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Whats the best way to understand the customer’s Organisation adoption and when is the right time determined ti make cross-selling for new Sub-Products. How much does a CSM own it and when does Account Executive come into Picture?

Need some additional guidelines for making a good career path into Customer Success

Kiran Panigrahi

Salesforce Director - Customer Success | Formerly HSBC, DELL, DELOITTE, AGILECRM, GAINSIGHT • Sat

I look at organizational adoption beyond just login or usage numbers as in who is using the product, how deeply, across which teams, and most importantly, whether it is d...

44 Views

What's the most effective way to scale a customer success team beyond the first customer success manager?

Chris Adams

LinkedIn Head of Customer Success, Search & Staffing Market, North America • 7mo

Pause, diagnose, and hire for the problem—not the title. If the pain truly requires more CSM capacity, scale with a segmented coverage model, clear outcomes, and builder‑...

625 Views

What's your framework to prioritizing needs/deliverables when you're the first customer success manager at a company establishing the function?

John Brunkard

Salamander Advisory Customer Success Advisor | Formerly Adobe, Sitecore, Red Hat, Symantec, Blue Coat, Intel, Dell, Dialogic • 1mo

I’d answer this by showing a clear, ruthless prioritization framework and also signaling that you know when leadership support is needed.---My framework has three lenses:...

371 Views

What's your best customer success 30-60-90 day plan to make a big impact at a new company?

Kiran Panigrahi

Salesforce Director - Customer Success | Formerly HSBC, DELL, DELOITTE, AGILECRM, GAINSIGHT • 1y

My focus is on learning, optimising, and driving impact. Here’s my structured 30-60-90 day approach:30 Days – Learn & AlignDeep dive into company goals, customers, an...

1,345 Views

For a Series A company, what's the most cost effective but purposeful tech stack you'd recommend to start their CS journey?

Chris Adams

LinkedIn Head of Customer Success, Search & Staffing Market, North America • 7mo

At Series A, simplicity beats sophistication. Keep it scrappy and purposeful. In my experience this often means choosing a lightweight CRM for lifecycle visibility and a ...

652 Views

How do you manage the workload and caseload distribution between traditional CSMs and tech-enabled team members to optimize efficiency?

Rox Fitzmaurice

Jellyfish Director of Customer Success • 2mo

When distributing the book across the team, you often have to start by drawing a line in the sand. I’m a fan of picking a clear, even if slightly arbitrary, threshold (ty...

372 Views

What are some examples of programs or events you've run and ways in which you measured success?

Rox Fitzmaurice

Jellyfish Director of Customer Success • 2mo

The key to scaling is being open to quick, low-stakes experimentation. I’m a big believer in running small tests, measuring the impact immediately, and iterating fast. If...

363 Views

How do you decide between high-touch, tech-touch, and automation for different segments?

Nina Wilkinson

ScaleUp CS Partner | Formerly Apollo, Lob, Canary Technologies • 8mo

I say this a lot when we're building out capacity planning and hiring budgets, is the juice worth the squeeze? You only have a limited number of dollars to spend on your ...

431 Views

What strategies do you use to personalize automated interactions and make them feel as engaging and relevant as those with traditional CSMs?

Rox Fitzmaurice

Jellyfish Director of Customer Success • 2mo

Scaling your CS efforts doesn’t have to mean losing the human touch. The goal is to move away from robotic scripts and toward interactions that actually feel intuitive. I...

437 Views

What's the single biggest mistake founders make when establishing their first CS function, and when should that first CSM really be hired?

Chris Adams

LinkedIn Head of Customer Success, Search & Staffing Market, North America • 7mo

I recommend you hire the first CS pro after PMF confidence — clear problem/value, stable onboarding, visible activation/retention, and agreement with customers on how you...

523 Views

What does your customer success team org structure look like?

Jeff Beaumont

Customer Success Consultant • 2y

This can vary wildly.AreasIt depends…CSM/Pooled CSMDigitalRenewalsSupportProfessional ServicesImplementationEducationOperations/strategyEnablementSo when you look at all ...

1,395 Views

How do you structure CS teams for both efficiency AND customer centricity without killing culture?

Cormac Kelly

SurveyMonkey VP of Customer Success | Formerly Microsoft • 6mo

Honestly, This is such a great question. Too often, leaders feel they have to choose: you either run a lean, efficient machine that quite honestly can feel robotic to the...

595 Views

What is the best way for CS reps to manage relationships with accounts where the "champions" are always changing and the value of your business is always having to be restated to knew employees?

Ben Terrill

Seso Head of Customer Success | Formerly Brex, Finn AI, Mobify • 3y

This is a tough one. I generally view these as “lite sales cycle” which it sounds like you do as well. If the account is large enough - a multi-level engagement strategy ...

3,778 Views

How does a CS team's structure need to adapt as a company grows from Series A to Series C, especially balancing high-touch and tech-touch?

Nina Wilkinson

ScaleUp CS Partner | Formerly Apollo, Lob, Canary Technologies • 8mo

I like to think of CS teams as 3 distinct phases (rowboat, sailboat, cruise ship). Each phase is going to be different to navigate and progressively harder to quickly cha...

412 Views

For product-led growth companies, how does the CS team's approach and structure fundamentally differ from a traditional sales-led model?

Chris Adams

LinkedIn Head of Customer Success, Search & Staffing Market, North America • 7mo

For product-led growth (PLG) companies, Customer Success looks very different from a traditional sales-led model—and the biggest difference comes down to scale and starti...

1,321 Views

What is your cadence and storyline for reporting CS KPIs to the ELT and board?

Rob Haber

Triple Whale 🐳 VP of Customer Success • 7mo

I have always done a weekly newsletter that outlines: 1. The Metrics; 2. Progress we've made; and 3. Problems we're facing. This gets sent to the ELT in a Slack every Fri...

160 Views

How are you leveraging predictive models or risk scoring to prioritize CSM focus, and how do you validate lift and precision?

Aishwarya Dwivedi

Adobe Director Customer Strategy & Success • 8mo

Predictive models can be a powerful tool specially when you are managing the long tail of customers. However , CSM insight should complement use of predictive models for...

1,060 Views

Setting KPIs can often feel arbitrary, especially when entering new markets. How do you get past this uncertainty to set realistic goals?

Trevor Flegenheimer

AlertMedia VP, Customer Success | Formerly Zego, Treacy & Company • 1y

The important thing is to start measuring items. Your initial 'goal' may be off, but you won't know that until you start measuring it and having your team work towards a ...

2,143 Views

What are some of the worst KPIs to commit to achieving?

Giselle Kerth

Deephow Director of Customer Success • 1y

In my experience, committing to and driving an increase in customer utilization is one of the most challenging KPIs to meet in my industry. If I had a dollar for every ti...

177 Views

How do you measure the impact of playbooks and interventions on movement in health, adoption, and retention KPIs?

Aishwarya Dwivedi

Adobe Director Customer Strategy & Success • 8mo

When you launch a playbook the introduction point becomes your baseline. From that moment onwards you can track shifts in key metrics against the baseline and assess if K...

864 Views

Which product adoption metrics correlate most strongly with retention for your key personas?

Aishwarya Dwivedi

Adobe Director Customer Strategy & Success • 8mo

Both adoption and value are critical drivers for customer retention. Smooth Onboarding (Time to Onboard) and implementation (Time to Implement) results in faster time to ...

838 Views

What are your top 3-5 Customer Success Impact Drivers that a CSM should focus their time on regardless of the product or segment.

Aishwarya Dwivedi

Adobe Director Customer Strategy & Success • 8mo

Three C's - Customer Outcomes , Customer Experience and Curiosity.Customer Outcomes : CSMs must first deeply understand how the product capabilities address customer pro...

1,245 Views

What are some KPIs that you find over-hyped and/or unimportant?

Kiran Panigrahi

Salesforce Director - Customer Success | Formerly HSBC, DELL, DELOITTE, AGILECRM, GAINSIGHT • 2y

The importance of KPIs might vary from organization to organization and between the respective goals or objectives. It makes more sense to have continued or enhanced metr...

1,794 Views

What KPIs should I own and not own as the first customer success hire?

I'm working at a start-up, and a first customer success hire.

Conor Holmes

Confluent Senior Director of CS & Account Management • 8mo

As the first Customer Success hire, your job is to set the foundations for how the company measures impact, while focusing on what you can directly influence in the short...

377 Views

What kind of KPIs can I hold my team accountable for if they're extremely bandwidth constrained?

Meenal Shukla

Zoom Head of Scaled Customer Success, Onboarding, Learning and Adoption • 1y

When bandwidth is extremely tight, focus on high-leverage KPIs that align with essential business outcomes and don't create unnecessary admin overhead:Must-Have MetricsCr...

661 Views

What are good OKRs for customer success?

Conor Holmes

Confluent Senior Director of CS & Account Management • 8mo

We’d first map our OKRs to the company’s strategic priorities — for example, growth, efficiency, or product adoption — and ensure Customer Success directly contributes to...

436 Views

How do customer success KPIs change with a self-serve product?

Trevor Flegenheimer

AlertMedia VP, Customer Success | Formerly Zego, Treacy & Company • 1y

With a self-serve product, you probably want to stay away from some of the more product-based KPIs (e.g., product adoption or health score if it's largely adoption driven...

1,418 Views

What's your process for figuring out what metrics to hold customer success accountable for?

Conor Holmes

Confluent Senior Director of CS & Account Management • 8mo

We split metrics into leading and lagging indicators. Leading metrics, like adoption or engagement frequency, show whether we’re focusing on the right customer behaviours...

434 Views

When it's hard to tie certain campaigns or assets to the pipeline generation, what other metrics can we consider?

Kiran Panigrahi

Salesforce Director - Customer Success | Formerly HSBC, DELL, DELOITTE, AGILECRM, GAINSIGHT • 2y

When directly correlating with pipeline generation proves difficult, consider alternative metrics such as engagement (website visits, email open rates), lead quality (con...

1,424 Views

What are the CS metrics you use that actually predict revenue growth vs. vanity metrics?

Nina Wilkinson

ScaleUp CS Partner | Formerly Apollo, Lob, Canary Technologies • 8mo

I look at 3 metrics in addition to the standard GRR, NRR, and CSAT; LRR, Speed to Adoption, and multi-product line adoption. LRR (logo retention): especially in the SMB s...

426 Views

What's your approach to implementing AI in CS without replacing your team's relationships with customers?

Nina Wilkinson

ScaleUp CS Partner | Formerly Apollo, Lob, Canary Technologies • 8mo

It's absolutely a balancing act. I broke down the specifics of how we use AI on our CS teams to improve efficiency and enable us to hire more strategically and we discuss...

464 Views

What's the biggest mistake you see when scaling from 2 CSMs to 10 CSMs?

Nina Wilkinson

ScaleUp CS Partner | Formerly Apollo, Lob, Canary Technologies • 8mo

I've lived this one and it was PAINFUL. The biggest mistake for me as I've grown teams is not hiring my first line manager fast enough. At one point I was doing 18 1:1s p...

518 Views

Beyond churn, what's one crucial CS metric Series B leaders often overlook that directly impacts NRR at scale?

Nina Wilkinson

ScaleUp CS Partner | Formerly Apollo, Lob, Canary Technologies • 8mo

For me, without a doubt, it's Logo Retention (LRR), especially in the SMB/MM space. While everyone's chasing that shiny Net Revenue Retention number, many leaders are usi...

970 Views

Where do you see the future of customer success heading?

What skills will a future customer success manager need that he/she doesn't have today?

Kiran Panigrahi

Salesforce Director - Customer Success | Formerly HSBC, DELL, DELOITTE, AGILECRM, GAINSIGHT • 1y

The future of Customer Success is evolving beyond traditional retention-focused roles into a strategic, revenue-driving function with deep technical expertise. Based on m...

817 Views

I’m the first customer success hire in my company. What advice would you give to someone tasked with establishing this function in an existing business structure?

Cormac Kelly

SurveyMonkey VP of Customer Success | Formerly Microsoft • 10mo

First of all, congratulations, that's awesome that your company is investing in such and important space, and also, that you are the customer success artist that has a bl...

698 Views

My goal is also to become a VP one day in my respective field. Do you have any tips on whether this would be more likely to attain by working for a startup/scaleup or by working your way up an already large enterprise?

Agatha Hood

Unity Vice President Operations & Customer Success • 11mo

If you’re primarily looking for the VP title, working for a startup/scaleup often provides a faster path due to rapid growth and opportunities to take on broader responsi...

507 Views

What's the best way to communicate a new SaaS platform tool/feature to your customers? EDM? Webinars? A combination or something else?

Ultimately we want to increase client engagement on our platform

Agatha Hood

Unity Vice President Operations & Customer Success • 11mo

If you have a unified user flow that begins in a dashboard or tool, a direct notification directly there, with the ability to learn more through documentation, AI chats, ...

698 Views

What advice do you have for someone aspiring to become a successful customer success leader?

Natasha Evans

Hook VP Customer Growth • 1y

I’m a big believer that there are 2 sides to being a great leader; people leadership and business leadership. For most part I see CS leaders as great people leaders, but ...

493 Views

What is your leadership philosophy when it comes to customer success, and how has it evolved over time?

Cormac Kelly

SurveyMonkey VP of Customer Success | Formerly Microsoft • 1y

My leadership philosophy at its core values remains the same but with regards to how I apply it, has changed over time. My clear values as a leader areA = Accountability ...

1,157 Views

How do you evaluate and adopt new customer success technologies to enhance the efficiency of your team?

Natasha Evans

Hook VP Customer Growth • 1y

For evaluation - really root yourself in the problem you want to solve. Throughout your evaluation you want to figure out exactly how using that tech (and which usecases)...

474 Views

How do you foster collaboration and communication between customer success, sales, marketing, and other departments within the organization?

Agatha Hood

Unity Vice President Operations & Customer Success • 11mo

Collaboration with each department requires a different approach because each team works differently and has different goals. Sales: We work one on one in territories sha...

806 Views

What are some common challenges you face as a customer success leader, and how do you overcome them?

Craig Woods

SurveyMonkey Senior Director of Customer Success • 1y

I actually touched a bit on this during Gainsight Pulse last year (shameless plug to the session here )but the ability to tell a cohesive and actionable story is crucial ...

824 Views

How do you set realistic goals for customer success teams, and how often do you revisit and adjust these goals?

John Brunkard

Salamander Advisory Customer Success Advisor | Formerly Adobe, Sitecore, Red Hat, Symantec, Blue Coat, Intel, Dell, Dialogic • 2y

Setting realistic goals for customer success teams and regularly reviewing and adjusting these goals is essential to ensure alignment with company objectives and adapt to...

1,043 Views

Can you share any successful customer engagement initiatives or programs that your team has implemented?

Natasha Evans

Hook VP Customer Growth • 1y

Figure out your foundational offering for every customer first e.g. 1) Every customer goes through an onboarding journey at scale that consists of them receiving X conten...

513 Views

How do you handle team challenges and conflicts that arise within a customer success department?

Agatha Hood

Unity Vice President Operations & Customer Success • 11mo

Overall, we try to have a culture of open communication and psychological safety, as well as multiple methods to bring up feedback: Peer reviews especially during perform...

1,400 Views

What methods do you use to identify and develop talent within your customer success team?

Agatha Hood

Unity Vice President Operations & Customer Success • 11mo

Identifying and developing talent within the customer success team includes both universal methods like regular performance reviews, 1:1 discussions, and personalized gro...

1,689 Views

How do you inspire and motivate your customer success team to achieve their goals?

Craig Woods

SurveyMonkey Senior Director of Customer Success • 1y

In terms of motivation, I think two things must be true - Most importantly you must believe in the outcome you're trying to obtain, and be invested in it. Whatever stage ...

1,612 Views

How do you approach right-sizing of CSM or PSM Teams as we're in a somewhat stagnant microeconomic climate?

Let's say your company requires you to reduce costs and productivity of your existing team. Where do you start? Is it by looking at individual productivity or looking at the outcome you're trying to achieve and then reverse engineer?

Natasha Evans

Hook VP Customer Growth • 1y

I always start with the outcome. What’s the goal you’re trying to get to (revenue wise, or GRR/NRR) and how far off are you right now. Essentially you want a forecast to ...

655 Views

Are there specific books, courses, or resources you recommend for aspiring customer success leaders to enhance their skills?

John Brunkard

Salamander Advisory Customer Success Advisor | Formerly Adobe, Sitecore, Red Hat, Symantec, Blue Coat, Intel, Dell, Dialogic • 2y

I previously answered this type question for CSMs however this time I will put in some resources that are more focussed on Customer Success Leaders. Here is the link to t...

1,187 Views

What are the most critical things to focus upon bringing to the creation of a CS function?

Steph Gerpe

LinkedIn Head of North America Customer Success, LinkedIn Talent Solutions • 1y

I'd recommend starting with these key areas when creating a CS function: Defining customer success - what does successful use of your product or platform look like? When ...

801 Views