By Chad Horenfeldt
“I told them they would get the white glove approach. Can you make sure you handle all of their support issues?” I’ve been in Customer Success (CS) for many years and this is something that I’ve heard told to me directly or to a Customer Success Manager (CSM) on my team too many times. It’s typically coming from a salesperson that has just closed a new deal. This is just one of the many items that some salespeople get wrong about customer success managers. It’s time for this to stop.
It’s time to expose all of the incorrect assumptions so that Sales and CS leaders can discuss how to prevent these situations from recurring and work on improving the relationship. Let’s rip off the bandaid.
Sales Myth #1: Every customer gets a CSM.
CSM Fact #1: Every customer may not get a dedicated CSM, it depends on the segment.
It may be the case in some companies that every customer gets a CSM but it isn’t always economically feasible, nor does it match the experience that all customers want. It’s important that Sales understands how CS has segmented its customers and the levels of service that customers in each segment receive. It may be that certain segments get access to a CSM but it may not be a dedicated CSM. Customer Success Management typically isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.
Some customer segments may not have any CSM but have access to Support, a customer community, in-app communication, and an account manager that handles renewals. Sales people need to be aware of this so they set the proper expectations. On the flip side, the CS leader must properly communicate how customers in each segment will be served to the sales team to prevent these situations from occurring.
Sales Myth #2: Customer Success Managers provide technical support.
CSM Fact #2: Customer Success Managers aren’t a technical support team.
CSMs shouldn’t be handling reactive product questions and issues which are typically handled by a support team. This takes CSMs away from their core responsibilities which should be to understand the customer’s business outcomes and ensure they are delivering on those. If CSMs get too wrapped up in support issues, their customers will see them as their go-to person for any question and they will not be perceived as someone that can provide more strategic value to help them achieve their business goals.
Salespeople need to understand what the role of a CSM is and what they do on a daily basis. Part of their onboarding should be to join CSM meetings and to get an overview of what CS does. On the flip side, CS leaders need to take the time to educate the sales team on the responsibilities of a CSM.
Sales Myth #3: Customer Success is about making customers happy.
CSM Fact #3: Customer Success is about helping customers achieve a return on investment.
Making customers happy isn’t enough. This was clearly demonstrated in the groundbreaking book, The Effortless Experience. Delighting customers may make them feel better but it won’t necessarily impact customer loyalty and retention. The only way a customer will stay with you in the long run is by demonstrating measurable business impact.
This is why CSMs can’t spend their time answering product questions and why they need to ensure they are tracking how their customers are using your product, educating them on new releases that will help them achieve their goals, and having strategic conversations that are geared around understanding the customer’s objectives and helping them achieve those. On the flip side, the CSM team needs to share customer stories on how they have helped their clients achieve success. This removes the vague “happiness” goal and provides tangible stories that the sales team will understand and can use in their own prospecting meetings.
Sales Myth #4: CSMs shouldn't be involved in the sales process until the deal is complete.
CSM Fact #4: CSMs need to develop decision-maker relationships as early as possible.
There is a fear that involving the Customer Success team in the pre-sales process may muck up the deal. The CS team may say the wrong thing or may be too open on the current product limitations. From this survey by Retently, the leading cause of churn by far was poor onboarding. The second reason was due to a weak customer relationship. Both of these risks can be drastically reduced by having Customer Success, and specifically CSMs, involved in the pre-sales process.
The CSM or at least certain members of the Customer Success team can start to build the relationship with key stakeholders early which can increase the trust with the potential customer. This can also lead to a better onboarding experience as the CS team can uncover potential issues early and ensure that they can be addressed rather than uncovering them on the kick-off call. Any fears or concerns that the Sales team has can easily be overcome by improved communication. On the flip side, CS needs to be prepared to join meetings at a moment’s notice so they don’t slow down the sales process.
Sales Myth #5: CSM teams have unlimited time and resources.
CSM Fact: #5: CSMs are probably the busiest people in your company.
It may seem to an individual salesperson trying to either close a deal or help a current customer that the CSM team has unlimited resources. There may have been many times that CSMs were asked to perform tasks to help sales that were way outside their roles. This could be requests for data, creating a contract or making updates in the CRM. In addition, the CS team may be asked to onboard a customer on a short timeline to fulfill a customer demand.
CSMs typically have packed schedules filled with proactive calls, inbound customer requests, and follow up activities. If CSMs are asked to drop everything and help with a particular client, there will be other clients that will be missing out. In addition, when CSMs are asked to do tasks that salespeople should do themselves, it can cause permanent damage in the relationship between the teams. Nobody wants to feel that they are subservient to others.
To avoid this dilemma, CS leaders need to clearly communicate the roles of the CSMs and their current bandwidth. CS and Sales leaders should also properly document the roles of CS and Sales and remove as much ambiguity as possible. Creating a RACI chart is a great approach as the roles are more clearly defined. Any issues like these need to be raised and addressed.
If you are in Sales, you are probably thinking that I don’t understand the constraints and pressure that salespeople are under. That may be the case but I can’t represent your side of the equation. Better communication needs to happen between CS and Sales. In the end, it’s the customer that suffers the most if these myths aren’t addressed. Hopefully this post can be your lightning rod to start those conversations in your own company.
Want to build your CSM toolkit? The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that offers a Certified CSM Training Program that includes classes like Cross-Functional Leadership and Business Strategy for CSMs. For more information on this and our other offerings, please visit our website at TheSuccessLeague.io
Chad Horenfeldt - Chad is a customer success executive with 15+ years of experience building and developing high performing teams. Currently, he is the Head of Customer Success at Kustomer. Prior to Kustomer, Chad held CS leadership positions at Updater, Bluecore, Influitive, and Oracle (Eloqua). In addition to writing for The Success League, he also writes regularly on the topic of customer success on his blog The Enlightened Customer.