It's never CSM vs CSE. It always CSM + CSE

Over the past 14 years in this field, I've witnessed this debate across more than four organizations. After exploring various combinations, each organization ultimately settled on having both a Customer Success Manager (CSM) and a Customer Success Engineer, also known as Technical Account Managers (TAM) or Post Sales Solutions Consultants (SC).

The synergy between a Customer Success Manager (CSM) and a Post Sales Solutions Consultant (SC) or Technical Account Manager (TAM) significantly enhances the post-sales customer lifecycle by leveraging their complementary skills and responsibilities. Here's how they work together:

Customer Success Manager (CSM)

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Focus:

• Ensuring customer satisfaction and success.
• Building and maintaining long-term relationships with customers.
• Monitoring customer health metrics and ensuring customer retention.

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Responsibilities:

• Onboarding and training customers to ensure they get value from the product.
• Regularly checking in with customers to understand their needs and challenges.
• Acting as the main point of contact for non-technical issues.
• Identifying opportunities for upselling or cross-selling additional products or services.
• Gathering customer feedback and working with internal teams to improve the product.

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Post Sales Solutions Consultant (SC) or Technical Account Manager (TAM)

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Focus:

• SME in the domain and the ecospace.
• Providing in-depth technical assistance and expertise.
• Ensuring the technical success and satisfaction of customers.

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Responsibilities:

• Conducting technical onboarding and integration support.
• Troubleshooting and resolving technical issues and queries.
• Providing ongoing technical training and best practices to customers.
• Advising customers on how to best use the product to meet their technical needs and goals.
• Working closely with product and engineering teams to address technical feedback and requirements from customers.

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How They Complement Each Other

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1. Holistic Customer Support: The CSM focuses on business value and relationship management, ensuring customers achieve their desired outcomes with the product. The SC/TAM focuses on technical success, ensuring that the product is implemented and used effectively.
2. Proactive vs. Reactive Approach: The CSM takes a proactive approach, regularly engaging with customers to anticipate needs and prevent issues. The SC/TAM often takes a more reactive approach, addressing technical issues as they arise, but also providing proactive technical advice and guidance.
3. Enhanced Customer Experience: By working together, they ensure that both the business and technical needs of the customer are met, leading to a more comprehensive and satisfying customer experience.
4. Retention and Upsell Opportunities: The CSM identifies potential upsell or cross-sell opportunities based on the customer's evolving business needs. The SC/TAM supports these opportunities by demonstrating the technical feasibility and benefits of additional products or features.
5. Feedback Loop: The CSM gathers feedback on overall customer satisfaction and product usage, while the SC/TAM gathers detailed technical feedback. This feedback is communicated to internal teams (product, engineering, etc.) to drive improvements and innovations.
6. Customer Advocacy: Together, they act as advocates for the customer within the company, ensuring that both business and technical challenges are addressed.

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Practical Example for the Cloud Security Industry I am in:

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At Check Point, the cloud security Customer Success organization that I am responsible for adopted this model over the past year, resulting in transformative improvements in our ability to support and care for our customers.

Imagine a customer has recently adopted a Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP):

CSM Role:

• Onboarding Plan: The CSM creates a comprehensive onboarding plan to ensure the customer is smoothly introduced to the CNAPP, covering initial setup, key milestones, and timelines.
• Creation of Journey: The CSM develops a customer journey map outlining the steps from onboarding to achieving desired business outcomes, ensuring alignment with the customer's goals.
• Project Management: They manage the project to ensure timely progress, coordinating with internal teams and the customer to keep everything on track.
• Business Outcomes Validation: The CSM regularly checks in to validate that the CNAPP is helping the customer achieve their business outcomes, adjusting strategies as necessary.
• Training and Enablement: They organize training sessions and enablement resources to ensure the customer’s team is fully proficient in using the CNAPP.
• Discussing New Use Cases: The CSM identifies and discusses new use cases where the CNAPP can provide additional value, helping the customer expand its usage.

SC/TAM Role:

• Technical Training: The SC/TAM provides in-depth technical training on how to configure and use the CNAPP effectively to secure their cloud-native applications and infrastructure.
• Troubleshooting: They assist with troubleshooting any technical issues during the implementation phase, ensuring smooth integration with the customer’s existing systems.
• Optimizing Performance: The SC/TAM offers advice on optimizing the CNAPP’s performance, such as fine-tuning security policies, setting up automated threat responses, and integrating with other security tools the customer uses.
• Bugs and Feature Requests: They handle any bugs and feature requests, ensuring that customer feedback is communicated to the product team for resolution and future improvements.
• Cloud Security Maturity Model Workshop: The SC/TAM conducts workshops on the cloud security maturity model, helping the customer understand their current security posture and how to improve it.

By working together, the CSM and SC/TAM ensure that the customer not only successfully implements the CNAPP but also continues to derive maximum security and compliance value from it. This collaboration leads to higher customer satisfaction, enhanced security posture, and long-term retention.