What is your advice for creating and/or improving the customer success process when joining a small but growing team?

Working from personal experience here (I can't speak for everyone), what I've seen in small Customer Success teams is that they're scrappy. They've started as the "do anything to help" team and have had success in that. So much success, the org wants much more Customer Success. The downside, there's very little consistency or boundaries in their role.

I recommend you start with taking an audit of the various roles/responsibilities that the CS team is owning or getting involved in. Chances are, you will find some opportunities to standardize and get the CSMs out of certain tasks/workflows through better internal partnerships and tooling.

A great way to plan for what CSMs should be doing is to seek tons of feedback (internally and from customers) and build a Customer Journey from it. Clearly spell out the CSM role and expectations through that journey, and add tools where required.

Also- consider the segments of your business. Should all customers be treated the same? Or would you want different CS motions for large vs. small customers, customers in different regions, industries, product lines or other? With very small teams it may not make sense to segment immediately, but having some thoughts on this early on can make the growing process smoother.

All of the above helps you grow the team thoughtfully. As we're learning in today's market, we can't afford to overinflate headcount.

• Interview the existing team and relevant stakeholders. Do a SWOT analysis and look for the top themes to emerge
• Review existing customer data - support data, adoption data, VOC data etc...
• Interview customers
• Create a plan on what you'll do and communicate this to the exec team, your team and across the relevant departments. Make sure you have SMART goals as part of your plan.
• Execute your plan. This will mostly involve a revised customer journey, people (structure and hiring), technology and process. 
• Measure your results.

Check what customer touchpoints have been identified and if there are more missing

Once the touchpoints with the most impact on long-term success have been identified setup clear processes and guidelines

As an example, the Onboarding of new customers can be one of the most important touch points ensuring long-term success. A customer who knows how to quickly use your offering and with this receiving first positive outputs will most likely be successful compared to someone struggling from the beginning