“I’m looking for best practices for career laddering”
“I need new strategies to retain top CSMs”
“I’m concerned about my CSMs getting poached”
If you’ve said any of these statements in the past year, you’re in good company. As the Customer Success department grows in prominence, businesses are forced to change their approach to developing and retaining top CS talent rapidly.
That’s why we spoke with Chad Greenleaf, SVP of Client Services at AppsFlyer, about two career paths he’s successfully implemented. As Chad says “these ladders are presented here as a guideline for leveling and growth of the CSM role, and are by no means the ‘only’ or ‘best’ career ladder options. But each can be customized for an organization and should also be considered for parallel roles in Professional Services, Support, Education, Technical Success, and other roles in the broader Customer Success organization."
Associate CSM - Associate CSMs are entry level, either into the industry and/or at the start of their professional careers. Associates work under the direction of a more experienced CSM or under a Team Lead. Associates may work with less complex customer situations, with clearly defined tasks, and with Mid Market or SMB customers at scale. CS organizations would expect advancement from an associate role faster than advancement through other roles.
CSM - This individual contributor is the backbone of the CS organization. This individual’s day-to-day responsibilities ultimately determine if their customers, and by extension their own organization, succeed or fail in a subscription-based world. CSMs can have a variety of responsibilities depending on the organization, but they are ultimately accountable for the customers’ success, satisfaction, and renewal. In some cases, they may also be responsible for product expansion within the customer organization.
A CSM seeks to understand a customer's current state, desired destination, and the initiatives and software required to reach the destination (or attain the outcome). They link business value with their own organization’s product value and create visibility within the customer organization of what progress has been made. A CSM is an individual leader that drives a matrix team (both vendor and customer) to deliver expected value for the customer. Great CSMs create advocates within their customers that are willing to speak positively about the software or product in public settings.
Senior CSM - Senior CSMs are expected to achieve individual targets consistently and with little oversight. They are often assigned and used extensively in the most strategic or complex customer segments. They frequently mentor CSMs or Associate CSMs.
“Principal CSMs are evidence that career success doesn’t have to follow the traditional management route.”
Principal CSM - Many consider this role to be an individual peer to managers, from a maturity and competence perspective. Principal CSMs are evidence that career success doesn’t have to follow the traditional management route. Achieving and exceeding individual targets and goals are a given. The Principal CSM is called upon to resolve challenging situations or customers in an effective and self-driven manner. They mentor other individual CSMs and are resident experts in one or many technical, product, or strategic subject matters.
Senior Principal CSM - These are the most experienced CSMs at the company. They’ve demonstrated mastery in product knowledge, subject matter expertise, getting things done with other departments, and management of the company’s largest accounts. They consistently set the highest standards by which all other levels of CSM are compared.
CS Team Lead - Team Leads mentor individual CSMs in a formal sense, minus the HR and revenue responsibilities that a manager has. Team Leads set the pace and lead specific initiatives, areas of responsibility, and mentorship for individual team members. Programs with a Team Lead position use the role as a stepping stone for candidates who demonstrate management potential. A CS Team Lead normally serves as a player/coach.
“Programs with a Team Lead position use the role as a stepping stone for candidates who demonstrate management potential.”
CS Manager - This is the baseline or formal foundation of Customer Success leadership. Managers can still serve as a player/coach, but this role tilts more towards coach. This person has formal HR and performance responsibilities for a set team, and for performance of those individuals’ aggregate book of business. They serve as the first escalation point for CSMs with customers.
CS Senior Manager - More experienced managers may advance to a Senior Manager role. Senior Managers are expected to be competent and consistent in managing a team and driving that team to high performance. They will often be drawn by senior leaders for strategic initiatives with the organization or to mentor more junior managers.
Director/Senior Director of CS - Directors often manage other managers, meaning they are the first role that must derive success from second-level leadership. Directors are responsible for individual and team performance across a larger span, including individual and financial success. They mentor managers and partner with other leaders in the broader field teams (Marketing, Sales) as well as the Product team to ensure customer success.
VP/SVP of CS - Often responsible for an aggregate group of teams, regions, customer segments, or departments (CSM, Consulting, Support). VPs of CS report to the CCO, or if a company doesn’t have a CCO role, the CRO or COO. The VP sets strategy and is responsible for the successful execution of the department’s goals. They often contribute to strategy that happens at the CCO level and are an important executive touchpoint for customers. The VP ensures that customer sentiment and feedback make it to the C-level executives and product leadership team.
“CCOs evangelize the need for the entire organization to be involved in Customer-Led Growth.”
Chief Customer Officer - The buck stops here as CCOs are responsible to the CEO, CRO, Product, and the Board for all Customer Success-related areas. A CCO drives organizational and go-to-market strategy for the CS group and ensures that different CS departments are working harmoniously towards the quarterly or annual goals set out by the CEO and Board. The CCO is often the executive sponsor in strategic customer relationships to ensure executive alignment. The CCO also ensures the organization continues to evolve and improve as customer needs shift and expand. CCOs also evangelize the need for the entire organization to be involved in Customer-Led Growth.
TEAM STRUCTURE
Fundamentals Matter
Janine Sneed, VP of Customer Success at IBM, makes a connection between CS and sports and explains how important it is to get the fundamentals right in each. This is the latest post on Janine’s new blog, Scaling Customer Success, which is a resource worth bookmarking.
ENABLEMENT
Why Invest in Customer Success Enablement
“When you make CSMs more effective and efficient, not only do they do better work, they have more time to do that work at that higher level of performance.” Here’s a post by William Buckingham, CS Operations Manager, Enablement at Delphix, with all the research to convince you to invest more into CS Enablement.
WEBINAR
How to Become A Customer-Led Growth Leader
We are stepping into the age of the customer and CS leaders must lead the charge. Join me during this session to learn more about Customer-Led Growth (CLG) and the skills you’ll need to implement this movement at your company.
The Great Resignation continues to cause problems for CS leaders that need to grow and retain their strong existing talent.
Debra Squyres saw this trend early and took action to create a workplace that was attractive to a remote-first workforce. As HackerRank’s Chief Customer Officer, Debra adjusts the hiring, engagement, and retention strategies and has offered to share her learnings via an interview below.
People are more willing to leave their companies due to several factors.
1) The world has gone remote (or hybrid).
2) Movements like the contingent workforce population are growing rapidly. This is where people are disconnecting from the concept of security and the necessity of having a full-time job.
Because of this, workers have more options than ever before and more power than they’ve ever had. We were headed in this direction, but I think COVID-19 accelerated us on this path by about 10 years over the course of about 6 months.
I don't think the Great Resignation is a bad thing. As a leader and hiring manager, the opportunity to hire talent is greatly expanded because I don't have to think in terms of traditional barriers, like location. In fact, I was the first leader at HackerRank that was hired outside of our headquarters location. Had it not been for COVID-19, I wouldn't be here. But we are now a remote-first company.
Workers want the same thing that they've always wanted. They just are more likely to walk away when they aren’t getting it.
The first way leaders usually try to solve this problem is by offering more money. This ultimately leads to a situation where your ability to compete with other companies for talent comes down to how much you’re willing to pay. Money is a hygiene factor. It may attract employees, but it won't retain them over the long term.
At the end of the day, when you look at employee surveys, it all boils down to the same things.
People want to:
It's important to recognize that good people and good talent are not always a good fit for what you need at the stage of the company, the nature of the role, or the product that you have. You have to really drill into the basics and understand your company’s stage and your CS organization's maturity level.
Do your CSMs have a broad spectrum of responsibilities? Or do you have CSMs who specialize? If you have Enterprise CSMs who work with multimillion-dollar accounts, scaled CS on the other end, and a variety of roles in between, the personas you’ll need in your org will look much different than at a company with CSMs who have an expansive remit.
The colleagues who excel and thrive in an environment where they do something different every 45 minutes hate being in mature organizations where they’re specialized by function and segment. It's not the same nature of work.
You can have exceptional CSMs in both environments. But if you're not clear about what your environment is, or you're not hiring for what you need them to do, or the circumstances in which they're going to be doing it, then you will create a mismatch. There will be frustration and attrition.
I have spent the last 15 years in rapidly growing companies. The reality is you can't retain everyone over the course of every phase of a company's lifecycle.
You can retain more team members if you're open about what that journey looks like and what opportunity it presents to them. You also have a better chance of keeping people if you’re clear on what their strengths and passions are because you can push them in certain directions or give them projects that keep them engaged for longer.
But as a leader, you're really fooling yourself if you think you can have 90-100% retention in a rapidly growing environment where the circumstances and nature of work are ever-evolving.
One of the things that many CS leaders, myself included, struggle with right now is the level of fatigue our teams are feeling.
Customer-facing people have to juggle many simultaneous responsibilities in a fast-paced workday managing multiple customers. They’re the voice of the company to the customer. They’re the voice of the customer to the company. They bring feature and bug feedback to the Product team. They bring ICP and pricing feedback to the Sales and Marketing teams. And since CSMs are usually “people” people and we’re mostly working in a remote-first world, they don’t have outlets to recharge their energy like they used to.
So dealing with fatigue, engagement, and retaining passion around the work has been a true challenge from a leadership perspective and ensuring that the team is okay.
All companies need to think about how to create an environment where people who have these intense experiences (like working with customers) can overcome obstacles and find a level of balance and peace in their work.
COMMUNICATION
Thoughtful Apologies for Bad Customer Service
So long as humans run companies, mistakes will be made. Here’s a post on how to craft a professional, but heartfelt apology when a customer is on the receiving end of poor service. The author also shares 5 email templates you can use for various scenarios like after a system outage, a negative customer service experience, or if inaccurate communication was made.
MANAGING UP
The Right Amount of Context to Manage Up
Here’s Wes Kao, Cofounder of Maven, with a thread of advice on how to share the perfect amount of information to make your boss’ life easier. She says, “It's your job to do the heavy lifting. By providing the right amount of context, your boss won't have to guess to figure out what you’re trying to do. Take the mental load off your boss & you’ll shine as an employee.”
ALIGNMENT
Stop Blaming the Sales Team
This quick read from Chad Horenfeldt, Head of Global CS at Kustomer, calls for Customer Success professionals to “stop blaming sales by default.” He advocates for leaders to develop a mentality of extreme ownership to “speed up the chance to make real change and progress” between CS and Sales organizations.
LEADERSHIP
The Dreaded Re-org
Lara Hogan’s piece will help you empathize with and prepare for how your team may react to an upcoming Customer Success team re-org.
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
Of course your CEO says they're "customer first". But how does that claim actually show up in their actions?
This week, we brought together 4 trailblazing customer-focused CEOs (Yamini Rangan of HubSpot, Nick Mehta of Gainsight, Christina Kosmowski of LogicMonitor, & Andy MacMillan of UserTesting) to understand how they create a company-wide customer obsession.
You can watch the full recording here.
This newsletter includes the panelists’ answers to the question “How have you transferred your deep passion for customers to your entire organization?” Their responses have been lightly edited for clarity.
Christina Kosmowski, CEO at LogicMonitor
I think anyone who has heard me talk understands I'm passionate about Customer Success and putting the customer at the center of everything we do.
I also believe that process is not the antithesis, but the enabler. You can say “we’re customer-focused” but if you don't actually create the processes around that claim, you can't enable your company to truly be customer-centric. That’s why we have very tight processes in place that hold our entire organization accountable to the customer experience including our red account program and voice of the customer.
In addition to those processes, we are purposeful about bringing the customer story to life—the qualitative aspect. There are 2 main ways we share our customer stories:
#1 We have a customer story channel in Slack where our customer-facing teams post client stories so that the whole company can hear those narratives.
#2 Once a quarter we require a customer to come in and speak live at our All-Hands. All team members know in the first month of the quarter they will hear a customer speak about the good, the bad, and the ugly. We also have customers share feedback at our executive staff meetings on a quarterly basis.
“Being able to balance that qualitative customer story and experience piece with tight processes is key to keeping the customer truly at the center of the company you’re building.” — Christina Kosmowski
Andy MacMillan, CEO at UserTesting
I completely agree, Christina. As a leader, the things you highlight and talk about are the things that ultimately are important because people listen to what you’re saying and follow your actions. Always talking about your customers is important because it is what your organization will focus on.
I wasn’t a founder of UserTesting. So I had the benefit of joining a company that was already very customer-centric, but I tried to accelerate that culture. For example, I did an All-Hands a few days before I joined where I got introduced to the company. Then my first day was a Monday in the office. During my second day, I was on an airplane to visit our largest customer. And at the end of the week, I told everybody, “Hey, it was a great first week. I met a bunch of you and I met our largest customer in person at their site.” That set the tone about what was important to me.
To transfer customer-centricity to an entire org, leaders need to:
1) talk about customers and then,
2) back that talk up with action.
I also believe that customer-centricity can't just be about individual acts of people interacting with customers. Those moments are important too. But the companies that are customer-focused at scale are able to find narratives about what's going on with their customers that they can align everyone around.
The core of what we do at UserTesting is to help people invite others to record and share their experiences with products or services. User videos then become assets to share internally around an organization.
We focus on how to get those stories from your users and customers, and then scale them around the organization. I think video is a very powerful way to do that because an organization can align around the same customer narratives, and then build a culture around impacting that.
“Customer-centricity can't just be about individual acts of people interacting with customers…Companies that are customer-focused at scale are able to find narratives about what's going on with their customers that they can align everyone around.” — Andy MacMillan
Nick Mehta, CEO at Gainsight
There are three very tactical things I've found helpful to promote customer-centricity org-wide.
#1 Lead with transparency. Every employee and CEO wants to help customers. The problem is, sometimes people just don't know what's going on. That’s why it’s so important to have transparency around the customer experience.
For example, every day I post in Slack and every week I send an email about the customers I met with and what I learned about them. This is a very obvious tactic, but to me, it's so important.
#2 Lead by example. Similar to what Andy talked about, you have to show the org your own customer obsession. I'm that super, crazy, maniacal person who still reads every NPS, meets 10-20 customers a week, and listens to Gong calls. I do everything I can to better understand the customer, and that’s visible to everyone at the company. Gainsters know that if the CEO’s top priority is the customer experience, they should also prioritize customers above all else.
#3 Lead with humanity. It's not just “this customer”. It’s “this person”. We need to highlight their aspirations and really humanize them. We can call out new roles, promotions, or celebrate wins.
Separately, for a long time I’ve hosted customer roundtables where I go visit customers around the country and have dinner with them. I do this several times a month. But one really exciting thing is that other team members at Gainsight are learning how to run these meet-ups. This is another example of how the team is learning and picking up how to be highly customer-focused.
“You have to show the org your own customer obsession. I'm that super, crazy, maniacal person who needs still reads every NPS, meets 10-20 customers a week, and listens to Gong calls. I do everything I can to better understand the customer, and that’s visible to everyone at the company.” — Nick Mehta
Yamini Rangan, CEO at HubSpot
For us at HubSpot and throughout my career, it's come to this question: what is the guiding principle for the organization and is that guiding principle customer-centric? At HubSpot, we call it Solve For The Customer (SFTC). SFTC is not just the starting conversation—it's the way we make decisions across the company. Almost everything comes down to customer over company, team, and self. So for any decision we need to make, we start with solving for the customer. That’s how you get customer-focus embedded into the DNA of the organization.
And then it's very, very practical.
We start every week by sharing our NPS with the larger management team and the product organization.
Every month, we start with a customer-first meeting where we hear directly from a panel of customers. That kind of qualitative data associated with quantitative insights are great.
And then every company meeting, board meeting, almost everything of consequence, starts with having a customer panel.
Nothing can replace meeting the human who is the customer. You see what they have to juggle. You learn about what they're struggling with. Hearing directly from the customer creates company-wide empathy that is crucial to your success as a business.
“You must continually hear from customers so that customer obsession doesn't become just another initiative. It must be built into the DNA of the organization.” — Yamini Rangan
LEADERSHIP
How to Effectively Receive Feedback as an Executive
Here’s a great post with Yamini’s recommendations on how leaders can appropriately receive feedback. The TLDR is to be curious about how you can improve and use feedback as an opportunity to grow.
MODEL
The Three Types of Customer Success Teams
Thomasz proposes a simple model for building a CS team structure. The alarming trend is that some companies are removing CSMs completely from strategic accounts and going with this account team: AE, SE, Support. Think about the impact this could have to your organization.
CULTURE
Running an All-Hands Meeting
An older (2016), but evergreen post with tips to run a more purposeful All-Hands meeting. The one big missing piece I’d add to this article is the importance of having customers consistently come to your All-Hands meetings to share feedback.
DIGITAL CS
The Proactive Pooled Model at Looker
Seth Wylie heads up a CS Ops group that recently had Brian LaFaille give a presentation about Looker’s pooled model. His talk is definitely worth a listen if you’re interested in learning how your low-touch CSMs can be more proactive. Skip to 4:30 to start.
CONTEST
Vote on Your Favorite 2.0 Magazine Photo
This year’s theme for posting photos with the 2.0 magazine has been (unexpectedly) “Kids & Pets”. Help us pick some winners and vote on your favorite photo.
Digital Customer Success is an engagement strategy that can be used with customers in SMB, Mid Market or Enterprise accounts. Adding digital into your customer journey will create better experiences for all customers.
We’ve interviewed dozens of CS leaders about their approach to digital CS, we shared insights on the Nuffsaid podcast, and today we’re bringing the best of what we learned.
Dickey Singh, CEO at Cast.app — “When you’re starting out your digital CS program, remember that you don't have to boil the ocean. A lot of people think ‘let's automate everything.’ You don't have to do that. You can start by automating smaller pieces like the QBR or a playbook for a specific segment. And then you can iteratively digitize additional touchpoints, playbooks, or segments.”
Marley Wagner, VP of Marketing & Digital CS at ESG — “There are foundational elements you need to have in place before you can even think about launching a digital CS program. Here are the prerequisites:
“Once these pieces are in place, you can move up to Stage 1 and beyond of the Digital CS maturity model.”
Lane Holt, Director of Scale Programs at Gainsight — “This strategy is reflected in our Scale programs team structure. Our team includes retention and adoption marketing. It includes customer advocacy. We have a 1:many Ops team. We have one person who handles our in-app messages, another person works on our customer emails, and then I have a team of CSMs who support our customers. All together we make up our Scale programs. Only a small portion of our team is dedicated to that SMB and fast growth segment.”
Brian LaFaille, Global Lead of SaaS CS Programs at Google (Looker) — “There are three key teams that influence our Digital CS program at Looker:
“These three teams are very collaborative. I have a weekly sync with a PM and a Customer Marketing manager to really dissect what the customer experience needs to look like. While Customer Success is accountable to and owns the cadence of how and when customers are communicated to, I'm not a copywriter, right? So I lean on the experience of the Marketing team and all their design chops to make sure that the messaging resonates and fits in with the rest of the brand. Meanwhile, I'm not a product expert, either. I lean on our PM to fix any of the hashing issues or things like that that we might have in anonymizing user data, for instance. With our experience combined, we’ve become a really powerful trio.”
Meenu Agarwal, SVP of Customer Success at VMware — “At VMware, we absolutely want to meet our customers in the moment. That's where digital gives us a lot of power and capability. We've launched a collaboration platform called VMware Customer Connect, which helps provide a very personalized, holistic experience for our customers at different engagement points. There are three elements that make up Customer Connect. First, it’s a central hub and repository where customers can access any information they need—be it product, support, daily operational tasks, self-help education, knowledge, or community.
“Customer Connect is also personalized. For example, if a customer is onboarding they will see content relevant to getting started. As a customer moves further along their consumption and adoption journey their experience will change in the platform. We make it very tailored to the user.
“The third element of this platform is our use of advanced technology. We have AI components to give customers even more in-the-moment capabilities and so we can sense what they're trying to do. We want to accelerate customer outcomes at the end of the day.”
Dickey Singh, CEO at Cast.app — “In most digital CS programs, customers end up turning off the emails that you're sending them because it’s not meaningful content. You're just overwhelming them with content. The same thing goes with dashboards. We have overwhelmed our customers with dashboards and now we’re overwhelming them with pointless emails, reports, and pdfs.”
Brian LaFaille, Global Lead of SaaS CS Programs at Google (Looker) — “At Looker the top 3% of our customers work with named CSMs, but everyone else, north of 3,300 customers, are in a Pooled model. Sometimes these customers need a proactive human element from Looker. That’s when we deploy a light-touch team member for a short burst engagement. We're able to rotate the customer out of the pool and move them into the light-touch CSM’s portfolio for a short period of time, so they get that extra white-glove experience for a brief stint.
"The customer is ideally driving towards some desired outcome (i.e. to roll out to some new department, a data migration, escalation, etc.) Then they roll off. And we try to be as transparent as possible with our customers about this. In the CSMs opening email they’ll say, ‘Hey, I'm going to be here with you for seven days. I really want to make sure that we're able to accomplish X, Y, and Z. Here are the resources I'm going to use to do so. When can you meet?’ This approach usually lights a fire under the customer to engage with us because they know there's a time limit associated with that engagement.”
Elisabeth Courland, Digital CSM at Agorapulse — “Digital CSMs are often afraid of sending emails because they worry that either 1) the emails won't be well written, or 2) emails will get lost in customers’ inboxes. Here’s what you have to do: make sure that when you send an email, it provides maximum value (don’t pitch, or say obvious things).
“We all have email and we all have to weed through at least 10 spam emails a day. It's exhausting—honestly, it’s a nightmare. So when customers receive an email, they have to get the added value. They have to immediately see how the message is serving them. For this to happen, you have to understand personas before sending out an email and each message must provide a clear call to action (CTA).
“When you’re the sender of emails, it's never about your company. It's never about the product. It's about your customer and his pain point. At the end of the day, no one cares about the product or its features. A product is just a way to achieve an objective. So my advice is to not speak about your product. Instead, let your emails be the advisor that your customers don't have enough money to pay for. Train your customers that your emails are always worth reading.”
Dan Ennis, CS Scale Team Manager at monday.com — “I see two big pitfalls people can fall into when developing a digital CS program. The first is making assumptions about your data. That’s the quickest way to ensure your data isn’t valuable. It can be really easy to see high numbers or product usage and then assume that indicates healthy customers.
“It’s also important to remember to avoid using 1:1 intervention thoughtlessly. If you have experience as a CSM, your natural go-to card is often to jump in and help customers 1:1. But that’s not necessarily the right move when building out a digital CS program. I always encourage others to intentionally hold that piece back a little. It’s a tool, not the tool. Later on you can leverage that 1:1 intervention for the truly strategic components, and focus on how to automate intervention within your Scale program.”
Lane Holt, Director of Scaled Programs at Gainsight — “One of the key pillars for our team is to lighten the load for CSMs. How can we make it easier to be a CSM here at Gainsight? Part of accomplishing that is to help send the right message, to the right customer, at the right time. For example, my team helped develop the communication strategy around our event Pulse alongside our Marketing team.
“We sent out an announcement about the tracks that would be available this year at the event. Then we followed up with an email on behalf of high-touch CSMs. That email said, based on the user’s persona, ‘These are the tracks that you should attend this year.’ The results were incredible—some of our quietest stakeholders responded, thanking the CSM for sharing this information.
“By automating this small piece for our CSMs, we helped save their time and energy in a big way. And we hit our registration numbers earlier than we've ever hit them before because of our thoughtful approach to sending messages to our users.”
Dickey Singh, CEO at Cast.app — “Of course, you cannot replicate white-glove experiences in environments when you have thousands of customers and not enough CSM coverage. So I recommend automating the top positive interactions or moments of truth of your named CSM experience to provide a great experience for customers at scale. For instance, take the best playbooks from your top 1:1 named accounts and consider digitizing those. That’s how you can scale this program.”
Creating content, segmenting customers, deciding on an automation platform, looking into engagement models, understanding personas…when you’re just starting out with a Digitally-Led Customer Success motion, knowing where to begin can be the biggest obstacle.
That’s why it was refreshing to speak with Elisabeth Courland recently on the Nuffsaid podcast. The Digital CSM at Agorapulse was an integral part of launching Talentsoft’s Scale CS program and she is currently working on building Agorapulse’s digital CS motion from the ground up. Because of her experience, she is able to get tactical about the process.
In this newsletter, Elisabeth shares five easily digestible tips that any leader working on digital CS can use right away.
Tune into Elisabeth’s Nuffsaid podcast episode, if you’d rather listen than read.
ELISABETH:
When you’re starting a Digitally-Led CS program from scratch, the first thing to do is to take a step back. Understand that you cannot deal with and implement everything you want to in the first week, so I suggest making three priorities per quarter and sticking to those priorities.
Step 2 is to look at what's already happening at your company in terms of a digital CS program. This step involves speaking with three different stakeholders:
1) Current CSMs. I send out a form to existing CSMs asking them a number of questions:
2) The Product team. It’s important to speak with Product about expectations for what the customer can do with the product and what the ideal experience would look like (i.e. Digital CSMs should learn what Product wants customers to understand and be able to do first with the product.)
3) Existing customers. Contact as many customers as you can because you need to deeply understand them before you can help with digital CS. Whether it be customer advocates who are super successful with the product, or even customers that recently churned, I ask questions like:
The objective of talking to all these stakeholders is not to have a single source of truth. It's your job to see how each department, how each persona (either internal or external) views the customer journey.
Then translate all your conversations with Product, CSMs, and customers into data. That means collecting and aggregating all the feedback from stakeholders into a spreadsheet that you can use to inform your digital customer journey mapping, segmentation, & tiering, and prioritizing tasks. This process will help you better communicate with customers in a newly launched 1:many motion.
ELISABETH:
People are really afraid to send emails because they worry that either 1) the emails won't be well written, or 2) emails will get lost in customers’ inboxes. Here’s what you have to do: make sure that when you send an email, it provides value (don’t pitch, or say obvious things).
We all have email and we all have to weed through at least 10 spam emails a day. It's exhausting—honestly, it’s a nightmare.
So when customers receive an email, they have to get the added value. They have to immediately see how the message is serving them, or going to help them. For this to happen, you have to understand personas before sending out an email. And each email must provide a clear call to action (CTA).
When you’re the sender of emails, it's never about your company. It's never about the product. It's about your customer and his pain point. At the end of the day, no one cares about the product or its features. A product is just a way to achieve an objective.
So my advice is to not speak about your product. Instead, let your emails be the advisor that your customers don't have enough money to pay for. Each message should add maximum value.
ELISABETH:
Customer sentiment can be a tricky topic because anyone in CS knows how often we send out customer sentiment surveys. The problem is that we don't really know if we can rely on it or if it's useful.
Let's be honest, when it comes to NPS (i.e. How likely are you to recommend us on a scale from 0 to 10?), the question is inherently misleading. No one sits around and recommends software products to their friends.
In digital CS, use automation. Send a one question survey in the body of an email that customers can answer in one click.
And the question should be simple:
This is dangerous because it's a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. And if it's ‘no’, you may see churn. But if it is a ‘no’, at least you can act on it. You can say, “Okay, do you want some help? How can we help you? Should we schedule a call? Do you want more content?”
This way, at least you’ll have some visibility into an account. Don’t send surveys you won’t act on.
ELISABETH:
The reason your company is utilizing a digital CS approach is to give a large number of customers a great experience at scale. Your customers need to be kept in the loop. That’s why in digital CS, it’s crucial that when a new feature is launched, or the product changes customers are notified.
Product and CS can work together on the following activities so digital CS customers have a great experience:
1) As soon as a new feature is implemented, an internal presentation should be created so:
2) Then, a live session or webinar should be scheduled to address and train the customers on the new feature or change. This requires the following:
ELISABETH:
If you’re interested in investing more heavily in digital CS, your first few hires are important. I see a few skills that can do really well in Digitally-Led Customer Success.
#1 Data-driven: Digital CSMs shouldn’t be afraid of digging into data. To run automation and a large number of customer communications, you should be excited by looking at data.
#2 Curiosity: You need to have a desire to understand your customer deeply, and you should be good at asking for information (either from the customer or from internal departments working on the customer experience).
#3 1:1 CS experience: I think having prior experience as a high-touch CSM is also important. It’s helpful as a Digital CSM to simplify what you've experienced in the past and be able to verbalize it for this new, 1:many audience.
#4 Social: In digital CS, the ability to collaborate with other departments is crucial to you and your customer’s success. We are always teaming up with Product, Marketing, Support, Data, high-touch CS, and more.
When it comes to skills in Digital CS, I believe that everything can be learned over time. I don't have any degree in CS. I've obviously had some certifications when started, but it’s more about soft skills (like communication, organization, etc).
We are also in a world where resources are free. Everything you need to know is on the table, you just have to go look for it.
To hear more from Elisabeth, go follow her on LinkedIn.
STRATEGY
Ultimate Guide to Customer Success Org Structures
Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta breaks down some common models for CS org structures. (His pdf, shared at the bottom of the post, is worth bookmarking.)
LEADERSHIP
Your Team Needs a User Manual (On You)
Everyone works differently and it helps to know how your peers or manager operate. What are their strengths and weaknesses, and their “default” ways of working? At Nuffsaid every manager shares their strengths and weaknesses openly. This article outlines how you can take a similar approach, and write a manager README.
POSITIONING
Tips for Handling Renewals from Gong and Gainsight
Here’s a quick article worth sharing with your team. It shares a few tips CSMs can use in QBRs to reduce churn risk (e.g. “frame the renewal in a way that ‘avoids change’”).
INTERVIEW
The Silicon Valley Executive Who Coined Customer Success
Here’s an exclusive conversation with Marie Alexander, the woman who came up with the terms Customer Success and CSM. It’s a lengthy interview so jump to each guest question and Marie’s corresponding answer for some key takeaways. For instance, Wayne McCulloch asks if there were any missed opportunities in the evolution of Customer Success. She responds, “what causes me the most angst is that Customer Success became a role rather than a philosophy or a corporate goal…Instead, it should be built into the product, built into each of the processes in your company. Customer Success Management is merely ensuring the focus.”
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
This week we announced the release of the second issue of the 2.0 magazine, titled Customer-Led Growth. It’s an exploration of the teams, systems, and skills needed for Customer Success to drive a Customer-Led Growth model.
Customer-Led Growth is a term I expect we’ll begin to hear more often. That’s why this newsletter features the foreword from the new magazine, which outlines the principles of Customer-Led Growth.
But first: What is Customer-Led Growth?
Customer-Led Growth is an operating mode where everyone at the company is obsessed about the value customers are receiving from the product. And, you’ll read this below, it builds on the principles of Product-Led Growth.
And how did it come about?
First we have to start with the CEO. The CEO’s primary responsibility, in the eyes of their investors, is to increase the value of the company.
In the early days of SaaS, investors rewarded companies that grew very quickly, which created the Sales-Led growth approach where companies were willing to spend 100% or more of revenue to acquire new customers. These companies also tended to have high customer churn rates.
Then, when Wall Street saw how expensive it was to grow these companies, they started rewarding companies that could grow more efficiently. And from that emerged Product-Led Growth, a model where the value delivered from the product and network effects allowed companies to grow quickly with minimal Sales and Marketing investments. These companies also had much higher customer retention rates.
But here’s the rub: 95% of companies will never be Product-Led. That’s because they’re missing the key ingredients that enable PLG, the most important one being that the product has to be very simple to use, and also the customer has to get high value with minimal effort. Very few companies have a product like that.
So if 95% of companies will never be Product-Led, but investors still want low-cost growth and high retention rates, another model is needed. That’s where Customer-Led Growth comes in.
By obsessing about the value customers receive, it forces the company to achieve product-market fit. Great product-market fit leads to great retention rates, great customer advocacy, and much lower costs to grow revenue than traditional Sales-Led Growth models.
Below you’ll find the foreword from the new magazine, which outlines the principles of CLG.
“Design for users!”
“Deliver value without friction!”
“Monetize upgrades that deliver more value!”
Read those declarations aloud, and your brain probably will go to Product-Led Growth. That’s because those ideas are core to the increasingly popular PLG model, and have helped companies like Slack, Zoom, and Airtable skyrocket their growth.
The principles of PLG power a very small percentage of companies. Most companies, which aren’t a good fit for PLG, latch onto the trend by putting a free trial on their website… And it doesn’t produce the results they’d expect.
That’s because most companies don’t have the core ingredients to enable PLG:
Companies that don’t meet all 3 of PLG’s criteria won’t be able to pull off Product-Led Growth. However, the principles of PLG are still solid. They can be built on to apply to customers who aren’t a good fit for the PLG model.
That’s where Customer-Led Growth comes in. Customer-Led Growth builds on the principles of Product-Led Growth and acknowledges that 95% of companies will never be able to truly be Product-led.
In a CLG model, the entire company obsesses about the value that customers are receiving.
In a CLG company, the Customer executive is one of the most important members of the executive team. They own “customer value” on behalf of the company, and arm their peers with the data that’s needed to acquire the right customers, with the right use cases, at the right price point, with the right features, to ensure the company maximizes its growth rate and profitability over time.
So for this issue, we explore the team, systems, and executive skills a Customer Success function needs to lead a Customer-Led Growth model. From unlocking CS Ops and designing digitally-led programs, to influencing Product, Marketing, and Sales — we hope this issue serves as a reminder that CLG is a company-wide job, and inspires Customer Success leaders to lead the charge.
PROCESS
QBRs Are Stupid
In the past 2 days both Aaron Thompson and Nick Mehta have called for a change to how most CS teams run QBRs. Nick’s post is tactical and Aaron’s takes a higher-level view at what makes QBRs ineffective (or his words: “stupid”). Consider using both to do an audit with your team.
LEADERSHIP
A Leader’s Job Is to Create Clarity on the Problems to Be Solved
Segment’s CEO Peter Reinhardt reflects on an experience at Segment (“everything was burning”), and explains why the solution was to share what the company’s problems were and let the team solve them. This lesson is easier said than done and it’s not the default way of working for many people. A helpful reminder.
MONETIZING CS
5 Models for Monetizing Customer Success
Marley Wagner discusses potential pathways for monetizing the CS motion. This piece might be a useful starting point for any leader thinking about implementing new CS models.
CAREER
Extending Your Personal Runway
Here’s a thoughtful examination by executive coach, Ed Batista, on how to assess a difficult professional transition. “Senior leaders do enjoy many advantages: They're well-compensated, have a great deal of autonomy, and often feel a strong sense of purpose. But such roles also come with significant downsides… [they] the subject of intense scrutiny, receive little developmental feedback, and are rarely viewed empathetically by others. So despite the many benefits of these roles, feelings of stress, fatigue and isolation can cause senior leaders to entertain thoughts of leaving.”
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
Some news: We have the next issue of the 2.0 magazine, print copies, in hand. We haven’t officially launched it yet (check out this sneak-peek of the issue), but the digital version is coming soon.
This edition is all about Customer-Led Growth, a business model that builds on the principles of Product-Led Growth but accounts for the fact that most companies aren’t a good fit for PLG. In a CLG model, the company 1. Measures the customer’s perceptions of the value at each step in their journey, 2. Uses that data to inform all important company decisions, and 3. Makes outsized investments in the Customer team.
This second issue of Nuffsaid’s 2.0 Magazine, called Customer-Led Growth, explores the team, systems, and executive skills a Customer Success function needs to lead a CLG model.
The following is an excerpt from one chapter in the magazine. This chapter hits on point #2 above (“the company uses customer data to inform all company decisions”) by explaining how CS leaders can influence an important decision: the Ideal Customer Profile definition.
Too often, the company’s ICP is an afterthought for CS teams. It’s easy to fall into being reactive, especially when you trust your Marketing team, or to ambiguously refer to the company’s ICP without holding anyone accountable for follow-through.
But acquiring the right customers is one of the first initiatives a Customer-Led Growth leader pursues. Good Customer Success teams proactively give Marketing the data they need to refine the company’s Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Great CS teams take it a step further: they assign a Fit Scores to every customer, and use the ICP internally to identify and manage expansion opportunities.
That’s why we asked several leaders one question: What’s one action CS leaders can take to have a bigger influence on the Ideal Customer Profile? Hopefully their responses won’t just inspire you but give you something you can do today to immediately be more influential over who Marketing and Sales are targeting.
Here’s what they had to say.
1. Compare the ICP to reality
RACHEL ORSTON, CCO AT SMARTRECRUITERS
“Planning for the next quarter or year is a great time to revisit the ICP. The big question to answer is how your company is doing on the ICP. Where have you won, and how did that impact renewals or expansions? How many customers churned due to being a bad fit? Does the ICP definition reflect reality, or have the behaviors and characteristics of your best customers shifted?
“Then, don’t just say, ‘We need to revisit this’. Be part of the solutioning too. That means coming prepared to make changes, and having the data to back those changes up. It's the Customer Success leader's responsibility to be the internal voice of the customer and use data to share the experience your customers are having.
“Come to your strategic planning sessions saying, ‘Hey, this is where we're seeing success. CMO, can I better understand our ABM strategy? Are we targeting the right people?’ Or, ‘Hey, Here's where we're really struggling and finding friction. We need to revisit our marketing or sales process here.’
“There’s an opportunity to pause and reflect before we jump into next year and say, ‘Well, do our teams still know what makes for successful customers?’”
“The CS leader must start this conversation, and they need to have a strong voice about what's working and what's not. Most CS leaders aren’t doing enough of that—we go right into OKR planning, we start with targets and back our way into them. There’s an opportunity to pause and reflect before we jump into next year and say, ‘Well, do our teams still know what makes for successful customers?’ And that’s a great opportunity for the CS leader to show their ability to be strategic and bring the right data points forward to the rest of the executive team.”
2. Require Sales to assign a Fit Score to every prospect
SHAWN RIEDEL, EXECUTIVE CS CONSULTANT AT ESG
“I’m a fan of Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) with a Fit Score. That way, everybody has visibility into what customers we are bringing on board. Fit Score also allows me to plan for more resources to make a less than ideal customer successful.
“The Fit Score needs to be agreed to by all pillars that touch the customer—Sales, Marketing, Support, Services, & CS. After all, they all benefit from adopting an ICP.
“In theory, low Fit Scores will lead reps to find and spend more time on good fit customers. You don't want to be the rep with all the low Fit Scores.
“In practice, a Fit Score is similar to a Health Score. The calculation will depend on an organization, but the output should be a rating that is objective as possible with one subjective measure:
3. Highlight the consequences of acquiring bad fit customers
KATE WALSH, VP OF CUSTOMER SUCCESS AT KLAVIYO
“Proactive data and communication is what CS leaders need to focus on. They should be leading the conversation and showing things like, ‘Look at these customers that are successful. If we sign up more of these types of customers, this is what our business looks like in 12 months, 24 months, five years, 10 years.’
“And then on the inverse, CS leaders need to be equally intentional about sharing the data around what happens if the business doesn’t acquire customers that are a good fit. We're all shooting to build that healthy business, so in your next planning exercise think about how you can get Marketing, Sales, and CS to better understand the ICP and the consequences of not following it. It requires building a plan together.”
“CS leaders need to be equally intentional about sharing the data around what happens if the business doesn’t acquire customers that are a good fit.”
4. Incentivize ICP fit by compensating Sales reps and CSMs on renewals and expansions
ALEX HESTERBERG, CCO AT DELPHIX
“Customer Success is gaining more clout and influence on major strategic decisions, particularly as we go from subscription into consumption. Most companies now are trying to get more than 50% (sometimes as high as 80%) of their revenue for the year from their installed base. So as that shift happens, the most important thing is for CS leaders to have the confidence to influence and change compensation plans.
“The CS and Sales organizations should both be compensated on renewals and expansion deals—although not necessarily at the same rate. There are different ratios your company may use, but both functions should be incentivized and compensated on both so that there is discouragement from selling deals and customers that we know are not in the ICP.
“And at the same time, incentivising both teams should drive a lot of alignment through reward for going after the right profile and working together to get those companies, not just renewing but expanding.”
CULTURE
Don’t Worry, Be Happy
Feeling happy at work requires a combination of harmony, impact, and recognition. Amidst this “Great Resignation” this is a good piece for managers to consider—how can you create more joy, and therefore success, within your teams?
(One typo from the article: the author mistakenly calls NBA player Stephen Curry, “Steph Kerry”)
RETENTION
“Five Stars, Six if I Could!” Strategies for Upping Your CS Game to Add Value and Drive Growth
Here are some strategies builder and investor, Chris O’Neill, suggests to earn more customer love and ensure customers renew year after year.
COMMUNICATION
The Art of Becoming a Better Listener
“It’s easy to assume that listening is merely about showing up and paying attention to the other person, but it’s also deeply tied to paying attention to ourselves.” In this piece, Ximena Vengoechea offers a trove of tactical advice for how to become better, more engaged and empathetic listeners—something that most everyone needs to work on.
OWN A NUMBER
Why the ‘Proof Gap’ is An Existential Threat to CCOs & CMOs
Peter Armaly shared this on LinkedIn last week; the TLDR for this one is that revenue attribution, and specifically owning a number, is key to securing more budget. Written for Marketing but the same concept applies to CS.
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
Recently we heard of a situation you might be familiar with: CSMs, possibly because of the way they’re thought of within the company, feel undervalued. They don’t know their worth.
It can seem like an ambiguous problem to tackle. So we recently sat down with Neelam Patel, someone we know has managed this dilemma before, to talk about where the issue comes from and how others can approach it with their teams. The following is an excerpt from our conversation.
Neelam: I see this problem stemming from a few areas:
1) Imposter Syndrome. On the individual level, most everyone has imposter syndrome when they’re starting something new. CSMs aren’t the only ones who experience this. Everyone has basic self-worth work they need to do like, “Hey, I exist. Therefore I should be in the room.”
2) Diplomatic Role. CSMs are people who care about people, right? That’s a big reason why we hire them. But the problem with this kind of diplomatic role is that if you’re skilled, you likely won’t be seen or heard. Often the only time you’re called out is when you’ve made a mistake or there’s a fire. No one thinks about the glue, right? CSMs are glue—they hold everything together and only get seen when something breaks.
3) Misunderstood Department. Customer Success and the role of the CSM are often misunderstood, so CSMs can be seen by others in a company as “the person who helps make customers feel better” or a project coordinator.
If a CSM already struggles with imposter syndrome and on top of that, the words and actions within the company support those fears, a CSM is going to fail to see their worth. That's the problem.
Neelam: #1 Build confidence by leveraging your subject matter expertise.
You need to get to the point where you're like, “I have value in this room because I understand my job and understand that I have a position that is unique.” As a CSM, you’re a subject matter expert on the customer—you’re part of the only group in an org that understands the customer on a deep level.
One way to build confidence is to create value within your company. Use what you know about customers, what you’ve heard in calls, and bring that information to your team (“here’s how I’ve handled this” or “here’s a pattern I’m noticing”).
#2 Draw a straight line from yourself to revenue.
When you have nothing to do with revenue, you’ll often be treated as someone who has nothing to do with revenue. Most people in an org are tech experts and subject matter experts, meaning their entire job and reputation is based on being highly skilled in a certain discipline and knowing the deliverable that is the profit center of the company.
If I'm responsible for the profit center, the most important thing to the company, then I’ll be treated as such. Everything else is secondary. And that’s not because everyone at a company is a jerk, that’s just business. The closer you are to the money, the more influence you have.
For your self-esteem and to have greater influence within a company, attach yourself to revenue and start tracking it. Start answering some questions:
This will give you the feeling of being responsible for the business.
#3 Know the product & how to help customers.
If CSMs don’t have the product knowledge to help a customer with a given request, they will often wonder, “What am I doing here? All these tech people know all the answers and I don't know anything.” This can be avoided with great product knowledge and understanding the common areas where customers struggle or places where they can find more value in your product.
You are also in a unique position to be able to translate to the customer in user-friendly terms. The more you understand from your “non-tech” perspective, the easier you can make it for the customer to understand as well.
#4 Think about your unique value.
I’ve had to do a lot of coaching, even with senior CS hires, about how out of the whole org, CSMs are the only ones who must wear two badges: 1) the company's badge and 2) the customer's badge.
As a CSM you're the only one with this vantage. Who else in the room at your company has the most intimate relationship with the day-to-day work and lives of your customers? You'll realize it's just you. You're literally a living, breathing avatar of the customer and nobody else can say that. Use this to your advantage.
#5 Track your impact.
The more you realize your value, the more you can vocalize it, so people “get” your worth.
If you’re able to share how a customer wouldn’t have renewed if you hadn’t done ‘XYZ’, a salesperson will start to think, “Wow, I want this CSM on my accounts because she always has my customers’ back.” People around you should know how the things you do help their paychecks.
As a CSM, you have a role that's 1) not understood by most people and 2) requires you to constantly advocate for yourself and educate people on how you’re worthy.
#6 Network and find a community of support.
It's helpful to network with CSMs at different companies to understand that you're not alone in your role. Partnerships will also help you think about how much your company values Customer Success. How does your company score compared to others?
A note from Chris:
Let's start with the root of the problem here, which is that if you’re a CSM and you don't own revenue for your accounts, then you don't own a number that matters to your company. No one cares. So the reality is if you don't own a number, you will be perceived as a project coordinator or Customer Support.
If you do own revenue, you will have power and influence within your company which you can use to pipe into conversations, share data & anecdotes from your customer accounts, etc.
Let's say you don't own revenue, but you still want to have a bigger voice in your company and you want to feel more valued. The most important thing that you can do is help bring the customer's voice into decision-making at the company. There are key decisions that happen over the course of the year without any customer input at all—it's crazy town. For example:
1) Product is making decisions about what features to build without understanding how much value it would add to customers' lives.
2) The Sales team is acquiring customers without deeply understanding the ICP.
3) Marketing is making decisions about pricing without knowing what's working and what's not working for customers around pricing.
4) Customer Marketing is coming up with content strategy without the knowledge of what customers need to help make their journeys more successful.
The next best thing that CSMs can do is to ask the same structured questions [see examples below] to all of your customers along their journey, and then summarize and share that information with managers and other leaders so that they can make better customer-centered decisions.
A CSM understands their customers more than any other person in a company but without quantifying that understanding, it's useless. At that point, all a CSM has is anecdotes, which don't mean anything to executives. What you need is quantified data about the customer experience that you can share.
PROCESS
The Power of Performance Reviews: Use This System to Become a Better Manager
“Done well, performance reviews improve performance, align expectations and accelerate your report’s career. Done poorly, they accelerate their departure.” Lenny Rachitsky, former Product Lead at Airbnb, offers a clear framework for a well-orchestrated performance review.
VOICE OF CUSTOMER
Who Is The Owner of The VOC?
Here’s an interesting discussion on which department should own the VOC program. Our opinion: VOC must be owned by a leader who is part of the executive team. Ideally, that leader is the CS leader since they’re closest to the customer, but it also requires the Customer leader to proactively deliver that information to other departments.
SPICY TAKE
Is Your Customer Success Team Helping Or Hindering Retention?
Here’s a CMO’s take on how not to approach Customer Success. If you’re reading this newsletter, you’ve probably already thought about the points in this article. But it may still serve as a helpful reminder that CSMs must be aware of their customers’ time, and treat their customers like humans. (Hint: Checking in to “see how a customer is doing” right before renewal isn’t a great experience.)
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
FEATURING: Jason Baldree (CCO at Alida), Nicole Alrubaiy (VP of Customer Success at Ping Identity), Emily Garza (VP of Customer Success at Proton), & Emilia D’Anzica (Founder of GrowthMolecules).
You’ve heard this one too many times: “Nothing beats face-to-face time.” Indeed, many of us are Zoom fatigued and virtual Happy Houred out. But with the recent surge in COVID-19 cases around the globe, you might again be finding yourself scrambling to pull off another virtual Sales Kickoff (SKO) or Revenue Kickoff (RKO) for 2022.
A great Sales Kickoff sets the tone for your year. So does a bad one. The good news is that running an effective and motivational virtual SKO is possible with some prep. That’s why this week we’re featuring advice on how to run Customer Success’s portion of a virtual SKO in a way that’s (almost) as good as in-person.
Chances are your week-long, in-person SKO of the past is too long of a time for your GTM team to be sitting in Zoom calls. It’s important to consider your event’s length and the cadence of sessions. Consider designing your SKO agenda using a healthy mix of the following elements:
For example, here’s Emily Garza’s solid plan for Proton’s 2022 Revenue Kickoff:
Day 1
Day 2
If you want your team and company to continuously improve, nothing beats hearing feedback straight from a customer’s mouth. In this year’s Sales Kickoff, make sure to bring a customer on stage and ask them about their full customer journey. You can get them talking about Sales, Services, Product, Pricing, Onboarding, and Content with questions like these:
Humans are designed to be “in-person”—teamwork and connection are a whole lot easier to foster when we’re not confined to little 1x1 inch images on a 12 inch screen. But since we can only play with the hand we’ve been dealt, it’s up to team leaders to do as much as they can to help facilitate building personal connections during virtual SKOs.
Here’s some advice from Jason Baldree, CCO at Alida: “We do a global Field Kickoff (vs. traditional SKO). This comprises all customer-facing functions in the field (primarily Sales, CS, Solution Engineers and Services). We have virtual networking sessions interwoven into the agenda for FKO. Our event is over 4 days (4-5 hours per day) since it is virtual. That is a lot of Zoom to consume, so we spread it out. On one of the evenings we are doing small team dinners where we send an UberEats to everyone and then get together to enjoy a dinner together virtually. We also are using some various tools to facilitate networking sessions (Hopin as the primary event tool, it has networking capabilities, Wonder.me for the Lunch & Dinner sessions). For my team's tracks we are separating the CSM's into small groups to have work assignments together and build some bonding.”
If in 2021 your Sales team had issues with setting customer expectations, for example, about how much CSM time customers get, or if the CS and Sales team need to level with each other about customer handoffs, there’s never been a better time to address the problem or iterate on processes than at your SKO.
Emilia D’Anzica, Founder of GrowthMolecules says, “Customer Success is responsible for segmenting the different experiences customers get which helps create some boundaries to help the team stay efficient. But they’re also responsible for making sure Sales is able to 1. understand how their deals map into the appropriate segments, and 2. communicate to the customer what type of support they will receive.
“It takes regular communication to make sure Sales is in-tune with Customer Success’s engagement models. But one tactic I’d note that I’ve seen work is running a session on this during your SKO. Map out your engagement models, train Sales on customer segments, explain the levels of support provided for each, and share that in a presentation to the entire Sales org—and do it again at every Sales summit.”
Nicole Alrubaiy, VP of Customer Success at Ping Identity, says, “Our sales process leverages a framework where Sales captures the customer’s challenge, impact of the challenge on their business, what solution we’re implementing and the expected outcome from that solution. That becomes the primary handover asset for our CS teams to lead the customer to those outcomes. Soon after SKO, we’re rolling out some new handover packages including this CISO framework, an org chart, and more.”
And for those who don’t have a challenge in Sales <> CS handoffs: Jason Baldree, CCO at Alida adds, “[At Alida] the CSM's are part of the majority of the sessions at our Kickoff event, including the sales process sessions with the AEs. Since we don't really have a challenge on the handoff side, we’re doing a number of sessions to further strengthen the bond of CS / AE alignment - joint account planning workshops, etc.”
We’re at a point in time where employees are extra motivated to look at other companies if their current company isn’t helping them grow personally and/or in their careers. In place of the fun, but nonessential concerts and trivial events of SKOs of the past, give your team the gift of leveling up. Coach them for the upcoming year, provide them with new skill sets, and work through scenarios so they leave the SKO ready to face the challenges ahead.
Advice from Nicole Alrubaiy, VP of Customer Success at Ping Identity:
“Up-leveling the CS team is core to our 2022 strategy. We started in 2021 with understanding the skill and comfort gaps in our current team to where we need to be in 2023. We built a roadmap to “CSM of the Future” and rolled it out to the team. Some of the key elements we’re focusing on are engaging decision makers in our accounts, improved success plans, and a deeper understanding of our product use cases and the value they drive. The team have also done personal assessments so their managers can work with them on tailoring learning plans to their needs.
“Our CS Architect team has done a similar self-assessment, but their learning plan is more focused on the products they each have as a speciality, as well as learning our newer products in depth.”
Advice from Jason Baldree, CCO at Alida:
“Our dedicated CSM sessions are focused on 2 themes this year—1) Value Discovery and 2) Solutioning. For Value Discovery, we have a couple of sessions on "how to" - e.g. questioning strategies, customer/industry research, Command of the Message tactics, etc. For Solutioning, this is all about upskilling the team to understand the customer tech landscape, as it relates to how we enhance and play a role in the martech stack/CX stack. We are going to be training on the types of tools, data, integrations, etc. that enhance the customer value from our tech and create greater stickiness.”
From Jason Baldree, CCO at Alida:
“The main thing my team has appreciated after an SKO is that it is a true field event and not just focused on Sales. There are sessions, training, awards, etc. focused on the entire field teams.”
From Nicole Alrubaiy, VP of Customer Success at Ping Identity:
“Hands down, our CS team members rave the most about the personal connections they build with their Sales counterparts. Sitting next to someone at a dinner or collaborating on an activity goes a long way to building trust that we can draw on throughout the year. Of course, the team also loves being part of the awards celebration, and getting the cool swag. The event helps us feel like we’re all on the same team.”
LEADERSHIP
The Best Managers Don’t Fix, They Coach
Here’s a message for any manager out there exhausted from being a “solution vending machine”—your over-reliance on fixing problems “constrains [y]our ability to lead and robs [y]our team members of growth opportunities.” This piece is a great place to start if you’d like to learn how to be a better team coach, not team manager. Worth sharing with directors on your team.
BEST PRACTICES
These Are the 5 Best Data-backed Sales Tips of 2021
Gong Labs’ research team set out to uncover the best-kept secrets of 2021. This post presents their findings, shares tips like “never negotiate over email”, and highlights trends like “longer emails are significantly more effective at booking a meeting”.
CAREER
Hugging the X-Axis
If you’ve accomplished anything big in your career, you’ll know that it took sacrifice, hard work, and above all, a commitment to a goal. But as David Perell’s essay argues, most people in Western culture suffer from some degree of commitment phobia. “People think they’ll be happy if they don’t have any obligations. In actuality, total optionality is a recipe for emptiness […] The challenge is that the greatest rewards generally go to people who are tied down in certain ways.” This piece will make you think deeply about responsibility and ownership.
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
The following is an excerpt from Bill Cushard’s article “The Business Model Innovation of Customer Success”.
We are thinking about Customer Success all wrong. We think it’s a function. A department. A post-sales team. The enlightened among us think CS is a philosophy or even an organizational design principle. That’s better, but still not quite right. I mean, what am I supposed to do with “Customer Success is a philosophy?” I have no idea. After spending two and a half years running a SaaS business as a general manager with P&L ownership, I have come to this realization in my thinking: CS is a business model innovation.
To understand what I mean by business model innovation, we must first define business model. According to Alex Osterwalder, “a business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value.”
Notice the three parts of this definition: create, deliver, and capture value. All three are required in order for a business model to work. A mistake I see Customer Success teams make is focusing solely on “delivers,” ignoring “creates,” and “captures.” When a Customer Success team over-indexes on delivering value, the primary purpose becomes retaining customers, which seems like a noble pursuit until you examine the behaviors of a retention mindset.
Retaining customers is defensive. The mindset is, “If we are going to retain this customer, we have to get them to log in more or get them to use the software more or build a better relationship with the champion or get them to understand the value they are currently realizing. We must compel or persuade customers to act in ways we want them to act.” When a customer renews, we are relieved that we got the renewal at the same price as the last contract. We celebrate it.
I know what you are thinking, “Bill, that is a good thing. We saved/retained/turned around that customer by delivering value. What’s the problem?”
I see two [business model] problems.
Here’s another way to look at it. A CEO came to me for advice on how to get her team to focus on net revenue retention (NRR) and said to me, “You know, I see my teams celebrate all these renewals, but I don’t see the value of the contracts going up. All of our costs are going up, including the raises everyone wants, but the prices we charge customers are not. This is not gonna work.”
This is what happens when a software subscription business focuses primarily on delivering value and retaining customers. There is no “what’s next.” No forward-thinking about how to continuously help customers grow.
Software companies that understand their business model get all of their teams rowing in the same direction by getting everyone involved in all three parts of the business model:
The “what’s next” mindset is built into the system (your business model). There is no need to upsell or for account managers to sweep in to “close the deal” or argue about who should own the renewal or waste energy on debates about whether people can sell AND be a trusted advisor. You will understand how this is possible as you read further.
A well-designed business model answers the question, “What’s next?” It creates a flywheel effect of the following:
Step 1: Create “something” that solves a problem
Step 2: Deliver that “something” to a customer
Step 3: Capture 10% to 15% of the value of that “something” with reasonable pricing
Step 4: Repeat this process with existing customers. FOREVER.
Steps one through three are simple in the sense that most software companies already do this. The founder noticed a problem in the world, built a product to solve it, and found customers willing to pay for that solution. Step four is where the magic happens, where the flywheel can start turning, and where many software companies mis-understand their business model.
When you get to step four, I assume you have already delivered on the one main value proposition that new customers bought your product to address in the first place; and that the product has been designed to address.
Step four is about “What’s next?” More precisely: “What is the next value proposition you intend to help a customer achieve; and if we do help a customer achieve that next value proposition, how much of that next, new value will we capture?”
Pause and think about that for a moment, and while you do, let me ask those two questions differently.
To over simplify what is happening here. If we operated our Customer Success in accordance with the business model innovation, at each renewal cycle (ideally before) we would identify the next value proposition that we are positioned to help the customer achieve. Better yet, the customer would identify the next value they want to achieve. We create an offering (or select an existing one) that will help the customer achieve this next value, and we charge a price such that a customer is willing to pay because of the value they will realize. “If we do this, we will save $100, I’d love to pay you $10 to do that. Where do I sign?”
So the flywheel of the business model innovation (step four from above) is:
It is similar to what Rav Dhaliwal calls the continuous sale. What Dave Jackson calls the next best value. If you look through the lens of business model innovation, you transcend debates about who owns the renewal, the customer relationship, and a quota. The business model is designed more like an algorithm and less like a customer journey with owners and silos and hand-offs and confused customers, “Who are you again? My account manager? Then what’s my customer success manager for? Wait, I should call my technical account manager for that? When do I call support? Oh, I should have put in a ticket instead of calling you? Sorry. I’ll try to get it right next time.”
All of this noise and friction becomes unnecessary.
The business model innovation of CS is an algorithm with the following rules:
IF a customer wants to realize this value proposition, THEN they need to buy that offering.
IF a customer wants to realize the next value proposition, THEN they need to buy the next offering.
Your job is to work with multiple teams in your company and write as many IF/THEN statements as you can, such that you can help your customers.
FOREVER.
We, CS teams, just need to take one more step in our evolution. We are concerned with helping customers achieve value. One of our most important charters is to help customers achieve “first value” and help customers accelerate “time to first value.” All I am suggesting is that we don’t forget that we inserted the word “first” for a reason; because we know there is more value that we can create, deliver, and capture.
My call to action to you is this. Write down a list of value propositions that you could help your customers achieve over time. Then, prioritize that list using the model above, answering the question, “What’s the next value proposition I can help customers realize? And what is the next one after that?” Then write down the list of offerings you have (or need to create) in order to help your customers achieve those value propositions; and capture some of it.
COVID-19
Risk Calculus and Social Norms
Here’s Ed Batista with a useful reminder as teams consider making in-person events virtual, or not: “We can legitimize others’ definitions of “risk” and “safety” and the resulting social norms that may differ than our own. I’m not suggesting that we should participate in activities that feel unsafe, or tolerate safety measures that feel oppressive. But we don’t need to stigmatize others’ choices and make them “wrong” in order to pursue the path that feels right to us.”
STRATEGY
Customer Success: Defined for 2022
Lincoln Murphy has revamped his “Customer Success definitions” to reflect some changes in thinking. Consider how his definitions of Customer Success, CSMs, and Appropriate Experience match how your teams’.
INDUSTRY
5 Takeaways From OpenView's Podcast
Here’s a roundup from OpenView’s team on the top 5 things they learned on their show, BUILD. They’ve had some great guests on the show including HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan. One takeaway: “It’s easier to say that you’re customer-centric than to actually be customer-centric. Most companies delegate this to user research, annual surveys or maybe the founder’s gut. It’s not enough.”
METRICS
Discovering the New “North Star” KPIs for Customer Growth
TSIA’s Jack Johnson makes the case for shifting your focus from Gross Renewal Rate to Net Revenue Retention (+ see his advice on how to create incentives around renewal goals), and explains how Resolution Rate helps build a sustainable renewal engine.
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
In a Customer-Led Growth company, CCOs are put in a unique position. Because the entire company obsesses over the value that customers are receiving, CCOs must use their close understanding of customer perceptions, use cases, and areas of friction to influence the company’s strategy. It requires an executive that thinks about the business, not just Customer Success, and has the ability to see gaps in the customer experience that other departments are responsible for solving.
In short, Customer-Led Growth companies demand a higher-powered Chief Customer Officer.
To become the executive CLG companies need, CS leaders will need to grow their skills in 10 core areas. We’ve outlined those areas in this rubric. The rubric will help you see what areas need to be focused on in the next 6 months and beyond.
(Click the image to expand it in a new window.)
Note: I created this rubric for measuring executive performance almost 15 years ago. I've shared it with each company I advise and it's consistently the best tool I've used for aligning the company around the customer.
The rubric above outlines two areas of growth: the second sheet outlines general executive skills, the first sheet outlines how to grow as a CS leader in a Customer-Led Growth company.
How to use this rubric:
If you don’t know where to start, begin by getting to Excellent in three specific areas to have the greatest impact.
Access those high-impact areas and read the rest of this article by following this link.
REVENUE
7 Reasons Why Chief Customer Officers Need to (Eventually) Own Revenue
Here’s Nick Mehta on how everyone benefits when the head of CS owns the revenue number. “You don’t have to do it all at once. Get clearer attribution of how your team impacts renewals and up-sell. Maybe take over renewals for small clients. Experiment with a new coverage model in your SMB customer base. Try something.”
ALIGNMENT
Cultivating a Strong Product <> CS Relationship
This is a solid, in-depth post by Jennifer Chiang who offers 5 impactful principles and corresponding initiatives to guide the relationship between Product and CS at your company.
ADOPTION
How Microsoft Uses the ADKAR Model to Improve Customer Success
Microsoft 365’s Customer Success organization primarily uses the ADKAR (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement) Model to influence buy-in and diagnose common barriers to adoption. Share this resource with your team so they can help customers through seamless change management.
PREDICTION
IBM’s Janine Sneed on Where CS Is Headed Next Year
Janine Sneed, VP of Customer Success at IBM, breaks down 6 ways she thinks Customer Success is going to evolve in 2022. I’m a fan of predication #2 where she says, “Net Revenue Retention is the north star metric that underpins what a CSM contributes to the business. I believe most of the industry gets this now. Where we are heading is taking this mainstream into the boardroom.”
Success Happy Hour is a weekly newsletter for Customer Success leaders. Each week we feature one digestible piece of advice or a framework from a top Success leader, along with the best resources from that week. Subscribe here.
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