How Do I Break Into Customer Success?

By Steve Schwartz

Building on what Ashley brought us in her 3-part series on Searching for Success, I frequently get asked by job seekers early in their careers “how do I break into Customer Success for the first time if I’ve never done it before?” While I may have taken one of the more straightforward routes to find myself here, I know that there are many possible ways to find your first job in the field. I’ve heard a lot of common themes about why people feel they aren’t qualified to even apply to certain Customer Success jobs. I offer the following advice to those who are struggling to break through and I hope it can help you find your way.

I’VE NEVER DONE CUSTOMER SUCCESS BEFORE

This is one of the biggest misconceptions people have about themselves when it comes to Customer Success. Have you ever worked as a server or bartender in a restaurant or in a retail store of any kind? Then you’ve done what I’ll term real-time Customer Success. So how do you show that with a resume and cover letter?

Construct a master resume with as many bullet points about each job as you can, including metrics and milestones you’ve hit, KPIs you’ve been measured against and how you delivered, new skills you’ve acquired, projects you’ve led and delivered, and anything else you might ever want to highlight. For each job you apply to, take the specific job requirements and skills they are asking for and pare down that resume to one page, with the bullet points focused on matching your experience with those requirements. Then use the cover letter to get into more detail about how those things align and make sure you show what you know about, and are interested in, the company (“do your research” as Ashley says!).

I DON’T HAVE PRODUCT OR INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE

Don’t let this stop you from applying to a job that says it’s required or preferred. If you can show me that you can learn new technology or a new industry through your experience and passion, I’m listening. If you back that up with the key skills that I’m looking for like, strong and empathetic communicator, analytical and critical thinker, and self-motivated learner, I’ll believe we can teach you the product and industry. In my experience, bringing a new hire with customer skills up-to-speed on a product is far less risky than trying to turn an industry expert into a customer-facing professional.

I KEEP APPLYING AND AM GETTING NOWHERE

You’ve applied to companies that you’re passionate about, but haven’t been able to break into the Customer Success team directly. What do you do next? Do you broaden your search or is there another option? Are there entry-level roles at the company such as support, sales development, or lead generation? Because these roles are typically fast learning and have high turnover, they will give you an opportunity to gain valuable product and industry knowledge, exhibit your customer-facing skills, and showcase your analytical abilities in a very short period of time. Good managers of these teams will recognize that they won’t be able to keep you for long and should be empowering advocates for your transition into another team, whether that be Customer Success or anywhere else that your passion and knowledge can benefit the company.

If you’ve made it this far and you’re passionate about electric vehicles, electrification, or energy storage, I’m hiring a Customer Success Manager to join my team at FreeWire.

Are you a new CSM or looking to break into the field? The Success League offers a complete CSM Training Program that can provide you with practical tools to strengthen your professional toolkit.  For more information on this program and our other classes and workshops, please visit TheSuccessLeague.io

Steve Schwartz - Steve is a customer success leader who enjoys starting and building high-performance teams at early-stage startups. He has worked in energy startups for the past 10+ years in a variety of customer-facing roles. By engaging with customers during the sales cycle, he ensures customer expectations are fully understood and can be exceeded. When not writing for The Success League, Steve is leading Customer Success at FreeWire Technologies. He holds a BS from Tufts University and an MS from Virginia Commonwealth University, and spends his free time with his wife and two kids exploring the Bay Area.

Customer Success Compensation: 5 Key Decisions

By Kristen Hayer

It’s fall. If you lead a Customer Success group, now is the time to consider adjusting your metrics, goals, compensation plans and team structure for 2018. Over the next 2 weeks I’ll be focusing on how to build CS compensation plans that drive high performing teams toward achieving key metrics. In this post, I’ll cover the 5 decisions you need to make before you start building your plan. For more details and ideas on this topic, you can visit this article I wrote last year.

Decision 1 – Total Compensation

You need to make sure that your total compensation package allows you to be competitive with other, similar companies who are recruiting CS candidates. There are a number of different ways you can track down compensation information. One of the easiest is to use a tool like Salary.com or Payscale. While these paid services aren’t cheap, they do offer a comprehensive look at compensation by role, seniority and location. You can also check out job descriptions online. While many don’t include salary information, some do. Finally, check with colleagues in your area. Many of the customer success forums have discussion strings that cover CS compensation.

Decision 2 – Variable or No Variable

Once you’ve made a decision about your total compensation package you need to decide if part of that will come in the form of variable compensation. Variable comp is simply a lever that helps you drive performance. Team members who perform better are paid more. Variable compensation is not the only way to drive performance, so if you don’t have executive support, solid goals, or a budget, you can turn to other management tactics. However, variable compensation has been shown to be a very effective performance lever (sometimes too effective, cough, Wells Fargo!) Pull that lever if you can.

Decision 3 – Variable Percentage

If you decide not to move forward with variable comp, you’re done. If you decide that variable compensation is an important part of your performance strategy, you need to decide on a percentage. In a selling or persuasion-oriented role (account manager or CSM with revenue goals) the variable percentage of total compensation should be higher. A typical range is 20-25%. For a role that is support-focused (implementation specialist, technical support engineer, CSM without selling responsibility) the variable percentage should be lower. A typical range in 10-15%. Again, check your compensation tools and network for comparable packages so you can be sure you’re competitive.

Decision 4 – Bonus or Commission

There are 2 main types of variable comp – bonus and commission. Commission works great for revenue-oriented, short-term goals like selling 10 training plans a month or keeping retention rates at 98% of revenue for the quarter. Commission requires individual goals, and is typically paid on a per-transaction basis. For example, if you renew 98% of the revenue in a quarter, you might earn 2% of each renewal you close. Bonuses are more flexible, and in many cases easier to implement for customer success teams. You can have bonuses based on project completion, specific activities or achievement of goals, and they can be tied to either individual or team performance. Many CS teams employ a combination of both commission and bonus.

Decision 5 – Payout Timing

In a perfect world, your payout timing will match the timing of your goals. Do you have a monthly expansion revenue goal? A monthly commission payment is a great fit. Have a quarterly NPS metric? A quarterly bonus would do nicely. The idea behind payout timing is to place the reward as near to the desired behavior as possible. This reinforces the behavior and rewards great results. The more senior the staff member, the longer term the goals should be, and the longer the reward payout can be. It is completely appropriate to offer an annual bonus to a people manager who should be focused on the achievement of annual metrics and goals.

Once you’ve made these decisions, you can build a model that helps you visualize how a low, typical or high performer would be paid. Use that to dial in your dollar amounts and percentages, and you can write it up, get it approved, and roll it out. Next week I’ll talk about how compensation plan execution is the key to great results. Until then, happy planning!

Need ideas for your compensation plan? The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that offers an online course on Developing Compensation Plans. Our next classes are offered on October 10 and November 17, 2017. For more information on this class, as well as other courses in our CS Leadership Program, please visit TheSuccessLeague.io

Creating a Customer Success Elevator Pitch

By Kristen Hayer

Customer success is a relatively new field, and is different from the account management, technical support or professional services fields it is often compared to. Success teams also differ from company to company in terms of scope, function and key metrics. Unfortunately, this means there is often confusion at the executive level about what customer success does and the value it brings to an organization.  As a customer success leader, a big part of your job is making sure that everyone in your company understands the role and importance of your team. This positions you to get backing for success initiatives and resources for your group.

One simple way to do this is to think like an entrepreneur and write an elevator pitch. To get started, ask yourself:

What problem does our team solve?

Think about how things worked before customer success came onto the scene. Was churn high? Were customers frustrated with onboarding? Were new users neglected? Choose the primary problem your team solves.

How do we solve it?

What’s special about what you bring to the table as a customer success team? Are you proactive? Do you have special knowledge about your industry? Think about what sets your team apart from account management or technical support.

Who do we serve?

Do you work with all of your company’s customers or a specific segment? Are there certain stages of the customer lifecycle you focus on? If you have a larger team, you may end up with different pitches for different groups.

How do we measure our success?

Think about the strategic metrics you drive or influence. Are you responsible for churn? Does your team produce revenue from cross-selling efforts? High-level metrics like churn, revenue or NPS score resonate with executives.

What is a quantifiable example of a recent success?

This should answer the “What have you done for me lately?” question. Think about the wins that you’ve had over the past quarter. Good choices are major achievements with high-level metrics or high-visibility initiatives.

Once you’ve thought through the components of your pitch, pull it all together into a concise paragraph. The idea is to convey a lot of value in 30-60 seconds. A good target is 4-6 tightly crafted sentences.

Sample Elevator Pitch

“Our customers buy our solution for a variety of different reasons, and without someone to help them don’t always achieve the outcomes they hoped for. Customer success works proactively with our enterprise customers to define the outcomes they hope to achieve, and helps them to create concrete goals to get there. As we work with customers over the course of their lifecycle, we make sure our solution stays aligned with their goals and initiatives. Our efforts help our company retain and grow our existing customer base, and secure contacts our sales team can reference with prospects. Last quarter we provided references to our sales team that they told us helped them to close 10 deals worth $2.5 million.”

Make sure everyone on your team is prepared to give the customer success elevator pitch. You never know when they’ll be sitting next to the VP of Engineering at lunch or riding up to your office with the COO. Every interaction with your company’s executive team is a chance for your team to share the value customer success brings to your organization, and can help you secure resources for your team down the road.

Need help defining customer success for your organization? The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that works with executives who are ready to build and scale their customer success team. Check out our new Leadership Training Program at TheSuccessLeague.io

The 7 Components of a Health Score

By Kristen Hayer

When SaaS customer success professionals talk about their customer health score, they are often referring to a metric based almost entirely on product use patterns. Things like logins, users and feature adoption are weighted heavily in the customer health algorithms for these organizations.

In reality, customer health (even for SaaS companies) is based on a much larger group of factors. Depending on the business, things as simple as geographic location or as complex as funding trends can have an impact on whether a customer is truly healthy. As you build or refine the customer health score for your success team, here are some of the components you should consider.

Product Usage

While this shouldn’t be the only thing you consider, it should be a factor in your health score if you offer a technology solution. That said, really think about the usage components you choose. Does the number or frequency of logins really indicate health? Or, does the number of features being used better represent a healthy customer? Should you incorporate both? Consider things like logins, the number of users, the adoption of key features, reporting use, and data downloads or uploads, and choose only the items that best represent health.

Customer Actions

Another component to consider is a customer action. These are triggers that you can build into your health score, both positive and negative. Did your customer call you or submit a support ticket that was resolved? Those actions could indicate a positive change in health. Has the customer failed to return calls for a period of time, or recently asked about their contract terms?  Those could be indicators of poor health. Think about the actions your customers typically take, and consider incorporating some of them into your health score.

Demographics

Sometimes the customer may be inherently more healthy or risky, based on demographics like the industry they are in, their size or their location. Do the laws in a specific state make your customer less likely to stick with you long-term? Does your client’s size make them attractive to competitors? Is their industry such a great fit for your solution that you know they have few alternatives? Be sure to consider demographic factors as you build your health score.

Company Changes

Another input into your health score could be company changes that your clients face regularly. Did your main contact leave the organization, or was your customer acquired? Those factors usually put the customer at risk, which should be reflected in a lower health score. Did the company go public or receive a new round of funding? That may open up new opportunities that should improve the health score. Think about ways that company changes might positively or negatively affect health.

Customer Relationship

A slightly softer measure of customer health has to do with the relationship itself. Has the customer been with you for a long time? If you’ve had a rich relationship, that might be an indication of health. If instead, the customer has been through numerous product updates without a lot of contact they may be at a higher level of risk. Consider things like the level of engagement with various departments in your company (do they go to your user conference, attend all your webinars and always call their CSM back?) and the depth of the relationship (how many contacts do you have and in how many different departments?)

Feedback

Have you gotten feedback from your customers? This can be one of the best indicators of health or risk, since it is coming directly from your client. That said, one NPS score by itself isn’t enough to indicate health, and shouldn’t be weighted too heavily. Even if a client says they wouldn’t recommend you to a colleague, there may be many reasons why they need to and will stick around. A better way to incorporate feedback into your health score is to have surveys across your product and customer success touch points that feed into the overall algorithm. This will balance one contact having a bad day with other feedback that provides a more holistic view.

CSM Assessment

If you’re using a customer success platform (think Totango, Amity, Strikedeck, ClientSuccess, Gainsight) it can be tempting to focus on the previous 6 components. After all, they are relatively easy to quantify, track and incorporate into an overall health score. The problem is that you could be automating away one of the most powerful indicators of health: the conversations your CSM team is having with customers every day. It is not uncommon for a customer to be showing up as healthy in a CS platform right up until they churn. Without qualitative insights from your CSM team you might miss clues to health or risk.

By looking outside of product usage for customer health and risk factors, you’ll develop a more accurate picture of customer health across your base, and become better at predicting churn and driving engagement.

Do you need help developing a score that aligns with what customer health really means for your organization? The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that can help you identify the right health score components, and report on the overall health and risk levels of your customer base. For more information please visit our website – TheSuccessLeague.io