What are the most critical things to focus upon bringing to the creation of a CS function?

I'd recommend starting with these key areas when creating a CS function:

• Defining customer success - what does successful use of your product or platform look like? When a customer in successful in your platform, what are the outcomes? What is considered optimal use of your product, gathered from a variety of perspectives (product, leadership, marketing, beta customers)?

• Defining the customer journey - considering how customer success is defined and what outcomes successful customers should strive for, what are the key touchpoints in the customer journey to promote that success? Examples include the onboarding experience, product adoption at certain time intervals, objective setting, progress check-ins, value-based discussions, renewal/commercial milestones. How does each customer-facing role engage in this journey?

• Consider the overall team structure and the roles and responsibilities of CS - Based on the customer journey, what role will CS play in promoting customer success? Will CS train/enable customers on the platform or will this be done digitally/self-service? How will CS onboard/implement customers? What customer engagements/moments will CS own?

• Establish team onboarding/training/upskilling - How will you ramp your CS team members? How will you ensure they maintain skills necessary for the job?

• Consider necessary tools - What tools/internal platforms will be needed for the success of the CS function? How will customer outcomes be tracked? How will CS manage day to day responsibilities? How will CS stay connected to internal functions such as engineering and support?

• Define measurements, reporting, and accountability metrics - Which customer metrics (adoption, health, sentiment) will best predict outcomes (churn, retention, renewal growth)? Which inputs (activities, customer engagements) promote those customer outcomes? How will your report on customer wins and risks? How will you hold the CS team accountable to these inputs/outputs?