Being the VP of customer success is a tough job. It is a huge step in any professional journey, and in the field of customer success, it can be considered to be the pinnacle of success. Customer success is a growing field and is still in its beginning. This is why top-level positions generally have more roles and responsibilities than others.

If you are being promoted to the VP of Customer Success, you need to know what roles and responsibilities you can expect.

Importance of VP of Customer Success

The pandemic has made it important for companies to keep customers as much as possible. This is why positions such as VP of customer success have found increased relevance. Customer success professionals ensure that customers derive the value they need and help them achieve their goals. While customer success managers try their best to douse as many fires as possible, it is important to have a senior professional handle some issues.

This is where a Vice President of customer success comes in to help scale the customer success team and reduce the challenges the team faces. The VP of customer success can establish long-term growth and make the company profitable in the long run. By increasing the customer lifetime value, the VP of customer success ensures the company is growing rapidly.

The VP of customer success needs to be the chief customer voice and deliver results for customers. You must take care of onboarding, sales function handoff, training, product updates, setting expectations, and more. You need to ensure you are increasing customer lifetime value.

Responsibilities of a VP of Customer Success

The responsibilities of the VP of customer success are as follows-

• Creating value-based plans and setting the stage for meeting KPIs and Objectives for the customer success team
• Set up programs that align with company goals, values, features, and use cases.
• Design plans for the customer journey
• Ensure customer loyalty is paramount with designed plans and more
• Discover opportunities for growth and customer advancement
• Improve customer lifetime value by increasing their value from the product
• Find the balance between customer needs and company goals
• Collaborate and connect with sales teams to know the true potential of customers
• Pivot the organization to be more customer-centric and display their voice and influence
• Leverage the support of customers to grow internally
• Employ technology to increase efficiency in operations and processes
• Assist customers from the stage of onboarding to product usage and eventual product adoption

The VP of customer success needs to understand the answers to key questions like-

• What CS software or tool does the firm use?
• What is the industry that the firm deals with?
• What are the alerts and triggers set up?
• Does the company use any KPIs or Key metrics?
• What is the rate at which customers are signing up?
• Unique differentiating factors for the company

Role of VP of Customer Success

We can divide the role of the VP of customer success into the following broad categories-

Customer Success

The primary roles of the VP of customer success in this segment include-

• Reducing customer churn and revenue churn
• Increasing renewal rates
• Enhancing product adoption
• Increasing health scores of customers
• Driving business growth through account expansion
• Focus on NPS and reference ability

Customer Value

Bringing out customer value is another primary role segment for the Vice President of customer success. Increasing customer value is important, and it is possible with-

• Defining specific operational metrics for the team
• Reviewing various aspects of team performance
• Tracking metrics and goals for customer success team

Customer Lifecycle

The VP of customer success needs to map out the customer journey, find peak points of usage or satisfaction, and explore areas of improvement in the journey. The VP of customer success needs to define segmentation at the customer level and identify the scope for improvement.

It is also important to take feedback from customers to increase and improve the customer lifecycle. The VP of customer success helps attract high-potential contributors and creates improved processes for the team. It can also encourage continuous learning with filled training sessions and create quicker onboarding processes.

Process Support

• Customer onboarding
• Customer support
• Customer product training
• Aiding in the process of renewals, cross-sells, upsells, and other aspects
• Manage onboarding

Broadly, the goals of the VP of customer success include-

• Ensuring customer success becomes a company-wide culture
• Aligning customer success team with marketing
• Aligning product teams with customer success teams
• Focus on centering the sales team around customer success
• Meet the goals of the executive sponsors and C-suite executives
• Ensure the company has a customer success feedback loop and implements valid suggestions as applicable

Requisite Skills for a VP of Customer success

• 7+ years experience in customer success
• Combined background of sales plus post-sale experience
• Analytical mindset
• Process-oriented
• Ability to function under stress
• Persuasion, consensus building, and negotiation
• Excellent communication skills
• Ability to present and collaborate across teams
• Understanding of key-value drivers in revenue
• Empathy for customers and strong adherence to quality
• Relevant educational experience
• Must have experience leading and managing customer success teams in a dynamic fashion
• Must be data-driven and experiment with top trends and movements

Bottom Line

The role of the VP of customer success is to boost customer retention and reduce churn. The VP of customer success is an asset for any company that helps drive success. The Vice president of customer success must be chosen wisely as the person is critical for the company’s success. The Vice President of customer success needs to take the CS leadership into their hands and ensure overall success.

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