Your New Career Is Calling: How To Get Started In Customer Success

In a previous article I shared my views on Customer Success within the context of Talent Management. Today I'd like to continue that trope in the first of a two-part series, focusing on possible career paths leading up to Customer Success.

Creating an entirely new department in a company is no easy task, and it takes far more than just new titles to make it work. This is as much a cultural shift as it is a change in 'who sits where.' I've made the business and cultural cases for Customer Success here, here, and here. Customer Success is essential for businesses now, and it will be even more vital in 25 years. What will change dramatically within that time frame is who will be performing the work that helps our clients thrive, and what experience they will bring to the table. 

Customer Success is so hot right now, yet we're only at the earliest stages of the discipline. So, who will we select to carry on the conversation with our best clients? Who has a bias for action, a strategic mindset, and an earnest desire to create long-term partnerships with the right clients?

And once we get the right people in the right seats on our bus, do we expect them to stay in those seats forever? As we encourage our new Customer Success Managers to set ambitious goals and develop the leadership skills that will enable them to excel, are we secretly hoping that they'll remain CSMs in our organization indefinitely? 

"Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to." Richard Branson encapsulates a universal sentiment: we want to feel empowered, yet also committed to a cause greater than ourselves. Yet nowhere does he say you should treat people like they will never learn anything new, so that you can be sure they'll do the same job their entire careers.

Customer Success Managers need career path options, and all of us need to join in the conversation of nurturing our best and brightest. In part two of this series I will discuss what happens once a Customer Success Manager feels confident in spreading their wings and soaring even higher. But first, how do you break into this dynamic new role?

How Can I Help? Why Support Leads To Success

Customer Support is just one aspect of Customer Success, and not the other way around. The goals of each discipline are distinct, and how we approach each one needs to be different for those goals to be achieved.

But if we want to build up our Customer Success team, Customer Support is one of the first places we should look. Why?

• The Best Customer Support Agents Were Born To Help

They're always ready to jump in and help, no matter what the problem might be. They recognize that simply passing a client off to another department can sometimes be counterproductive, introducing unnecessary friction and degrading the trust that has already been established in that relationship. They understand that if the client is calling with a problem, it's probably something serious that they couldn't fix on their own. Resolving it quickly and decisively can make that relationship even stronger than it was before. But on an even deeper level...

• The Best Customer Support Agents Have A Flair for Being Proactive

If your house is on fire, good Customer Support Agents do whatever it takes to put out the flames, immediately. Great Customer Support Agents, on the other hand, are more likely to put out the flames and launch a forensic investigation into the why? and of that particular fire. They realize it's not enough to simply solve problems as they arise... if they really want to help their clients they'll look for patterns in previous tickets across clients and client segments. Their involvement might even go so far as to engage other departments in the company, because if it's a systemic problem then it would be wrong not to enlist the help of their associates in overcoming it.

Within your Customer Support team, you probably have several agents who already embody the values of Customer Success. Select these team members as the nucleus of your new Customer Success department, or encourage them to apply for openings in your existing CS organization, and you've just taken a huge step forward in true Talent Management.

Here's Why Sales Should Care About Customer Success

We need new business coming in, we always have and we always will. But new business development alone will never be enough to offset the forces of churn. By now we've seen that if we have one department responsible for new business (Sales), we need a separate department responsible for making sure clients receive the full value of our solution (Customer Success). For both departments to thrive there needs to be a healthy, ongoing exchange of ideas among all team members on both sides of the fence.

And the most valuable means of exchange? Talent. 

Here are the factors that might make some of your Sales Managers or Business Development Representatives excellent candidates for a new career in Customer Success:

• Always Be Closing... But Don't Stop With The Close

The best clichés embody a grain of truth, and Sales is no different. Yet while some members of your team are thinking "Always Be Closing," others are thinking "Always Be Learning," or "Always Be Strategic." It's not a sale without the close, but what happens after the close belongs to Customer Success. Yet I could also say, since Customer Success can be the source of many qualified high-value referrals, that everything that happens before the close also belongs to Customer Success. Some of the best Sales Managers know this, and they invest extra time up front to qualify, nurture, and strengthen relationships... before closing the deal and heading off to the next one. How much more valuable would those Sales Managers be if they could build on those relationships, instead of handing them off to Customer Success or Implementation just when it's starting to get good?

• They Spend A Long Time With Clients... And That's A Good Thing

Some of my best Sales emerged out of conversations that took far too long to close. Ironic, you say? Perhaps, but speed isn't everything. These same sales also created some of my best professional relationships. This was what first tipped me off that I might be better suited to Customer Success. What began as a means to identify new opportunities for upsell and cross-sell turned into something much deeper: true partnerships. Don't believe me? Try calling an existing customer just to sell them something, and then come back and tell me that a transaction is the same thing as Customer Success. Again, your best Business Development Representatives know this, and they take the time to build rapport and learn more about their clients' organizations even if it means they close one less deal that day. The value of those good conversations compounds over time and across companies. When Sales Managers realize that not only do they prefer going really deep into a client's needs and goals, but that those relationships are also their most rewarding, that's when they're ready to advance into Customer Success.

Helping clients achieve their long-term goals is the common theme that can empower both Customer Support and Sales. Both teams can act as staging grounds for the next Leaders in your Customer Success organization. We can't hope to completely understand our clients' motives, needs, and goals in the first month, let alone the first conversation. Those who understand this are poised to help you generate much higher levels of recurring revenue across your customer base.

Any time I start to feel a bit impatient with the way a client relationship is progressing, I take a deep breath and look for inspiration. But I don't always look to blogs on leadership or strategy. In times like this I prefer the words of long-distance swimmer Lynne Cox, from her book Swimming to Antarctica:

After that exchange with her coach, Lynne entered the three-mile race... and won. A few years later, at the age of 15, she set a record for swimming across the English Channel. Then again when she was 16. Then she embarked upon a career that almost defies imagination, swimming in some of the most brutal conditions on the planet, often in water far colder than science said the body could endure.

None of this would have been possible if she had stayed in the pool. Her frustration was a blessing in disguise, the first ray of light shining through a new doorway to excellence. If she hadn't recognized her own inner strength, and if her coach hadn't encouraged her to redefine success... I shudder to think what the entire human race would have missed.

Everyone on your team has gifts and talents that can be improved, and some of those skills might be far better aligned with a new role. Great Customer Support Agents and Strategic Sales Representatives are Customer Success Legends in the making. If you're reading this and you're one of the former, I strongly encourage you to explore Customer Success as the next stage in your career. And if you're an executive, do you recognize the signs that some of your team members in Customer Support and Sales might find even greater fulfillment (and generate far greater results) in Customer Success?

What steps are you taking to help them realize their gifts?

This post was partly inspired by a recent article written by Chad Horenfeldt, describing his experience hiring Customer Success Managers. Chad, you're a legend in my book!