Customer Success Team

Technical Support response targets! We’ve all been there, and being the first Success Hire is super exciting. You get to wear many hats, get involved all the way through the customer lifecycle and be scrappy to get customers what they need. For us at the beginning, that meant taking on a lot of Technical Support tickets for our EMEA customers, especially in the morning before our then US-based tech support team was online. On the one hand, this gives you a lot of valuable product knowledge that can help you be an impactful CSM, but on the other hand, it can mask the business need to expand technical support teams and can hurt your focus in the long term. If you can, explain early the difference between CS and Tech support KPIs and ensure that anything you take on is temporary!

Unlike a lot of Customer Success departments, we’ve chosen to align our team to customer KPIs rather than commercial/upsell targets. As such, we have less overlap in goals between CS and Sales. Of course, we’re both targeting Gross Renewal Rate and ensuring we maintain the customer base, but we don’t extend that to upsell targets in the same way as commission-based CS teams. Currently, we’re focused on exploring how we can share “time spent” efficiency and reach KPIs to help keep us accountable for spending as much face time with our customers, tech, and agency partners as we can over the course of many key city hubs whilst being mindful of the cost of trips.

I’m nervous to say it …. But I think NPS can be a total distraction if given too much weight. Of course, the overall shape of NPS scores can help spot trends but, as we’ve learned, the rules you set up for your NPS sampling and the time of year NPS is sent can drastically impact the outcomes. It’s easy to get a detractor score from a customer we’ve never spoken to in an organisation, who has limited exposure to your product and takes it out on an NPS and for everyone to “panic”. If you’re going to give NPS a lot of weight, I’d recommend looking at: * Change in NPS scores by an individual. It’s more impactful to know if you have a detractor going to a promoter or vice versa so you can understand what caused the change in sentiment over time * CSAT scores related to features: Often, it can be unclear if an NPS score represents feelings about the product, people etc. CSAT scores that ask for feedback in real time when someone has used a specific feature can be more helpful for product teams to solicit broad, automated and actionable insight.

Community as an extension of advocacy KPIs. Typical customer advocacy is a flywheel for new business, case studies, sales references, etc. And of course, that’s important, but I think customer success can afford to be a bit more self-serving by going a level beyond and thinking about Community. By that, I mean looking at how often customers in your base are interacting with each other and how you can use that to accelerate outcomes. For nearly seven years now, we’ve nurtured our customer community through city-by-city happy hours, tentpole marketing conferences, digital roundtables, and helping to place customers within our base. We’re supported by internal teams like Marketing on this along with our Bonfire slack and website tooling. Still, we find our CSMs are the most effective connectors of people and that there is real value in being able to match customers on a topic to discuss what has worked.

In my experience, the number of voices in the room around feature adoption KPIs grows as organizations mature, and a complete list might look something more like this: 1. Customer Success 2. Product 3. Marketing [where you have customer marketing/product marketing functions] 4. Enablement teams 5. Sales [where there are paid feature upsells] 6. Partnerships However, no matter where you are, the steps I'd recommend would be the same. A) Create an aligned and QA’d data set around product adoption that anyone can access. Each department might likely have a different slant on what they deem to be product adoption, so it's important to start by getting a consensus on what should be measured and be transparent with your BI/Data team on definitions so that there can be one source of truth. For example, does using feature adoption mean using it once, X times in Y days etc.? Being clear on definitions helps to avoid each department coming up with its own definitions that tell different product adoption stories, causing confusion. B) Don't let complexity stand in the way of measuring something Similarly, different pieces of adoption may drive different outcomes, and different departments might be trying to set different KPIs. My advice would be to start simple and add over time, rather than shoot for an overly complex "NRR Prediction" type product adoption KPI that tries to use complex correlations between product adoption and outcomes. C) Decide product adoption KPI ownership based on the sophistication of the feature One thing that has worked well for us is thinking about how complex the feature is to adopt, and then assigning targets internally accordingly. For example, we have a feature that requires alignment between CRM teams (who we normally work with) and Acquisition teams (who don't typically use Braze/may not know it). We drive the best adoption of this feature through human interactions and by our CS team getting those people together in a room, so we'll often set OKRs for the team around it. Conversely, we also have an intelligence suite feature set that Braze users can enable by clicking a button and, as the required enablement is low, this feature adoption is best driven through in product messaging (product marketing) or customer marketing flows.

First and foremost, our CEO, Bill Magnuson, sets the philosophy that our company-level OKRs exist to give departments freedom. Teams can feel empowered to move quickly if their initiative can ladder up to those outcomes. From there, we use a categorized framework for our OKRS: ACQUIRE, ACTIVATE, RETAIN, BUILD, which helps us to organize our thoughts within each department towards specific goals. Next, our SVP of Customer Success, James Manderson, sets our department-level OKRs. With a team of > 150 CSMs, these OKRs span outcomes aligned to different CS Divisions (CSMs, CS Ops, CS Consulting, etc.), helping us to work together as a group. Mid-way through each quarter, I review our upcoming Company and Department level OKRs and use those to shape our EMEA Customer Success OKRS within the 4 pillar framework used at the Company level. Typically, 3 out of the 4 pillars [ACQUIRE, ACTIVATE, RETAIN] contain an OKR that the whole EMEA CS group is targeted on, no matter the specialism of the CSM, such as being Enterprise or Scale focused. The ‘BUILD’ OKR is reserved for individual skill development, which might be personal and involve an education budget allowance or alignment to a project that has come from a different team. This approach lets us do a few things: 1) See through the noise. Customer Success often has many different priorities, dependencies, and messages from different teams at any given time. Choosing what's most important right now means that we're all singing from the same hymn sheet, can create reusable resources across the group, and ensure we don't pass competing priorities on to customers. 2) Show the incremental impact of CS efforts. This is a real passion of mine – we often work with customers to show the positive impact of their marketing campaigns over control groups, and the same can be true internally. By focusing on driving the adoption of specific parts of the Braze Product that we know have a high impact on our customers, we can demonstrate how our efforts impact customer behavior and outcomes vs. our customers who don't have a CSM. This lets us quantify the value of our CS team across factors outside of retention rates like advocacy and adoption. 3) Create development opportunities. It's a bit meta, but often a CSM will have a ‘BUILD’ OKR to run the program for one of the team OKRs. This alone means that every quarter we guarantee opportunities for team members to align around a goal – creating reporting and resources to help drive us to a result. These are core CS skills that help our customers and any opportunity to practice can help.

Firstly, good choice! You have picked a hot career and I only see CS becoming more prominent and important over the next decade. * Be curious. Take time to understand your customer’s business - one of the best parts of this job is the exposure you get to so many different types of businesses. The more you understand this, the better a CSM you will be. * Put your hand up. If there’s a new product / initiative you can be part of, volunteer for it. Lean in and maximize the learnings even if it scares you.

It can seem daunting jumping into a customer-facing role. Where do I start if I don’t have the relationships built yet? How do I make connections to successfully drive business for my company? At the end of the day we all have to start somewhere. My advice would be to think about what actions you can take today to create valuable connections and start building customer relationships. Get your feet wet with webinars, workshops, office hours, anything that will help build your knowledge and get you comfortable connecting with customers. And then the best thing about Customer Success is the community. Network and learn from others within CS to learn and grow your skillset. 

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 extending 1-2 management layers above your main champion would help. I would also ask why these champions are changing - is the position being passed around in the organization because no one wants to own it? If so, why? Is it too time consuming? If so, perhaps there’s a way to reduce how time consuming it is or advocate for a dedicated role.

When it comes to maintaining positive relationships with customers – especially if your champion has changed and you need to restate your value proposition – I always think about three things as related to customer touchpoints: 1. You have to be intentional about building out a level of service that ensures every customer feels heard. It’s important to be as accessible as possible to your customers, especially as we navigate an uncertain market. At Salesloft, for example, we host live office hours every weekday, giving customers a guaranteed opportunity to speak live with someone on the CS team if they need to troubleshoot or discuss best practices, and receive answers in real-time. Additionally, something as small as ensuring your webcam is on when meeting with customers is another way to elevate their CS experience. 2. Create high-value, high-impact touchpoints. All your customers will have different needs, and if your champion changes, you likely need to adjust. Talk to your customers directly about their potential problems and specific needs and create touchpoints that provide them with the value they care about. There is nothing better than building out a success plan with your customer and then showing them how you’re going to get to the value that they care about. 3. Expand your definition of memorable experiences. People emerged from a pandemic era ready to connect and network once more. Whether in-person, or virtually, there are plenty of opportunities to create networking opportunities between you and your customers. As remote work continues to become the standard for many, the teams and partners we work with are more distributed than ever – sometimes even across continents – but there is plenty of opportunity to nourish these relationships from afar.

I find the best CSMs are: * Curious - they want to understand “why”. This translates well with customers as it means they have an innate desire to understand their business. It also means that they are likely to find the CSM role very rewarding. * Builders - especially in the early days. * Empathetic - Empathy has 2 components as a CSM: 1) it helps build a personal connection 2) it allows a CSM to more successfully advocate on a customer's behalf internally.

The best customer success candidates: • Communication skills: The ability to communicate with customers and all stakeholders clearly and effectively. • Customer-centric mindset: The ability to put oneself in the customer's shoes and understand their needs, pain points, and goals. A genuine passion for helping customers succeed and a strong sense of ownership over their success. • Adaptability: The ability to adjust to changing customer needs and priorities and to be flexible in finding solutions. • Empathy and active listening: Managing emotions is crucial for effective conflict resolution, active listening, and building trust. • Project management skills: Managing customer projects and initiatives effectively to ensure timely delivery and customer satisfaction. • Industry knowledge: Understanding industry trends, best practices, and competitive landscape. • Analytical skills: The ability to analyze customer data and metrics to identify trends and opportunities for improvement. • Product knowledge: A deep understanding of the product or service. • Problem-solving skills: The ability to identify and resolve customer issues quickly and effectively. • Team player: The ability to work well with others and a willingness to collaborate with other teams and stakeholders to achieve customer success and effectively communicate and collaborate with other teams and departments within the organization. I put this in order of my personal preference. For a mid-level CSR/CSM, I expect the top five. Industry knowledge will be a great asset and a nice to have. Rest, I expect them to pick up on the job.

Customer Success is different in every organization. Some companies see CS as product experts or an extension of Support. I see Customer Success as Consultants and Change Agents and so I hire for the skill set that will ensure they succeed in a role at Salesloft. 3 main things I look for: Leadership & accountability: Leadership isn’t always leading a team. It’s ownership of your book of business and ownership of the success of your customers. It’s being able to coach a customer and push back or manage expectations, when it’s in their interest. And accountability falls into this too. Are you accountable for your customer’s success? Communication skills: This is imperative for anyone in Customer Success. Not just because we spend a lot of our time customer facing and we need to articulate key concepts in a succinct way, but because we need to understand how to adapt our communication style depending on the audience. CSMs need to understand what matters to a customer and then articulate their message in a way that will resonate. We also need to sometimes be able to deliver tough messages in a well thought-out way! Organization & prioritization: CSMs need to have a method of organizing and prioritizing their day. When you’re partnering with multiple customers who are in different phases of maturity or “health”, prioritizing where you spend your time becomes really important. You also then have multiple stakeholders within each customer, goals to hit, queries to answer….organization is key!

This is one of the top questions I get about Customer Success! When breaking down responsibilities I try to consider what the best experience for the customer will be and ensure I align the responsibilities with the capabilities of the team. To this end, I prefer the following structure: * Customer Success: Logo + Revenue Retention * Sales: Revenue New Revenue + Revenue Growth I find this structure works well because: * It sets sales and CS up as partners. A retained customer is a better sales prospect and an upsold customer is easier to retain. * It means sales and CS are talking to different people at an organization. The stakeholders responsible for day-to-day operation of the software are often different from the buyers. * It plays to each team’s strengths. Sales people are often motivated by an extrinsic measure (sales commission) whereas CS people are often motivated by an intrinsic one (solving customers problems).

In my opinion, this really depends on your internal org structure and who owns renewal and growth. But, if I could design something from scratch and do it at any company, it would mirror exactly what we do at Salesloft: Focus You need each team having a clear focus and lagging indicator that they’re driving. For us, that's retention rate for Customer Success and bookings/growth for Sales. Incentivize You also want to incentivize partnership and collaboration. This is the best thing for your customer because you get a joined up approach and account team, but it's also the best thing for your business. So allow each side to have some skin in the game with their teammates. For example, make a small portion of a CS teams’ incentive aligned to the sales targets and vice versa. That way, Customer Success teams want to see growth and sales teams don’t want to sell things that won’t renew.