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“How do you prevent CS from becoming an overblown support team for enterprise?” — The President of a prominent tech company asked me this question today.
It’s a great question. I believe this is a contributing factor to some of the Customer Success reductions we're seeing in SaaS right now: CS teams have become indistinguishable from support. And therefore putting unnecessary stress on Gross Margins.
So how can Success leaders make sure their function is seen for what it is—part of the go-to-market function—and not an unnecessary cost to the business? Here’s my advice:
This week's newsletter features posts on:
STRATEGY
Who Should Own Renewals and Upsells: Sales or Customer Success?
Whether Sales or Success should own commercial activities with customers is one of the more highly debated topics, but there aren’t many actionable frameworks for companies to use when grappling over this decision internally. Here’s Boaz Maor (CCO at Talech) and Jay Nathan (Managing Partner at Customer Imperative) with one of the best I’ve seen.
CAREER
Advice for Quickly Advancing in Customer Success
Kristina Valkanoff, Head of Customer Success at Carta, offers advice for establishing a high-growth career in Success and how to make the transition to managing at a higher level.
STRATEGY
Give Immediate Feedback Because Feedback Has a Short Half-Life
Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, reminds us to not wait until the next 1:1 to provide feedback. “If you have a beef with somebody in your personal life, it would never occur to you to wait for a formally scheduled meeting to tell them.” Here are her tips on how to give timely feedback in the workplace.
REMOTE WORK
How to Keep Your Team Connected After a Sharp Transition to Remote Work
“Work from home, not work alone.” Wojciech Zaremba, Co-founder of OpenAI, offers a list of ways to keep your (remote) team connected and supported. Among his list, try “group lunches over zoom,” or “remote happy hours.”
From an interview with:
All customers aspire to work with the “trusted partner” CSM. This CSM deeply understands the industry, the product, and the different verticals of customers. The customer trusts them enough to incorporate the practices and use cases the CSM recommends.
Customers generally don’t want to exclusively work with junior members of the Success organization.
The problem is, Customer Success owns less budget than other departments in most companies, so there’s a limit to how senior of CSMs we can attract. We need to be able to hire junior CSMs with potential, and then grow them into senior CSMs that aren’t just building strong relationships but are also providing expertise and guidance—we want customers to value the opinion of their CSMs.
Here’s some advice on how to bridge the gap:
This week's newsletter features posts on:
COVID-19
Navigating This Crisis: How to Bring in More Capital
First Round Review’s “field guide” for navigating the current crisis is, in a word, comprehensive. Chapter #6 offers three strategies for extending your runway, including how to bring in more revenue from customers. See how to “focus on getting paid upfront from your stickiest customers,” and “learn from your customers as much as you can.”
PROCESS
Brew and Review: Building a Knowledge Sharing Loop for Customer Success
“Riding along on calls isn’t enough.” Nicole Rashied, Customer Success Manager at Intercom, breaks down the process her Success team uses to share knowledge about use cases, talk tracks, and more.
STRATEGY
Why Customer Success Leaders Aren't Getting a Seat at the Table
With only lagging metrics in their toolset, Success leaders can’t really drive strategy at the executive level. Here’s a list of leading indicators of renewal, and an explanation on how Success leaders can use those insights to drive strategic discussions.
ONBOARDING
How to Onboard New Hires Now
Here’s Lish Gates, Sr Manager - Global Revenue Enablement at Algolia, with a cheat sheet on how to integrate a new hire into your team and culture remotely. Some gems: “Social distancing doesn’t equal being socially distant” and “If you’re doing back-to-back Zoom training, you’re likely doing it wrong.”
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