What is your favorite customer success interview question and the best answer you've heard?

Question:

What does customer success mean to you? What is it, what is it not?

Why it's good:

It's open-ended, and gives the candidate a big opportunity to talk about CS as a field, the success of a customer on an individual basis, and more. 

Example of a great answer:

"To me, Customer Success is the driving of client business outcomes by providing value through our product and services." From there, the best candidates talk about being able to do this at scale (do more with less!), using technology and data to drive results, and give examples of how they actually prove ROI to customers. 

Almost did not want to answer this question because it would give it away. Haha!

I ask: Has it ever happened to you that a very red customer is moved to your portfolio? What's your first reaction when that happens? How do you solve for it?

The answer to the first question tells me whether the CSM's current leadership trusts them enough to give a red-hot customer. Only the best CSMs get really risky customers because the leadership believes in the capability of the CSM to save the customer.

The answer to the second question tells me about the attitude of the CSM. Did they like the challenge or did it seem overwhelming? What are the words they are using to describe their state of mind?

The answer to the third question tells me about their rigor and the playbook they use to solve for tricky customer situations. People can fib in the first two questions, but the third question is what gives most people away.

The best answer that I received was the following: 'I felt a sense of pride when my leadership gave me a customer who was about to churn. I know that I have earned the trust of my leaders and I was determined to rise up the occasion. Then the person described in detail the situation, tasks, blockers, how they circumvented objections, etc and finally the results. She completed turned this customer around. Best interview ever!

Scenario-based questions are my favorite but I especially like this one as it breaks the ice and allows the candidate to show their personality & you can have fun with the scenarios.

Three emails hit your inbox, which do you answer first, second, and last and why?  No wrong answers here!

1. You ordered lunch and the delivery person is running an hour behind and asks if you still want your order. (symbolizes a higher-value downgrade scenario)
2. Your friend wants to reschedule your plans for the evening and is asking for a confirmation (symbolizes a mid-value cancellation scenario)
3. You were given an Amazon gift card that needs to be claimed (symbolizes a lower-value upgrade scenario)

I have many different questions and always include some scenario based questions to see how they would handle those.

Often I start with a very fundamental question along the lines of;
"Tell my why you want to be a Customer Success Manager? What motivates you for this type of role?

A good answer to the question would be one that demonstrates a genuine passion for helping customers achieve their outcomes and a desire to be part of a dynamic collaborative team that strives to make a positive impact on our customers (and internal stakeholders).

The candidate should explain how they enjoy working with customers, learning about their needs, and developing solutions to help them overcome challenges / pain points / needs / business objectives...by working across internal and external stakeholder.

They should also be able to highlight their ability to build strong relationships with clients and be empathetic towards their concerns. Furthermore, the candidate should talk about how they enjoy working in a fast-paced environment and that they are driven by the challenge of meeting and exceeding customer expectations.

The answer should also highlight how the candidate's skills and experience make them an excellent fit for the CSM role. They should be able to show how their previous experience in customer success or even a non-customer success role such as customer service, account management, or sales has prepared them for the challenges of being a CSM at my company.

What problem have you solved in your work that you are most proud of?

This is a great question for a few reasons:

1. If they fumble for an answer, they haven't been reflecting on their experience and professional journey so that is an easy red flag to spot

2. Their answer tells you a great deal about their real values - what is really important to them - and lets you get to know them more deeply. If they've said they value collaboration but then their story is all about them solving a problem on their own with zero collaboration, they don't practice what they preach.

3. Do they light up when they tell you the story? If not, they aren't a "dig it" for solving problems.

4. Does the story have a beginning, middle and end? The organization of their answer tells you a great deal about how they communicate and how their mind works.

There isn't one best answer that stands out, but the common traits of great answers are specificity, logical telling in the order of events, and that they tell the story with a big smile on their face because their delight just can't be dampened.

One of my favourite CS interview questions is some variation of "Can you share a time when you received constructive feedback from a peer, manager, or cross-functional partner in your previous role as a Customer Success Manager? How did you deal with it, and how did it impact your actions after the fact?"

The reason I like this question is that the way the candidate answers it tells me a lot about their self awareness, intelligence, their ability to handle difficult situations with maturity, humility and professionalism, their communication skills and their growth mindset, all of which are skills that are valuable in your role as a CSM and also make someone a great colleague and team member.

The best answers I have heard to this question have been thoughtful, honest, clear and have all resulted in genuine impact for the person in terms of how they have grown and developed.

I’ll share 2 questions – one is behavioral based, and one is situational.

One of our core values is Extreme Ownership. I ask candidates to “Tell me about a time when you had to convince someone to do something in order for you to meet a goal or deadline. Why did you need to convince them? What was the goal/deadline? What was the result?”

What I like about this question is it embodies all things CS - accountability; influence (usually without authority; partnership and teamwork; creativity…

I look for an answer that helps me understand the what, the how, and most importantly, the why. Influencing someone because you missed something and now are in a crunch is very different than your new leader assigning you a nebulous project with a clear deadline, but not much direction. 

One of the best answers I’ve gotten was around a ‘still in development' product that was sold to a customer prior to the CSM taking the account. The customer was frustrated with the length of time it was taking to go GA - and with 2 missed delivery dates already. was asking for specifics to bring to their senior leadership regarding the 3rd promised delivery date.  

The candidate talked about the challenge first of understanding what the use case was as well as what was promised in the sales process. The candidate had to help the customer define the use case and then went back to the AE to understand what was sold. They then went to the product team to understand the product functionality and engineering to get timelines, which were still a ways out. 

They went back to the customer with the updated information and the customer was extremely unhappy. The candidate held a cross functional meeting internally - they were able to get alignment internally to prioritize the product to get within 2 weeks of the 3rd deadline, which was much improved from 6 weeks. The customer was cautiously optimistic, and when the vendor was able to deliver on the newly agreed upon timeline and the product worked as expected, over a period of weeks the customer moved from a detractor in sentiment to a promoter. 

The other question I’ll talk about here is “If you were to join us, what would you do in the first 90 days to build trust with your peers, leadership, and cross functional team members? (NOT CUSTOMERS)

What I am looking for here first is whether their instinct is to lead by process or by people. Some candidates say they schedule meetings to understand the product, and some say they want to know what makes the team tick. I also listen to see if they tend to ask for help or go it alone. Neither are right or wrong; it helps me understand how they tend to work. I then look for them to share specifics on ways they would engage, and if it would be different for each group or more of a cookie cutter approach. This is really important for us as all of our CSMs are fully remote, and they need to be able to work with a variety of people at different levels in different ways.