The customer comes first.
Whether you’re in the service or tech industries, I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase before. And I’m pretty sure you know what it means, too -the happiness of the customer is the key to success and business growth 💸💸
But it’s hard to ensure the happiness and satisfaction of a customer if you don’t totally understand their expectations and needs or, basically, if you don’t talk to them.
Hallelujah, we have customer success teams!
The ambassadors of the company, the translators of the customers, the bridges between the customers and the company…
In this article, we will talk about customer success managers and explore their responsibilities and qualifications, as well as related statistics and benchmarks.
When you’re ready 🏃🏻♀️
TL;DR
👉 A Customer Success Manager (CSM) is a professional that is responsible for ensuring the success and satisfaction of customers. The CSMs help customers through sales processes, onboarding processes, and afterward with further education and training sessions if necessary.
👉 CSMs become the voice of customers: They gather insights/feedback about the customers’ product experiences and share the necessary information with other teams, such as the product team, sales team, and customer support team.
👉 As, most of the time, they’re entrusted with the subscription renewal follow-ups and upsells/cross-sells, a CSM is expected to have excellent communication and persuasion skills.
👉 Another vital qualification for a customer success manager is having a case-solving mindset and problem-solving skills.
👉 Finally, a CSM should be good at the time and project management as they will be working with lots of customers/partners at the same time.
Customer Success Management Is Evolving
A Customer Success Manager (CSM) is a professional who assists customers throughout their journey. They are responsible for establishing relationships with customers and helping them get the most out of the offered services to meet their company goals.
Most of the time, a CSM can be defined as a mentor for the customers too, which distinguishes them from customer support agents. They’re always right beside their customers not only to solve product-related problems but also through the sales process, onboarding process, and afterward.
As people always say, strong relationships ensure customer loyalty.
Trends & Benchmarks in Customer Success Management
As Anika Zubair, an award-winning customer success leader, expresses in one of her podcast episodes, the concept of “customer” is akin to the concept of “growth” as they both form the heart of the business. All in all, everything businesses do is ultimately for the benefit of their customers.
Today, we see that many B2B SaaS companies adopt this customer-oriented approach, and customer success management/customer relationship management concepts are becoming increasingly popular.
Here are some stats👇
- The customer success manager position has a 176.54% year-over-year increase rate -the industry is crying for CSMs!
- 95% of the companies have Customer Success (CS) operations.
- 45% of the companies state that they leave the responsibility of following up on the subscription renewals to their customer success management teams -which shows that CS directly affects revenue and growth.
- When asked what the top priorities of their Customer Success Managers (CSMs) are, 83% of the companies answered “churn reduction”.
Customer Success Manager Job Description Examples
A clear job description is essential if you’re interested in a career as a Customer Success Manager (CSM) or looking to hire someone for this role.
Although the responsibilities of a CSM may differ from industry to industry -or even from company to company within the same industry- here’s an example job description👇
The Customer success manager will establish and maintain strong relationships with customers to ensure their success with our products/services. As the position necessitates working closely not only with the customers but also with the other teams within the company (such as the product team, sales team, customer support team, etc.), excellent communication and problem-solving skills are crucial.
Also, the ideal candidate should have prior experience in a customer-facing role and proficiency in CRM tools/software.
Responsibilities:
- Conduct check-ins, provide customer training and product demonstrations if necessary
- Serve as an advocate both for the company and the customers
- Analyze customer usage patterns and get customer insights about their user experiences with our product
- Work on customer success stories
Requirements:
- A bachelor’s degree in communication and/or prior experience in a customer-facing role is preferable.
- Candidates with knowledge and expertise in data integration will have an advantage in this role.
- Strong communication and project management skills are essential.
- Soft skills such as persuasiveness, creative thinking, and active listening skills are crucial for the position.
Key Responsibilities of CSMs
Now, let’s take a closer look at the core responsibilities of customer success managers 🔎
✅ A Customer Success Manager (CSM) ensures that a new customer’s onboarding process goes well and smoothly.
✅ A CSM keeps track of the subscription status of the customer base and follows up on both the renewals and churns.
✅ As customer success managers work closely with the customers and know the needs and goals of their customers, they can see the upselling/cross-selling opportunities better.
✅ It is also the CSM’s responsibility to explain to the customers how this specific product can help them to achieve their goals faster and/or more smoothly, as well as how they can get the most out of it.
✅ Finally, customer success management is not only about upselling or marketing; it’s also about becoming the customers’ voice. A CSM does not speak only for their company but also for the customers. They’re responsible for receiving customer feedback about customer concerns/ customer requests and then discussing these issues with the relevant teams in the company, such as the sales or support team.
CSM job descriptions of top teams
Okay, up until now, we have covered the core responsibilities of customer success managers, cool.
Yet, we also said that these responsibilities might differ from industry to industry and that every company might expect -slightly- different things from their CSMs.
Thus, it’s time we have a look at real-life examples: the CSM job descriptions/postings of top teams 🥁🥁
P.S. For the purposes of this article, I’ll give 2 example job descriptions, but you can always go and check Customer Success Jobs to see for yourself 🕵🏻
Netflix
In their job posting, Netflix states that the Customer Success Manager will be responsible for developing and implementing scalable and blended learning solutions for the company’s apps.
Also, the CSM will be responsible for managing the feedback loop and providing insights, they say.
“… CSMs will also foster relationships with our application user groups; define, evangelize, and manage our product feedback loop; and provide user health insights to our Product partners. …”
Here are some of the listed responsibilities:
- Developing an education strategy for the products.
- Facilitating customer training sessions.
- Gathering user feedback and delivering the insights to other teams such as Product or Support.
- Building relationships with partners and users.
➡️ For the other details, you can check here.
Amazon
And here is Amazon’s job description for their future customer success managers.
According to the job posting here, the role of a customer success manager at Amazon is multifaceted.
The CSMs at Amazon Business (AB) are responsible for driving digital transformation operations or automation of P2P processes, providing system consulting and configuration services with RPA, while also collaborating with the sales team and building long-term customer trust to promote AB’s growth.
➡️ For the other details, you can check here.
Required Qualifications for Customer Success Managers
- Being responsive and attentive
One of the primary responsibilities of CSMs is to solve customer issues related to their customer journeys. In order to understand the pressing issue and offer a solution, a customer success manager must be attentive and responsive.
Also, if the customer feels that you care about their concerns/questions and try to find ways to meet their goals, they’re more likely to trust you and your company.
- Industry knowledge
You need more than excellent product knowledge, unfortunately. You need to understand the needs of your customers and the market if you want to show them how they can meet those needs with your product. Knowing the specifics of the market and the industry will drive potential customers towards you too.
- Case-solving mindset
Okay, you know your market and customer goals, but is that enough to succeed? I don’t think so.
As a CSM, you must have excellent problem-solution skills and a case-solving mindset. Because there’ll be times your customers will want to solve their problems by cancelling their subscriptions and/or downgrading them. At that point, it’ll be your responsibility to find other solutions and growth opportunities for them, opportunities that won’t cause customer churn.
Don’t forget, besides ensuring customer satisfaction and happiness, keeping the churn rate as low as possible and preventing future churns are also among your responsibilities.
- Project management skills
Once you become a customer success manager, even if you have a team working alongside you, you’ll have tens of customers to watch over, which necessitates great time and project management skills.
If you want a career in customer success, you should be ready to work with different customers from different industries and growth stages, as well as to allocate your time and energy accordingly.
- Interpersonal skills
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the responsibilities of a CSM is to do follow-ups on renewals and encourage upsells/cross-sells.
If a customer comes to you to renew their subscription or purchase another product of yours by themselves, how lucky you are!
Most of the time, you’ll probably be the one to go and remind the subscription expiration date.Thus, you’ll need to remind the value your product offers to their company, use your soft skills, speak confidently and persuasively. Customer loyalty is not earned so quickly, people might need to hear everything repeatedly, even if they see positive outcomes.
Have their churn rates decreased after your product? Have their visitor numbers increased? Have you helped them to improve their customer retention rates? As a customer success manager, you must draw a conclusion and show the value you bring to them openly and impress them.
- Excellent communication skills
Sometimes you’ll act like a sales rep; other times, you’ll be a support agent, and maybe even become a marketing person. I’m not saying you’ll do all the job all the time, but there’ll be times you’ll need marketing or sales skills.
For example, you’ll reach out to churned customers to understand their decisions, and trust me, you need to be a good marketer to have them open your e-mail after a subscription cancellation.
Or, you’ll talk someone into upgrading their plan, then you’ll need your sales skills.
Here I’m saying that relationship building and communication are a big part of the job, and you need all those speaking and writing skills.
- In-depth understanding of human psychology
Your customers are managers, CEOs, and CFOs, yeah, but they’re also individuals that have feelings, questions, concerns, and all other human experiences. Seeing them only as customers that own companies or that work in important positions makes it hard to relate to their goals, expectations, and problems. In order to establish healthy and long-term relationships with customers, you need to understand how they feel about certain things.
Maybe the secret to improving customer experience is to say “people first”, not the customer!
Conclusion
Customer success departments play a vital part in the success of a business.
And it’s not because your customers will be more likely to pay for your services if they themselves make more money, but because customer success management ensures solid and healthy relationships with the customers -which nourishes customer satisfaction and loyalty.
That’s why there’s an increasing demand for customer success roles -especially customer success manager roles- in the market!
Yet, don’t forget that being a customer success manager is not as easy as pie, it has its own ups and downs. Sometimes you’ll feel overwhelmed with the tasks/skills the job requires, and other times you’ll feel very proud of your -or your customers’- accomplishments.
Nevertheless, if you have great organizational skills and a deep understanding of human psychology, or if you’re willing to improve your problem-solving skills and learn about the best practices, and most importantly, if you love to help people on their journeys towards success, you are the ideal candidate for the job! ✅ If you’re planning to become a customer success manager -or simply wanna read more on the topic- here’s a list of the best blogs on customer success management to follow!
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the skills required for a customer success manager?
- Problem solution skills
- Communication skills
- Interpersonal skills such as persuasiveness, impressiveness, leadership, etc.
- Time and project management skills
- Being responsive and attentive
What are the responsibilities of customer success?
- Handling customer onboarding and improving customer experience.
- Building relationships with customers.
- Following up on subscription renewals.
- Encouraging upsells and cross-sells.
- Speaking up for both the company and the customers.
What are the KPIs for customer success managers?
The top KPIs every customer success manager should follow are Net Dollar Retention (NDR), Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Customer Health Score.
