Certified Customer Success Management Professional (CCSMP) Information
A practical training experience
Strategy and concepts set the scene and provide the context, but the real value of training comes not from just being taught what to do and why to do those things but how to do them.
Watch a five minute overview of the CCSMP training program
Answering these “what?”, “why?” and all-important “how?” questions is the focus of our CCSMP training program, but we go further than that and also explain when and in what order they should be completed, and provide you with the tools to ensure you perform complex tasks to a consistently high quality whilst simultaneously increasing your productivity and efficiency.
Topics taught within the CCSMP training program include:
- What “customer success” is and why it is important
- What value customer success provides to both the customer and the CSM’s own company
- How modern businesses function, what the CSM must know about business decision making, and how to work with senior leaders
- The general skills and knowledge needed by all CSMs and how to gain them
- The benefits of using a framework together with an overview of the Practical CSM Framework
- Preparing for a new customer engagement
- Meeting the customer’s stakeholders and gaining commitment to work with them
- Using consultative techniques to understand the customer’s initiative and outcome needs
- Stakeholder management and relationship development
- The process of initial onboarding for a new customer
- Helping a customer understand their end user adoption requirements
- Creating and implementing multi-phase adoption plans
- Helping the customer to manage change across their organization
- Helping the customer to measure and report on value and outcome attainment
- Keeping the initiative on track to ensure value gets realized
- Maximizing both renewal and expand opportunities and gaining customer advocacy
- Measuring and reporting back to the business on customer success activities
Dov Mendelovich
VP Global Customer Success
“I looked for a one-stop-shop for certification and for online training, that people can consume in their own time at their own pace, while I as a manager of the organization can track their progress, and I found that very easy to do with PracticalCSM.com.
I would recommend PracticalCSM.com as a very good starting point for a new Customer Success Organization. The materials are built in a logical order and it provides a very good starting point to teach newcomers to the organization, and to build a common language and common terminology, both inside our organization and actually shared across the CS community. ”
Will Pagden
Head of Customer Success
“PracticalCSM.com has revolutionised the way we work. The content is superb and really pushes all the CSMs to challenge themselves and work in a much more effective way. In particular I have seen a great improvement in the teams stakeholder management and we are turning a big corner in the value we are getting from each interaction with our customers.
I had scanned the market pretty hard, Rick’s professionalism and approach is what won it for me. The experience of purchasing and using the product has been a joy. I can pick up the phone and speak to someone to make suggestions of how it could be different and they listen and respond. Whilst there are other players in the field that offer “similar offerings” I struggled to find one that got close to PracticalCSM. The management dashboard and the ability to understand where my team were struggling has been a real game changer”
Framework-based to make life easier
The CCSMP certification program is based on the Practical CSM Framework – a best practice framework that covers the entire spectrum of customer success tasks right through the entire customer lifecycle.
Having the Practical CSM Framework at your back is like having a spare pair of helping hands to assist you in the performance of your duties. It reminds you what needs to be done next, it explains the steps needed to perform each task and it provides you with clarity around how to manage your time and activities to maximize the positive impact you can create both for your customers and for your own company.
What’s Included within the CCSMP Program?
Training Videos
There are well over a hundred multimedia video presentations or lessons to watch within the Certified CSM Professional program. Each HD quality video can be paused, forwarded, rewound, and resized, and users can also slow down or speed up the playback as they desire. The training videos incorporate the instructor’s talking head, together with bullet lists, tables, diagrams, screenshots, illustrations, and much more. Each lesson typically lasts from 5 to 15 minutes in duration and can be replayed multiple times.
Each students’ progress is tracked in the system and the platform automatically bookmarks the student’s progress so they do not need to remember where they got to last time they logged in. Badges are awarded for each completed module, making it both intuitive and fun to track and monitor progress through the four certification levels.
Tools and Templates
Another important aspect of the program is the access you’ll receive to a comprehensive suite of customer success tools and templates that will help to make you more productive whilst increasing the quality of your output.
These tools and templates are customizable to suit your own company’s specific needs, and their use is fully explained within the training program.
Quizzes and Case Study Exercises
At the end of every module there’s a 15 question, multi-choice style quiz to test your understanding, plus a detailed, case-study based exercise for you to try out your new knowledge and skills in a real world scenario.
This will give you not just the competence but also the confidence you need to actually get out there and use the techniques and skills you have been taught in front of your own customers.
Certification to Prove Your Capability
Our online exam covers both your theoretical understanding and your practical application of the knowledge and skills that are taught within the CCSMP training program.
Students who pass the exam are awarded the title of Certified Customer Success Management Professional or CCSMP and receive a digital certificate as proof of their achievement.
Access to Online Support
Finally, all our material is carefully developed to maximize learning and to ensure full comprehension of all the information contained within it.
However, if you do find yourself struggling to understand something you have unlimited access to our instructor team to ask as many questions as you like.
The ability to complete
the training in your own time
You get a full twelve months from when you purchase the course in which to complete the training and pass the test. That means that you will not under pressures of time to finish the course quickly and can fit your learning around your existing schedule as necessary.
Why is Certification so Important?
Certification is what proves you are a professional in your role. Certification does this by taking a holistic approach to Customer Success Management and by providing training and testing across the entire breadth of Customer Success Management activities – from customer research right through to value realization… and beyond!
A good certification program does not stop there. Our CCSMP (Certified CSM Professional) program provides not only breadth but also depth. Our program contains no less than four certification levels across ten training modules, and with two final exams that uniquely cover both knowledge of best practice concepts and techniques and the application of those best practices in real world scenarios.
Completing all four levels of our certification program provides students with four certificates of achievement, and entitles them to use the initials CCSMP in their title, and to display their badges of achievement on their social media profile.
Certification is important for the company, for the CS Team Leader and for the individual CSM.
For the Company
- Benchmark and proof of confidence
- Adds value to the overall proposal
- Adds USP to the overall proposal
- Provides basis for external process ratification (eg BSI, OSI, etc)
- Provides a basis for measurement and evaluation of overall CS function
For the CS Team Leader
- Enables standardization of CS approach and methodologies
- Simplifies training and requirements and resource provisioning
- Simplifies onboarding of new recruits
- Simplifies coaching and mentoring
- Provides a basis for measurement and evaluation of individual team members
For the Individual CSM
- Provides internal ratification of achievement
- Provides external evidence of achievement
- Provides an objective viewpoint rather than a biased one
- Fills the missing gaps between role experience
- Enables faster career progression
We recommend the CCSMP program for all Customer Success Managers – from brand new entrants who need a solid grounding in all aspects of Customer Success Management best practice, right through to seasoned professionals who are already in a senior role and who need to both plug the inevitable gaps in their experience and provide external evidence of their existing capabilities.
Completing the CCSMP program is not complicated and need not be an onerous task. Our Practical CSM Academy platform makes it simple and pleasant to access the learning content, which is broken down into bite-sized chunks that you can learn according to your own schedule – however busy or however available you might be.