Natasha Evans

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!

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. 

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.

The main hard skill that stands out to me for a Customer Success Leader is change management. Because really this hits in 2 different ways in a Customer Success team: 1. You need to coach and guide your team through how to successfully drive change in their customers 2. You will often need to drive change internally. Customer Success is one of the most change-heavy departments as it often evolves as the business and the market does, so being able to get your team on board to an internal change is key. For optional hard skills, I think project management feeds nicely into change management. Often as a CS leader you have a lot of moving pieces and knowing how to organise that and other internal stakeholders is key.

I want to first understand which activities or metrics correlate to churn, renewal and expansion. Then I know how to target my CS team and which activities to track off the back of that, as well as which metrics I need to keep a close eye on. So I don't think there's an easy one size fits all answer here. But I certainly think that broad strokes I will be tracking Health/adoption,GRR and NRR wherever I am, as well as understanding where you're losing WHY and WHO you're losing - is it specific company types, sizes, tenure etc.

Great question! Retaining great CS talent is the same as retaining any good talent, but I do think that there are a few extra things to consider... The role of a CSM can often be high pressure when things go wrong and little recognition when things go really right. So I would always go out of my way to recognise great talent at every opportunity. That could be everything from nominating them for High Achiever's Club and shouting them out at company meetings, all the way to dropping them a meaningful message to thank them for something they did. I also think that more often than not, CSMs love the variety of the job and the variety in skills that goes with it. Which means they often want to learn and grow. So clear PDPs with each CSM and helping them develop in new areas is key. Finally, CSMs want achievable targets and they want to be rewarded for all the hard work that they put in. So design an incentive plan that does just that.

Soft skills * Communication - (This is everything from how to communicate with an Executive, to how to deliver a training session, how to manage expectations with customers in the right way and get their buy-in to a Success Plan) * Organisation & prioritisation - More and more is expected of CSMs as the role progresses, balancing time and workload effectively and focusing on the right customers at the right time is key * Storytelling with data - As we get more and more data heavy, CSMs need to be able to interpret the data into insight for their customers and explain it in a way that the customer is able to understand and take action, to influence their goals Hard skills * Change management * Project management * And increasingly tech expertise in CRMs, CS tech (like Hook!) and Sales Engagement software

There's only one that springs to mind and it's "Put the customer at the centre of everything you do". If every department thinks customer first, then the whole company wins, as well as the customers!

It's better to have the right soft skills, always! In fact, I'd go one step further than that and say it's even more important to have the right attitude/mindset first. Because if someone has the right mindset, and they're hungry to learn and take feedback on board (we call that Growth Mindset) then the soft skills and the hard skills can always be taught.

Relationship management is where Customer Success and Sales meet in the middle, but I liked the other skills that I'd develop in CS like project management and change management as well as that more consultative focus.