Before I begin to delve into the subject line, ‘How to become a customer success manager’, I am going to share with you some statistics. The companies that prioritize the customer experience can generate up to 60% higher profits than those of their competitions. Even something as small as a 5% increment in customer retention can result in a 75% increase in revenue and profits.
Now let us see what a customer success role looks like. Well, it is kind of obvious, that a customer success manager helps and manages the company’s clients to become more successful. Want to be a part of helping companies achieve outstanding results? In that case, fret no more. Read on the following article and get answered.
Learn technical customer success tools
When you want to know, how to become a customer success manager, the icebreaker of the list is technicalities. Accepting a career in technology will demand you to be technologically sound and be adept in all of the technical know-how. With this, you can make yourself more marketable by learning common technologies. Smartkarrot is going to great help to you in this regard. You may also grab a free trial and learn by yourself. Aside from this, a minimum of 4 years’ experience in working with the software industry or being exposed to the SaaS business is a plus!
Take a customer success certification course
Taking a customer success certification course is always a good idea for a couple of reasons. Not only it is an exceptional way to learn about the various demands of the role discussed, but also having a completed certification on your resume can turn out to be quite helpful when you are applying. It will make your resume stand out from a sea of applicants. Remember, you want to become a customer success manager by expertise, and not just by designation.
Certificates can be nice, especially in the times when your resume needs a boost. Kindly note that a track record of real-world success is always going to trump a piece of paper, or in this case a digital certificate. Get yours today itself.
Close connection with stakeholders
Needless to say, you should be building a friendly yet professional relationship with all of your customers. In such a manner that they are not afraid of approaching you in case of any queries. Meanwhile, there are some other sets of people that you have to befriend. Some of these include project managers, with whom you shall be sharing your project status. You will have to update them with the user engagement as well as product adoption.
Not just that, you will have to speak to the customer service and support reps, to solve their issues or related queries. Moreover, it is always better to be in touch with account managers and salespeople. As they are the ones whom you will have to update about the renewal times or opportunities to upsell and cross-sell as the clients arise.
Passion for customers and exceptional customer management skills
Perhaps the best answer to, ‘how to become a customer success manager’, is by having a great affinity for customers. You should be people-centric to be a good fit for the role. How do you deal with a challenging customer situation? Customer success managers are generally the voice of reason – the ones who take a notch up and help get the issue resolved. Remember, this role demands courage and audacity of you, at all times. If you think it could be tough for you to pacify a situation between a customer and an employee, this might not be the job you are looking for. Better yet, buck up and get ready.
Translate your past domain experience into customer success
With the current trends, having an inculcated domain knowledge is very crucial. When you put yourself in the shoes of a customer success manager, you will have to pep up in some traits. To provide advice to your customers on how best to use the software, having a good amount of experience will make you the black horse in the race. Not just that, think of the credibility that you can get.
Further, you can instantly start adding value to your clients and your brand. For that, it is of high pertinence that you understand your customer’s point of view as well. It depends on the level of complexity that the problem you are dealing with has. The bigger the problem, the more is the amount of experience.
Yes to Value and Quality
You might have a lot of customers, but at the end of the day, they will stick around only when you render them the requisite value and quality. These supreme factors are like little glimmers of hope on behalf of your company. It is a common problem that you might not have sufficient resources to solve a particular issue, then such situations, you should get to reused technology from any other projects and that can help you save costs as well.
Rightly quoted by Jay Nathan, SVP, Customer Success, PeopleMatter “Customer success in a SaaS or subscription business is all about teamwork, coordination, and collaboration. A CS leader must translate what they hear from customers. Into actionable information that other functions of the business can use. Feedback touches a variety of areas of the business. The leaders of the customer success team should be able to interface with sales, marketing, product, engineering, support, services, finance, etc. And establish customer-friendly processes that help clear hurdles to revenue retention.
CS leaders should also be able to provide input on strategy. The business is given its proximity to and regular interactions with the market. They should serve as the eyes and ears of the market for the executive team. And be able to massage massive amounts of data into useful information the company can use to make decisions.”
Final Take
The question, ‘how to become a customer success manager’, could be a little more tricky and subjective as an answer. While customer success is a data-driven role, it is the truth that if you want to work successfully in the business. Hence, you will have to good with numbers.
Kaustubh Sangam is a Customer Success Analyst with 2 years of experience. Committed to delivering exceptional customer experiences and driving business growth. Proficient in leveraging data analysis to optimize customer success strategies.
Published July 21, 2020, Updated June 07, 2023
