How to Build a Customer Success Team
A well-structured and skilled customer success team can proactively engage with customers, drive their success, and ultimately foster long-term relationships. Building an effective customer success team, requires considering not just the roles and required skills, but also timing your hires, perfecting your new hire onboarding, and adapting the skills you look for in order to round out your team as a whole.
Defining Roles in the Customer Success Team: To build a successful customer success team, it's important to define and allocate specific roles within the team. Here are some essential roles commonly found in customer success teams:
a). Customer Success Manager (CSM): CSMs act as the primary point of contact for customers, managing their accounts and ensuring their success. They provide personalized guidance, proactively identify opportunities for growth, and address any challenges customers may face.
b. Onboarding Specialist: Onboarding specialists focus on the initial stages of a customer's journey. They guide customers through the onboarding process, helping them understand product features, setting expectations, and ensuring a smooth transition. This makes the most sense if you have heavy implementation or integrations at the beginning of the customer experience, that then becomes fairly low touch afterwards. These folks can be your experts on getting users up and running quickly and effectively, focusing on short TTV (Time to Value).
c. Renewals and Upsells Specialist: This role concentrates on renewing customer subscriptions and identifying upsell opportunities. They analyze customer usage data, engage with customers to understand their evolving needs, and work towards expanding the relationship. You’re usually not going require this type of role until your revenue really starts to build out past the $20M mark or if your renewals and upsells are big technical conversations.
d. Technical Support Representative: Technical support representatives assist customers with technical issues, troubleshoot problems, and provide timely resolutions. Their expertise ensures customers can fully leverage the product's capabilities, and this is a great entry level role for more junior employees as they hone their skills.
Identifying Required Skills: To build a capable customer success team, it is crucial to identify the skills necessary for each role. Here are some essential skills to look for:
a. Excellent Communication: Strong verbal and written communication skills are essential for effective customer interaction, active listening, and conveying complex ideas clearly.
b. Empathy and Relationship Building: Customer success professionals must empathize with customers, understand their challenges, and build trusting relationships based on transparency and mutual respect.
c. Product and Industry Knowledge: A deep understanding of the product or service being offered, as well as the industry it serves, enables customer success team members to provide relevant guidance and value-added insights. Certain industries are harder to pickup on the job, and it can be beneficial to hire someone who has some previous background (ie. media buying or chat automation).
d. Analytical and Problem-Solving Skills: The ability to analyze customer data, identify patterns, and devise creative solutions is vital for addressing challenges and driving customer success.
Establishing an Optimal Team Structure: The structure of your customer success team can greatly impact its efficiency and effectiveness. Consider the following factors when establishing the team's structure:
a. Team Size: The team size should align with the number of customers and the complexity of their needs. Adequate resources should be allocated to ensure personalized attention and timely support.
b. Collaboration and Cross-Functionality: Foster collaboration between team members and other departments like sales, marketing, and product development. This ensures a seamless customer experience and enables valuable insights sharing.
c. Continuous Learning and Development: Encourage ongoing learning and skill development within the team. Offer training opportunities, access to industry resources, and promote a culture of knowledge sharing.
Building a customer success team that excels in delivering value and driving customer satisfaction is a vital investment for any business. By defining roles, identifying required skills, and establishing an optimal team structure, you can create a customer success team that can effectively engage with customers, guide their success, and foster long-term relationships. Remember to adapt and evolve the team as your business and customer needs change, what works at $5M likely won’t work at $15M or at $50M and that’s ok. Provide your team with the training and resources to be successful, and set the expectation that the changes you make will be thoughtful and necessary.
