The more you wish your customer base to grow, the higher you need to zoom in to productivity and time management. As a Customer Success Manager, you constantly juggle between relationship building, onboarding, upselling and strive to take the customer satisfaction score a notch up. In the beginning, it might seem like 24 hours aren’t enough on your watch. That is when laying a firm foundation of some of the best productivity and time management systems is the way forward. Here, we shall be outlining 6 such tenets for the CSMs to gel well.
Table of Contents
- Avoid booking Back-to-Back Meetings
- Keep Buffer Time in between Calls
- Club similar tasks together
- There is no Trophy for ‘Complete it all in a Day’
- Take Breaks between Meetings
- Plan your Next Day in Advance
Avoid booking Back-to-Back Meetings
Meeting tardiness is one of the worst pet peeves for any manager in general. It is never a good idea to fill your calendar with all the meetings on the same day. This will only leave you tired, worked up, and unfocused on your work routine. What good will a back-to-back meeting do if you aren’t being productive in any of them due to restlessness?
On that note, you can try Google Calendar. Its feature ‘Speedy Meetings’ allows you to manage the space between meetings. For instance, it will schedule your 30-minute meetings to end after 25 minutes giving you a breather before your next meeting.
Keep Buffer Time in between Calls
As you schedule your calls and meetings for a week, ensure that you allow some room to chill and breathe in between, which in technical terms is called as ‘buffer’. Sometimes, you may need to spend a little extra time with your customers, or there could be times when you would have to travel from one place to another. Including traffic time, or lunchtime should be unmissable too. Even if everything on your calendar goes as per your plan, it would never hurt to have buffer time before that.
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Club similar tasks together
A large part of your usual day is prioritizing your tasks and following up on them. Ensure that you take on tasks that pay dividends in a given time frame and save you space on your calendar. For instance, you can easily batch related tasks such as mapping the customer journey or maybe reviewing the onboarding process periodically. This will allow you to wrap up more projects without having to take breaks or switch gears in between. Look at this really informative video by Ruben Rabago, Chief Customer Officer, Intellum who talks about Time Management in Customer Success:
There is no Trophy for ‘Complete it all in a Day’
There are high probabilities that you might not be able to complete all your assigned tasks in a day. It could be due to endless meetings, prolonged calls, or can be some personal reasons too. Whatever it may be, it is alright. Decide on which are your top priorities at the moment and have the courage to say ‘NO’ to the rest. You need some personal space too. It is vital to not only know what those priority items are but also to have the fortitude to postpone the rest that pops up on your calendar.
Take Breaks between Meetings
The brain as an organ hangs if it is not decluttered time and again. It too needs rest and clarity. Before you are all set to get into a fresh meeting, allot some time off to take a quick break. Go for a walk, have a coffee, chat it out with your colleagues or family, stretch a little, and meditate too, if you have the luxury of time!
These micro-breaks will enable you to get into your next meeting with a clearer mind. You will now be able to think and verdict more rationally. The time that you give to your next meeting will be more productive and useful to your employees as well as your customers. Just like Omer Gotlieb, Chief Customer Officer & Co-Founder, Totango, says:
“Do not try and make every customer happy all the time. Prioritize programs that generate tangible business outcomes for their team. When you focus on making the customer successful with your product or service, things like retention and renewal become an easy conversation.”
Plan your Next Day in Advance
Generally, mornings are unpredictable. It is possible to find yourself derailed when you are swamped between calls and skip out lunches and dinners. That is why you need to start planning your next day from today itself. This way things do not go out of tethers and you can always circle back to the original plan. Once you draft a plan for your next day, you will now be in a position to be better prepared for tomorrow, get a good night’s sleep tonight, and wake up with a clear, unclouded head.
There are so many tools available out there that will be your assistant in doing this. You can ToDoist, SmartDay, and RescueTime too. Be it tracking, informing, or delegating tasks, they will support you no matter what.
That’s a Wrap
No longer wish to have another pair of hands or a few more hours in your clock. Plan and prioritize your day as a CSM and things will pan out rationally. Try out these six essential tips on productivity and time management and benefit that indefinite progress of existence called ‘time’. Take help of the diligent tools as and when required and free up some space. Let time be your friend and start utilizing your day in a rather productive and fulfilling way. Big goodbyes to unending meetings, calls, and headaches right away!
An implementation engineer with six years of experience is a seasoned professional specialising in implementing and integrating complex systems and technologies for businesses. Possessing a diverse skill set that combines technical expertise, and project management capabilities.
Published April 21, 2021, Updated June 07, 2023
