How to improve working relationships between colleagues?

Thanksgiving Special Edition 

Thanksgiving is the time for appreciating the people around us. Commonly spent with our families and friends, it’s become a holiday that everyone looks forward to and finally spends time with the people we love. However, we commonly overlook our coworkers whom we spend most of our time with. Improving our relationship with the people we work with definitely helps in the quick completion of projects, participation in multiple Customer Success Management strategies, identifying churn red flags, and a lot more. After all, Customer Success Management is a department that relies on people, both the customers and within the organization. So, how do you improve working relationships given their importance? 

1. Find Time to Socialize  

Without being able to develop a close enough relationship with your colleagues, sharing ideas, critiques, and opinions are difficult. Some may remain quiet despite having a good solution to the problem simply because they aren’t comfortable working with you. When you have built rapport with the people you work with, most of your collaborative efforts would go smoothly where everyone is participating in the completion of a project in a high standard. 

Building good working culture and relationship takes time and continuous effort. Only when there’s an opportunity to improve teamwork would there be chances to improve collaboration between the Customer Success team and another business department. Hence, put in the effort and reach out. Try to understand who they are and how it affects their work, to grasp what they value and connect with them in a deeper manner. It would be best to have team-building activities but, even without one, you can simply approach them and ask how they’re doing. Genuinely offering yourself to help them, asking them for their opinions, and being respectful are all simple ways you can do to socialize and improve your relationship with your colleagues. 

2. Show Appreciation 

Appreciation goes a long way. Colleagues who are appreciated for their work and efforts are more likely to be motivated, and according to a study, 49% of employees are even willing to change companies just to have that. (Source: https://www.ragan.com/infographic-49-percent-of-employees-would-change-jobs-to-feel-more-appreciated/) 

In Customer Success Management, collaborative efforts are often, if not always, occurring. Many people are participating in the development of the customer’s path toward success. Though it is the Customer Success Manager’s responsibility, without the effort of multiple people from various business departments, there will always be churn red flags the CSMs must try to fix.  

Why then would we fail to see the value each contributes in making Customer Success Management easier and more efficient with the help of others? 

3. Listen to Understand 

Employees wish to be heard, their opinions to matter, and for their ideas to be considered. To promote participation, you must first create an environment that fosters collaboration. A simple greeting in every meeting before moving on to the agenda can set the mood for a smooth and calm productive assembly. When they do share their opinion, it would be best to let them finish and try to understand their opinion before responding. Allow them to feel heard and ensure that they know their participation is valuable. 

Summary,

Customer Success Managers are always working hard to ensure that both customer and companies are reaching their expected outcomes. They are at the forefront commonly sacrificing their own time for the smooth Customer Success journey. This Thanksgiving, we hope that you have your finally well-deserved rest after days of unending work and for everyone to be appreciative of your’s and your colleagues’ work towards value realization. 

Happy Thanksgiving Day, Customer Success professionals! 

Learn more about the best practices in Customer Success Management here.

Should you wish to develop your own competitive and effective Customer Success team, check this out.