Who do you align yourself with to gain momentum in the leadership organization?

Question

Michael Maday · Accepted Answer

As a Customer Success leader, there are a handful of alignments that I have prioritized.

Sales - Aligning CS & Sales is the most important thing an organization can do and if you be the tie that binds these groups, it will pay significant dividends.

Support - Bugs happen, tickets and escalations are part of our day-to-day but if you do not have a strong relationship with Support you will not have a lifeline when you need something prioritized, or eyes on an issue impacting your customer.

Services - Most SaaS companies are dependent on Services to stand up the instance and make incremental improvements through the lifecycle. Building relationships with the team will make tricky situations easier to work through and will also you to offer procedural improvements that they would otherwise not appreciate. Getting in the trenches with Support and Services is something a great CSM / CS Leader does but you also need to know when to get out of the way!

Product teams - No one knows the way your product is used and the gaps that exist like Customer Success and Product teams thirst for this knowledge. Either through technology or a spreadsheet, find a way to aggregate feedback and get it to Product. Also, invite them to meet with your customers! Most Product teammates love seeing their work in the hands of customers, but do not have the relationships, make it happen for them! Once this relationship is built, then you can introduce a little scope creep into their backlog :)

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