Conor Holmes

As a CS leader, it's critical to have the ability to analyse, interpret and understand data. Most organisations have various data sources to understand what is happening in the customer base. What's important for a CS leader is to combine these data sources to get a complete picture of what's happening. Within this area, cohort analysis is fundamental. Understanding customer cohorts allows you to segment the customer base into a distinct grouping that shares specific attributes and behaviour, al ...Read More

Generally, when hiring CS team members, for me, it's all about soft skills; Deep customer empathy Great communication skills Strategic thinking Time and project management Active listening Problem-solving The hard skills are more related to domain knowledge, which can primarily be trained on the job. However, there is a significant dependency on your company's stage and goals. For example, if the company is an early-stage B2B tech software company, you may want a profile that has been there and ...Read More

This will depend on how fast the team is expanding. 1 to 3 people will need a different approach than 1 to 10+ Generally, you will want enough processes to quickly get a team member up to speed. Yet, if you are adding only one more in the near term, onboarding could be done via shadowing and close collaboration rather than a heavy process. Here are some recommended processes; Team member onboarding checklist - description of what the new members need to get started. This should include introduct ...Read More

The best candidates can relate their experience to how they will be successful in the role. They will have thought about scenario-based questions and be ready to describe how they have tackled specific problems and scenarios. I have found that having a reasonably open presentation brief in the interview process is an excellent way to understand how a candidate unpacks a brief. It's always telling how much research and preparation they have done for the presentation round. One common trait of suc ...Read More

There are many signals of potential churn; at scale, that's the inherent problem with data points; there are so many. Nothing replaces speaking to your customers regularly and digging into what's happening in their environment. Yet as a guide, you could look at the signals/question below, put a score against each and create a simple weighted risk or engagement score against each customer to identify where you need to focus, i.e. healthy vs at risk. There are CS tools out there to optimise this, ...Read More

Every company is on some form of journey. Whether you are at an early-stage start-up or have been around for decades, your team needs to understand how what they do daily relates to the journey the company is on and how their daily interactions contribute to the company's goals. For me retaining good talent is ensuring that you have a team that has signed up to go on that journey with you. I operate from a position of transparency, which builds trust. If your team trusts that you are lobbying fo ...Read More

Scaling customer success doesn't necessarily mean adding more CS headcount, at least not immediately. Before that, some foundations and a solid go-to-market framework should be implemented. Seek alignment from executive leadership on the metrics and KPIs the business wants to deliver upon and how this team will be deemed successful, or if that doesn't exist, provide a recommendation. Create a detailed view of the customer journey and what the engagement framework should be, i.e. what exists toda ...Read More

Having been the first EMEA customer success hire at a couple of high-growth companies, I recommend several steps to tackle the priorities ahead; Ask why the company requires a customer success manager and function, including how your experience can support that. This should be clarified in the interview process and help define your short-term focus areas. Understand the install base - How many customers, what they spend with the company, plus what segment and geography they fall into. Once that ...Read More

This is undoubtedly a challenging scenario. Here are recommendations for smaller customer success teams to follow in this situation. Understand the highest priorities for the business and how that translates to positively impacting customers. There are typically many tasks that CS teams can be doing, yet only some that drive significant internal and external (customer) value. Therefore, focus on those high-value activities that align with your business objectives. Look for friction points in the ...Read More