When you’re trying to build a great success team, searching for a good Customer Success Manager, most often you see that the right fit-Customer Success Managers are hard to find. But maybe we can unearth some secret place to actually find them. So Yes, that’s nowhere else other than your own organization to look for. We have seen successful success managers come in from all sorts of backgrounds which is not just limited to Support representatives. Account managers, Product Managers but also Industry consultants and sales representatives who can actually be competent Customer Success Managers for your organization. And to know more about the roles of a CSM , check out this blog – What are the responsibilities of Customer Success Manager (CSM)? How many do you need?
Pro Tip: The Ultimate Guide to Customer Success Manager
Roles that succeed as Customer Success Managers
Support Reps:
As the support team has seen a lot of customer engagement, they understand what the customer is looking for. Although they started as a support expert, over time, they would have picked up lots of business skills by understanding the nature of the business and trying to help the customers get to the desired outcome. The Support reps, are constantly converting, translating, and changing their skill sets to move into a customer success role and that’s what we want. A lot of support guys, even by wearing support hats, continue to actually deliver the success as they understand the use cases of the customer and the problems they are facing. So yes, don’t forget to look into your support team both within and outside the organization.
Account Managers
The second most common place to find Success managers is- people, wearing the hat of account managers as they are very likely to develop a deeper understanding of the existing problem. They are the people who understand the domain and relation-building aspects, they understand what it takes to deliver success and with the nature of that role, they might be a very good fit for the Customer Success Role.
Sales Managers
Sales on other hand are the first person to interact with the customer. In their starting point of conversation with the customer, asking what they are looking for? What is the pain that is big enough or top priority that the customer is willing to pay for ? And with that conversation, the sales team exactly know what the customers want and can become a natural candidate for Customer Success roles.
Product Manager
The next one in the series is the Product Manager or maybe a person from the product side as they already develop enough empathy with the customer about the problem statements that the product is solving.
Industry Consultants
Last but not the least, the people to be considered as the industry consultant, who is likely to be a freelancer or maybe working in a large consulting firm- can be a perfect Customer Success Manager. Because they understand, exactly -” What does it take”. A lot of times your product may solve or maybe has a huge potential to solve a lot of business use cases and lots of coverage but for all the practical purposes your customers might be using it as a point solution.
So it’s the consultants who can come in wearing an educational hat, educating the customers about how to approach the problem, and then provide a much more natural fitment of your product and technology to your customers. Hence they can become the ultimate catalyst for making sure that your B2B SaaS product delivers the business outcome that you’ve originally promised.
Customer Success leaders are everywhere. You just need to find the right one to build your awesome customer success team.
Bonus tip:
If you’re planning to hire a new CSM for your company then don’t forget to check out the- Ten Interview Questions to hire the best Customer Success Manager (CSM).
