By Mike Lee
Customer Success is a booming industry and is growing as one of the most in-demand job categories on common job sites such as Indeed, Monster, and LinkedIn. It seems everywhere you turn, you find people looking to break into the field. One of the biggest problems we have as CS Leaders is defining what skill set will make the best CS Professionals in our organizations. Although this article isn’t about the specific requirements needed to succeed in CS, I am attempting to recognize the overwhelming correlation between the everyday duties of teachers and customer success managers.
It is often said there is no “real” job description for a customer success manager. We can read this as: an essential part of the job is connecting with the customer in an empathetic way, which is not a hard skill. I agree with this assessment mostly; however, there are actual actions and abilities a successful CSM needs to take and have to be successful. As a leader, I’ve witnessed almost every one of those skills in classroom teachers.
I do not have an educational background; however, I have served on the Board of Education in Durham, North Carolina, for the last eight years. I am also an Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In my time on the board of education, I have seen up close the work involved with teaching, and I’ve learned a few things along my way. As a CS leader, I always look for parallels between my work and the world around me, and how they intersect. Below is a list of five reasons why the work teachers do every day will successfully translate directly to your CS organization:
Stakeholder and Customer Management: Every day, the average teacher in the USA has twenty-four customers in her classroom. The customers are the students, the product is the curriculum, and the stakeholders are the parents or guardians. As you can imagine, each student has a different learning style and will need an extra level of attention. The curriculum can be confusing and must be fully understood by the teacher to help the students get the most value from each day in school. Often, about four times per year, the teacher needs to have conferences (or business reviews) with the primary stakeholders (parents) to assess how the student is doing with the curriculum based on where the student needs to be now versus the end of the year. As the year progresses, the teacher must adjust in the roadmap as to what needs to happen for the student to achieve their goals by the end of the grade. These adjustments in the roadmap must be communicated to the stakeholders for the family (or customer) to see value in sending their child to school every day.
Success Plans: Every student learns differently, just as every customer uses your product differently. In education, the primary way to adjust for these differences is a tool called an IEP (individualized education plan). In the CS world, we call these success plans. Built into the IEPs is the thorough outline of what the student needs to succeed in their current grade. This plan is created and finalized through various meetings with parents, students, administration, and councilors. The idea behind an IEP is to outline actions, activities, and a timeline for the value of the curriculum to be realized. This plan is monitored and measured throughout the year and carried with the student from grade to grade. Just like IEPs, CSMs must create specific goals for each customer as needed. Many standard success plans include a path to green, ROI, onboarding success plans, etc. Each of these must be customized with the customer and stakeholders. The success plans also must be monitored and reviewed with customer leadership to show value in your product.
Health Scores: Every student is traveling the path of education differently. To understand how a student accepts the curriculum, the teacher periodically undertakes assessments. Many assessments are automatic, while many are done manually by the teacher. These “health” scores are frequently sent to stakeholders either at the end of a quarter, middle of a quarter (progress reports), or at the end of a semester. These scores allow all interested parties to understand how an individual student is doing at any given time. These scores are often reviewed by the school’s administration, the school district’s leadership, and aggregated at the school board level. In the CS world, we use heath scores similarly to grades. The CSM uses these scores (some automated, some subjective) to judge where a customer is with respect to the product's value. When assessments are done on customers, the CSM must work on plans to help customers when their scores change in a negative direction. Still, we also must celebrate the increase in grades, just as teachers often do with students. CS leadership constantly reviews health scores and will question the reason for declining health just as a principal at a school will question a teacher.
Trusted Advisor: One of the central tenants of customer success is achieving the trusted advisor status with our customers. This is when a customer feels they can contact you with challenges without the fear of feeling they are being sold to nor being a burden on you. This feeling allows the customer to receive feedback from the CSM to guide success in their personal and corporate goals. Teachers are seen the same way. We as parents trust our teachers to guide us to what is best for our children’s futures. We trust teachers to help us understand what support our children need: levels of books or assistance in math, for example. We listen intently to the parent-teacher conferences (business reviews), we review the assessment grades (health scores), and we work with the teacher to find the value of growth with the curriculum at the end of the year for that grade level.
Onboarding: Each year, teachers get a new set of students into their classrooms. To have a successful year, the first few weeks of the school year serve as an important time to “onboard” the students into the structure, practices, and curriculum they will work with for the school year. Many times, in early grades, onboarding will consist of “how-to” be successful this year. This could include where to sit, how to request a bathroom break, what homework will look like, how to operate in the classroom in general to be successful. A successful onboarding in the classroom potentially sets up the students for the success they need throughout the year. Onboarding in the CS world is much the same. When a customer is handed off from Sales, it is like promoting another grade. This gives the CS team a chance to onboard the customer into what success looks like with the product. We can cover the “how-to” subjects with the customer and outline what it takes to be successful. Just as a student understands that their success highly depends on their motivations, students will always know they have someone to lean on when there are questions. This is how onboarding works in CS; customers should be shown the path to success but reminded that a CSM or team is there to help.
In the CS industry, we are in constant need for professionals who can immediately make a difference in the lives of our customers. To do that, we need to know the person we are hiring can show empathy, caring, and a desire to help the customer succeed, even in trying times. We need to know that the CSM has the facilities to understand where each customer is individually, plan for those differences, and execute based on customer needs. It is generally difficult to find these qualities during an interview process, however, I believe there is a profession that encompasses all the necessary skills a high performing CSM needs, that profession is Teaching.
These are just a few ways teaching and CSM duties overlap each other. CSMs are often responsible for their customers, just as teachers are responsible for their students. Customer Success as a discipline is new, and there hasn’t been a natural career path that points directly to who could be successful as a CSM or CS Leader. After observing teachers for years and hiring former teachers, I believe a strategy to develop a strong, organized, empathetic, and creative CS organization is making a teacher your next CS hire.
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Mike Lee - With 28 years as a technical professional, Mike is currently the Head of Customer Success at PublicInput, the leading Software as a Service public engagement platform. He leads the entire post-sale organization including Customer Success, Customer Support, Onboarding, Renewals Management, Professional Services, and Training. Mike also is an Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC). Mike received his MBA in 2011 from UMASS and is currently perusing his Doctor of Business Administration at UNCC.