What hard skills are must haves to be a customer success leader? What are nice to haves?
Some essential hard skills that are considered must-haves for a customer success leader include: (must have does not necessarily mean now - you can and should be trained on the job)
• Analytical skills: the ability to analyze customer data and metrics to identify trends and opportunities for improvement, as well as a deep understanding of customer behavior and the ability to create actionable insights from that data.
• Project management skills: managing customer projects and initiatives effectively to ensure timely delivery and customer satisfaction.
• Technical skills: navigating technical tools and software used in customer support and engagement.
• Product knowledge: a deep understanding of the product or service can help customer success leaders effectively troubleshoot and provide solutions to customer issues.
• Problem-solving skills: the ability to quickly and effectively identify and resolve customer issues is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Knowledge of Tools (soft and hard skills): CRM (Jira/SFDC/HubSpot/Zoho etc.), CSM (Gainsight, Einstein, Totango, ChurnZero), and Analytical Tools like (Tableau, SAS/ PowerBI, and Google Analytics). You should get some training as part of your onboarding; however, self-help is the best help.
As for nice-to-haves skills:
• Industry knowledge: the ability to stay current on industry developments and trends, as well as an understanding of best practices in customer success management.
• Financial analysis skills: the ability to evaluate and analyze financial data, such as customer revenue, churn rate, and lifetime value, to identify opportunities for growth and improvement.
• Business Acumen: the ability to understand the company's goals and align customer success strategies.
• Leadership skills: the ability to inspire, motivate and lead a team of customer success managers and associates to achieve their goals.
• Communication skills: the ability to clearly and effectively communicate and collaborate with customers and other stakeholders/inter-department and intra-department are essential for building and maintaining positive relationships.
Must-have hard skills for a customer success leader include:
Operationally rigorous and metrics-driven
Knowledge of customer success best practices and methodologies
Strong presentation and negotiation skills
Cross-functional and be able to remove organizational barriers to get stuff done
Strong communication and interpersonal skills
Problem-solving and analytical abilities
Project management and organizational skills
Being reasonably good with numbers
Nice-to-have hard skills for a customer success leader include:
Sales, Consulting or business development experience
Technical aptitude and understanding of the company's product or service
Familiarity with customer relationship management (CRM) software
Knowledge of data analysis and reporting tools (or having someone reporting to them who is good with these)
Familiarity with industry-specific regulations and compliance requirements.
As a CS leader, it's critical to have the ability to analyse, interpret and understand data. Most organisations have various data sources to understand what is happening in the customer base. What's important for a CS leader is to combine these data sources to get a complete picture of what's happening. Within this area, cohort analysis is fundamental. Understanding customer cohorts allows you to segment the customer base into a distinct grouping that shares specific attributes and behaviour, allowing CS leaders and their teams to design dedicated motions to treat these cohorts.
Other essential skills include; effective presentation and communication abilities, project management, collaboration with other teams and change management. Out of this list, I would classify project management as a 'nice to have' as there's software out there that can help with this, or if you are fortunate, you will work with a CS or Sales Ops person who can be a game changer for your organisation.
The main hard skill that stands out to me for a Customer Success Leader is change management. Because really this hits in 2 different ways in a Customer Success team:
You need to coach and guide your team through how to successfully drive change in their customers
You will often need to drive change internally. Customer Success is one of the most change-heavy departments as it often evolves as the business and the market does, so being able to get your team on board to an internal change is key.
For optional hard skills, I think project management feeds nicely into change management. Often as a CS leader you have a lot of moving pieces and knowing how to organise that and other internal stakeholders is key.
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