Ten Interview Questions to hire the best Customer Success Manager (CSM)

Customer Success is where the battle for growth is being fought for every SaaS company and Customer Success Manager or CSM is the foundation for any successful customer success team.

Hence, finding the right CSM is extremely important for every SaaS company.

What questions would you ask a Customer Success Manager ?

Here are the top ten interview questions you can ask Customer Success Manager candidates before your hire them.

1. To Check Customer Success understanding

   What is Customer Success and why do companies need it? What will happen if we abolish the customer success department? And reverse what will happen if we have a great customer success team? How do onboard a customer? (ref: customer onboarding framework)

2. To Check Empathy

   The customer is about to cancel the contract because he/she is not able to do a task. But it’s actually possible to manage the task via the customer success software. What should we do? Who or what is at fault here? Product, Training, Support, Customer Success or Customer?

3. To Check domain knowledge

   Say, you could only measure one thing to check if the customer was getting value from using the product. What would that be?

4. To Check ability to create a Strategy

   What will be your strategy to manage a mix of accounts varying from a few thousands dollars to hundred thousands of dollars in annual recurring revenue?

5. 

   To Check Time Management

   How will you manage your day, week and month to Onboard new customers, retain existing customers, grow the portfolio and drive advocacy?

6. To check if they are comfortable with Data

   In a portfolio of hundreds of accounts, how will you know which customer is about to churn? And which customers are going to upgrade?

7. To Check their comfort to shuffle tasks

   You have a day packed with pre-planned Onboarding meetings. How will you handle an escalation from your key customer?

8. To Check the Sales inclination

   If a new major product feature is released, how will you work with it? How will you get the customers to adopt the new feature?

9. To Check if they are a team player

   Give me an example from your experience where you helped out a colleague.

10. Put them in a real scenario

    Competition has just released a new feature which we do not have yet, and customers are asking for it. What do you do?

Found the perfect customer success manager? Here are 10 Customer Success KPIs you should track.

Bonus tip- The Ultimate Guide to Customer Success Manager