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 mus ...Read More

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 questio ...Read More

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:  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. Assertion. They regularly train and lead customers to an outcome and do so with empathy, not aggression. Emotional ...Read More

Five tactical skills I look for: Discovery and listening. Most CSMs talk too much. The best ones ask better questions and follow the thread. If you can’t surface a customer’s actual goal in 15 minutes, you can’t drive an outcome. Look at your gong recordings, your customer's should be speaking between 60-75% of the call, not your CSM. Project management. Every account is a moving project with stakeholders, dependencies, and timelines. The CSMs who hit their numbers run their book like a portfoli ...Read More

For me the two most important skills above all else for a CSM are Resilience and Problem Solving. In your role as a CSM you are the are the face between the customer and the company. Which means you bare the brunt of both the customer when things aren't going well and are the voice of the business when a message has to be delivered good or bad. Resilience allows you to adapt, recover, and keep performing well when faced with challenges, setbacks, or constant change. In customer-facing, fast-pace ...Read More

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 autonom ...Read More

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 - ...Read More