiveness of your product or service.

    • Emphasize the long-term value and ROI of your offering.

    • Collaborate with finance and sales teams to structure customized solutions.

  • Scaling Customer Success Operations:Expanding and optimizing your Customer Success team and resources.

    • Implement customer segmentation to allocate resources effectively.

    • Frequently review and tweak CSM assignments to customers. Focus on strategic growth accounts that are expanding or have potential to do so.

    • Use customer success management platforms for automation.

    • Develop clear customer journey maps with defined touchpoints. Focus on handover from sales and customer onboarding.

  • Managing Customer Expectations: Ensuring that CSMs can meet the promises made by the sales team.

    • Establish clear communication channels between Sales and Customer Success.

    • Sales handover process is critical. Conduct thorough handoff meetings from Sales to Customer Success where customer outcomes are clearly established.

    • Develop a customer playbook that aligns sales and success strategies.

  • Working with Other Customer-Facing Organizations: Collaborating effectively with Sales, Marketing, and Sales Development.

    • Establish clear communication channels and shared goals. Create a RA(S)CI responsibility matrix with swim lanes.

    • Collaborate on customer segmentation and targeting. Review quarterly and ensure alignment.

    • Share customer insights and feedback to enhance product offerings and messaging.

    • Conduct regular interdepartmental meetings and training.

  • Team Member Retention: Attracting and retaining top talent, fostering growth, and providing career paths

    • Offer continuous learning opportunities and professional development.

    • Recognize and reward top performers with promotions and bonuses.

    • Foster a positive work culture with a focus on well-being and work-life balance.

  • Partner Enablement:Ensuring that partners are fully trained and enabled to deliver successful implementations.

    • Ensure our partner team provide comprehensive training and certification programs for partners.

    • Ensure Partner Team offer ongoing support and resources for partners.

    • Ensure Partner Team establish quality standards and conduct regular partner performance assessments.

    • Create a clear communication and escalation process for partner-related issues.

  • Being More Proactive Than Reactive: Focusing on proactive customer success work rather than constantly firefighting issues.

    • Implement regular customer health checks and early warning systems.

    • Collaborate closely with product teams to prevent issues before they occur.

    • Adhere to established escalation procedures and ensure accountability for issue resolution.Let Escalation management take the lead and next step action on customer escalations.

    • Develop playbooks and resources (KB artilcles) to proactively address common customer challenges. Adapt Product Support KCS to Customer Success

    • Prioritize continuous improvement based on root cause analysis. Work with support teams and engineering to ensure this is an embedded best practice.

    • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to address customer issues and drive product improvements.

871 Views
Top Customer Success Mentors
Trevor Flegenheimer
Trevor Flegenheimer
AlertMedia VP, Customer Success
Rebecca Warren
Rebecca Warren
Eightfold Director, Customer Success
Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Senior Director of Customer Success
Caoimhe Carlos
Caoimhe Carlos
Udemy Vice President Global Customer Success
Nicole Alrubaiy
Nicole Alrubaiy
Jellyfish Senior Vice President, Customer Success
John Brunkard
John Brunkard
Sitecore Vice President of Customer Success APJ
Jessica Haas
Jessica Haas
Appcues Chief of Staff & VP of CX
Michael Maday
Michael Maday
Gainsight Senior Director, Customer Success
Natasha Evans
Natasha Evans
Hook Head of Customer
Conor Holmes
Conor Holmes
Confluent Director, Customer Success EMEA