What are the most important skills (both tactical and intangible) that are must-have for customer success managers?

The most important skills for a Customer Success Manager are:

• Ability to conduct discovery with a customer. In sales, we've heard the phrase "Always be closing." In Customer Success, we should Always be Discovering. This means that every conversation a CSM has with a customer is an opportunity to ask why, learn how, and dig deeper into the customer's business goals. The more we know about the client's goals and business, the more valuable we bcome. 
• Setting expectations early and often. CSMs must be able to (tactifully!) set expectations with customers, and set expectations with internal cross-functional partners. 
• Objection Handling. Most Customer Success Managers are, by nature, people-pleasers. We want to make customers happy and solve their problems, and when everything goes according to plan, that's easy to do! What's more difficult is when everything doesn't go perfectly, the product doesn't actually answer all of their needs, when the price is too high, when there's a breaking defect... the list goes on. A CSM has to be able to handle objections with grace and prove value even in difficult circumstances. 
• Presentation and Interpersonal Skills. CSMs have to be ready at all times to address talking points of an agenda, lead conversations in a personable way, and present new ideas. Customer Success Managers must be comfortable giving presentations and leading the relationship with the customer.  

Operational Rigor: ‘The buck stops with me'

• Understand, follow and contribute to processes
• Deliver on metrics
• Ownership of customer situations

Problem-solving ability: 'I am knowledgeable about my business, my product and our use cases'

• Product knowledge
• Knowledge about your industry and best practices
• Technical: Not many people agree to this but at the end of the day we are selling software in most cases as a CSM and therefore you need to be good in technical knowledge to answer level 1 questions. If you don't do that, you will become a glorified meeting scheduler

Building Relationships with your customer and internal teams: ‘I am a trusted advisor for my customer and I know where to find help OR who to ask for help’

• Understand your customer’s business and build a plan to achieve success
• Understand the functions and roles of your internal teams and foster relationships

There are so many but below are the top-5 I've used and subscribed to for years. These skills are must-haves for the best of the best CSMs but apply to any role in the CX space: 

1. Ownership. 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. Assertion. They regularly train and lead customers to an outcome and do so with empathy, not aggression.
3. Emotional inteligence. 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. Perception. They filter product and operational changes using perceptive skills to recognize how the changes will affect the customer.
5. Social soldiers. They have strong social fortitude and actually like working with people. They have a positive outlook and authentic concern for others.

What makes a great Customer Success Manager?

• Comfortable in a customer-facing role – Customer First Mindset, a passion for Customer Success
• Has a Growth Mindset and excellent aptitude - looks to continuously learn, develop and improve
• Excellent Communicators – spoken and written, also when presenting and facilitating meetings
• Relationship management and interpersonal skills
• Teamwork & Collaboration
• Strong business acumen – strategic thinking
• Empathy – active listeners
• Ability to work autonomously when needed. Can take ownership, be accountable and get things done
• Curious, self-starter and not afraid to tackle issues. Has initiative => Pro-active – Desire to help
• Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving & Decision Making
• Attention to Detail
• Positive attitude - resilient
• Expectations Management
• ++ Industry knowledge, technical skills and project management

The attributes/skills of the most successful CSMs that I have seen are as follows;

• Customer Empathy: They genuinely understand how to internally represent the customer's challenges and what the organisation needs to do to ensure customer projects are successful over the long term.

• Clear and concise communication - they can distil complex problems into easily consumable summaries.

• Timely and detailed follow-up - surprising, but this is something I see often lacking!

• Analysis and recommendations - make informed recommendations both internally and to customers about how they can improve.

• Managing up - can help both the individual and customer because you are looping in more senior layers of your organisation into initiatives, problems and solutions. However, be careful to pick and choose wisely what situations you bring your management team into because if you saturate that avenue, future asks will be less impactful or ignored.

• Create content - successful CSMs create content to make it easier for customers to use your product or service. This could be anything from a how-to email to a detailed account-based marketing plan.

The most successful CSMs that I have seen have the following:

Other tactical skills include;

1. In-depth knowledge of the product

2. Strong communication skills

3. Data Analysis and problem-solving abilities

4. Project Management skills