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You're the new customer success manager for a B2B SaaS company that has 40 people and is starting to scale. What should you aim to do in your first month and your first quarter?

Meenal Shukla
Meenal Shukla
Gainsight Senior Director of Customer SuccessMarch 24

I am assuming that given the size of the company, this question may be for the first hire in CS.

First Month:

  1. Understand the company's product and services thoroughly.
  2. Familiarize yourself with the CS team processes. If there are no established processes (and you are a team of 1), ensure that you establish a risk escalation and management with clear lines of escalation to the product, support and services team. 
  3. Familiarize yourself with the customer data, including customer profiles, purchase history, and feedback. Understand what's the contract size look like and how the product is priced.
  4. Understand what the key metrics that you are responsible for and accountable for in your new role
  5. Introduce yourself to key stakeholders and establish a working relationship with them.
  6. Make sure you are establishing cadence calls with the customers
  7. Understand your customer's buying center: Who are the most relevant stakeholders in your customer organization
  8. Begin creating a plan for measuring and achieving customer success (Especially if you are a team of one).

First Quarter (If you are a team of one or the first hire of CS):

  1. Develop a customer segmentation strategy to identify key customer groups and their needs.
  2. Establish clear customer success goals and metrics that align with the company's business objectives.
  3. Work with the customer success team to develop and implement a comprehensive onboarding process for new customers.
  4. Identify opportunities to upsell or cross-sell to existing customers and develop a strategy to execute these opportunities.
  5. Establish regular meetings with the sales team to discuss customer feedback, engagement, and issues.
  6. Develop and implement a customer feedback survey to measure satisfaction levels.
  7. Analyze customer data to identify trends, challenges, and areas for improvement.
  8. Develop a plan to address any identified challenges and areas for improvement.
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