What are the biggest frustrations you have as a customer success manager?

As a customer success manager, one of the most important skills someone can develop is setting the right expectations and getting alignment between internal and external stakeholders. The biggest frustrations I've exeperienced come from when we haven't reached alignment.  The best CSMs do this as part of their process whenever they work with someone new - internal or external. For example, a CSM's top priorities when being introduced to a client should be to set expectations about what they can ...Read More

I think the most frustrating thing about Customer Success is that without agreement across the organization about the importance and role of Customer Success, it can become a catch-all. As the quarterback of the customer relationship, that means all things can fall to the CSM. If there are not very clear swim lanes, paths of escalation and role definition, this means the CSM may soon find themselves as; Customer Support Collections Specialist Renewal/Contract Manager IB seller Product Specialist ...Read More

I would answer this the same way I answered the "what's your least favorite thing of being a CSM:" It’s been a number of years since I’ve been a CSM (which I still believe is one of the most difficult customer-facing roles!), but as a Leader, I think it’s wildly important to stay on top of how your CSMs are feeling about their work and their place in the organization. Two common themes I hear from CSMs regarding what frustrates them are: 1. The Internal Scavenger Hunt Chasing down internal peopl ...Read More

Weak leadership: A leadership that:  Does not establish clear RACI for the role Do not have clearly defined metrics or a clear path to achieve them Does not adequately staff CS operations team to help the CSM team Does not invest in tooling to provide people with the right CS tools to do their job well Does not remove organizational barriers for the CSM with cross-functional leaders such as services, support, products, sales etc. Does not establish clear Rules of Engagement to work with other te ...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

Here are some of the things that can frustrate CSMs from time to time. When the role is misunderstood or confused with that of Customer Service or a single point of contact for everything. When everything related to the Customer is dumped on Customer Success.   When internal teams are unresponsive or uncooperative. This can hinder the CSMs ability to provide high-quality engagement with the customer and be the trusted advisor. When sales teams fail to do a proper handover when the booking is com ...Read More

It's still a misunderstood function, and there are many different ways to deploy customer success, leaving a consistently referenceable best practice methodology challenging. From my perspective, CS should not be seen as a cost centre but as a function that can drive retention and growth and impact a business's bottom line. It's crucial that CS leaders are data-orientated and that they can use metrics to demonstrate why companies should deploy CSMs, scale resources, and other relevant roles that ...Read More