Finding the right Client Success Manager is extremely important for every SaaS company today. The customer success manager is much more than the traditional account manager. Client Success Managers ensure that the customers realize the value and achieve their goals using your product. Client Success Manager is not a profession that can be mastered overnight. It takes efforts, time, knowledge, and experience to become a world-class Client Success Manager.
6 Attributes to Look for When Hiring New Client Success Manager
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Quotient (EQ) is very different from Intelligence Quotient(IQ). EQ is mainly focused on identifying, using, and controlling emotions. A strong EQ is what you need to look for in your candidates. A good CSM should be self-aware and possess qualities that indicate high EQ:
Self-regulate, like being calm even under pressure.
Empathy, the CSM must know and understand the customer’s situation.
Self-awareness -To know your emotions, and how you react to tough situations.
Being Proactive
In the SaaS industry, you cannot wait for your customers to reach out to you. You have to reach out to them proactively. To reduce churn and ensure customers are satisfied, it’s absolutely necessary to be proactive.
If your customer faces any problem, it won’t take much time for the customer to go elsewhere. In fact, being proactive is the major difference between customer success and customer support. Customer support is reactive, customer success is proactive.
Suggested Reading : How to take your SaaS Business from Reactive to Proactive?
Bonus tip: The guide to customer success manager
Passion
Regardless of how classified your candidate may be. He should be passionate about client success. This is something that cannot be taught. A deep passion for success is something that will greatly benefit your business.
Make sure your CSM is ready to put in efforts in his or her work and get satisfaction out of going the extra mile. Is he/she passionate about the work and actually cares about helping customers reach their desired goals?
Relationship Builder
A Client Success Manager will have a strong relationship with the customers which is absolutely necessary. While interviewing your candidates, make sure to look for traits that indicate he/she can build good relations and they really value and care for the customers.
Industry Experience
Certificates, courses, books and webinars are a great source of knowledge. But practical implementation rules in this case. Candidates with industry experience have faced many challenges and have learned lessons. Also finding candidates who have experience in your particular industry can be beneficial.
Of course, if you happen to come across the perfect candidate who doesn’t have a background in your domain, it’s also possible to bring them up to speed, especially if they possess the above characteristics.
Strategic Thinking
A CSM has to take up challenges every day and needs to think out of the box. A good Client success manager will not only make decisions that are good for the present but also are beneficial in the future. This helps accomplish long-term goals. A CSM with good strategic thinking will sense and identify when there are changes occurring and act accordingly.
Principles to follow for Client success manager
Now that you know what to look for when hiring a CSM, let us look at some important principles that you need to consider.
Hire them, regardless of their background
Your candidate can be project managers, MBAs, teachers, operations managers and even recent college graduates. Each of these backgrounds have helped them develop different qualities. It is not the background that matters but the traits that the candidate possesses. A Teacher can handle pressure, a fresh grad is enthusiastic about learning new things, project managers know how to design and run processes.
Test Them
The candidate resume tells you a lot about your candidate but not everything. You need to put actual situations in front of them to see how they tackle it. As a CSM he/she should be good at problem-solving with an approach that benefits the customers as well as the company.
Early Hiring
SaaS organizations have a number of priorities. Hiring a CSM is one of them. If you are thinking of replacing your present CSM or hiring a new one, do it right away. Your business needs a CSM in order for good customer success and experience. There can also be cases where you want another CSM. if you keep adding accounts to one CSM, he may not be able to provide a quality experience to all of them.
Bonus Tip: Ten Interview Questions to hire the best Customer Success Manager
Suggested Read: 90 day plan for your first CSM
How do you hire a Customer Success Manager ?
Hiring a stellar Customer Success Manager could be a cumbersome process. Here are a few steps that you can follow while looking for one in order to ensure a smooth and systematic process of hiring.
- Start by creating a customized job description
- Promote your position in the right places, put your job openings in various social media platforms
- Perpare meaningful interview questions
- Conduct meetings with multiple team members
- Check on the customer success skills
Takeaway
Hiring a super CSM doesn’t have to be a struggle. You just have to know what traits to look for and what to ask when evaluating the candidates. The CSM and customer success software you choose will decide your and your customer’s success. The tips above should help you narrow down your selection.
P.S. – The main image has been taken from pexels.com
