What is a Customer Success Manager?

Why should I want to be one?

“This is a non job!” 

“It’s just another sales job; I don’t want to be a salesman with another name!” 

“I don’t have any interest in doing tech support or the knowledge.” 

Perhaps the first thing to admit here is that we must up our game! We need to get the message out to a broader audience that a Customer Success Manager role is not just another name for a sales job or tech support. A Customer Success Manager is a crucial player in an organization’s sales strategy, delivering customer satisfaction, supporting customer retention, renewals, and overall revenue growth.

In the view of many experienced industry observers, Customer Success Management has never been more critical.

During financial downturns, organizations may face financial constraints, increased competition, and decreased customer demand. In this environment, Customer Success Managers become the focus of efforts to maintain and retain existing customers rather than acquiring new ones. They underpin these activities by ensuring that the customers are getting value from your product or service, addressing any issues or concerns they may have, and proactively identifying and addressing potential issues before they become significant problems. Additionally, customer success teams are central to ways to upsell or cross-sell to existing customers and identify new revenue streams to help mitigate the impact of the recession.

But what is Customer Success? 

In a nutshell, customer success is the purchaser getting what they wanted! 

This could be overall company growth, more sales in a specific region, or improved margins; the list is almost endless and depends on the product or service acquired. In most cases, this is achieved by ensuring that customers can effectively use your organization’s products or services to achieve their desired outcomes and realize value from their investment.

This often involves various support channels and other resources to help customers get the most out of the product or service and work closely with them to identify and address any issues or challenges they may be facing. Customer Success Management has both short and long-term goals; the short-term goal is to realize value for the customer as quickly as possible so they can begin to ‘earn back’ the cost of their investment; and, in the long term, to build mutually beneficial relationships with the customer, and to ensure that they continue to use and recommend the company’s products or services.

OK, but what does a Customer Success Manager actually do? 

A Customer Success Manager works with customers to ensure they get the most value out of a product or service. This involvement starts earlier than you might think. Even during the early stages of engagement, a Customer Success Manager can gain an understanding of a potential customer’s needs and aims and, ideally, get to know some of their key stakeholders.

This knowledge can be valuably employed during the sales process, helping to customize the solution to the customer and tailoring after-sales and support services accordingly. It is equally valuable during the commitment phase, where the customer relationship is further developed and defining how the success manager can add value to the overall package through their support during the onboarding and adoption phases. Depending on the customer and their experience of integrating and deploying third-party products or services, a Customer Success Manager can also support their counterpart in the customer organization (this could for example be the project lead or a team or function manager) with access to external technical specialists, identifying groups affected directly and indirectly, and recommending training interventions to help ensure the customer has a sufficient number of appropriately and well-trained staff.

When the customer starts using the product or service ‘in anger’, the Customer Success Manager will move into a measurement phase, agreeing on milestones, baselines and targets for various KPIs. This activity aims to define where we are against our initial plans and schedules and help predict future progress. To help keep key stakeholders informed and engaged, Customer Success Managers will provide regular progress reports underpinned by the data generated by KPIs and other measurements.

Why is this such a crucial activity?

Key stakeholders are central to renewals, to up and cross-selling, and to advocacy, thus preventing churn and expanding revenue opportunities in general. To quote Pearson’s Law, “That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially”.

Customer Success Manager – multi-tasking specialist! 

So we have examined what Customer Success is, and the many roles the Customer Success Manager plays; Is it for you?

If you enjoy routine and structured schedules, where you are likely to know exactly what you will be doing one to three months from now, and where any problems you encounter will be the same as or very similar to the ones you faced last month, then Customer Success Management is probably not the job for you. On the other hand, if you like facing new and varying challenges on a regular basis and want a role that puts helping others with their needs first, then Customer Success Managers have the opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of their customers by helping them achieve their goals and objectives.

In this role, you will have the opportunity to learn about and become a specialist in your company’s products and services, as well as gain experience in the different industries and business models of your company’s customers. You will meet and learn to deal with a diverse group of customer stakeholders, each with their own unique needs and challenges.

As the acquisition cost for new customers continues to grow, organizations will place more emphasis on customer satisfaction and retention, increasing the demand and competition for Customer Success Managers, which in turn generates good salary and benefit opportunities. With the potential for personal development and skill enhancement, Customer Success Management roles can often become stepping stones to other professional positions within a company. And to promotion into more senior management and leadership roles.