Customer Success (CS) can seem daunting to fully comprehend. I certainly felt that way when entering the field 8 years ago. While you may understand the nuances of a well known role like a Customer Success Manager, that does not translate to fully comprehending the broader landscape of departments and teams. This can be especially impactful as your organization expands its offerings and would like its Customer Success function to reflect that growth.
Navigating this multifaceted discipline can benefit your career growth within Customer Success. It opened up various pathways tailored to my interests, for ultimately supporting customers and their growth within organizations I worked for.
Let us explore some of the key teams that form the fabric of Customer Success.
“Pure” Customer Success
Pure Customer Success teams epitomize the core concept of the discipline. As a Customer Success Manager (CSM), you work directly with customers to optimize their experience with your products and services. This team encompasses a diverse range of tasks – driving customer usage, managing renewal and growth conversations, and troubleshooting product issues your customers experience.
On a personal level, this was an excellent entry point to understand the breadth of responsibilities and to identify my preferences based on skills and responsibilities I enjoyed more than others.
Larger organizations and those with more complex products/services could have further taxonomy, with a scaled or digital Customer Success team. These setups involve managing a larger customer base, but on a more reactive basis or focusing on a specific set of customers within certain investment ranges with your organizations, to ensure their success.
CS Operations
CS operations support the inner workings of a CS team, designing processes and managing tools to drive the broader team forward. This team can have varying abilities in terms of technical acumen, strategic guidance, forecasting, and alignment with other departments. This team can also be quite analytical in their approach – understanding pitfalls their CS teams fall under, and designing solutions for that they can scale up as an organization quicker, and ultimately benefit their customers.
This role was most closely matched by abilities prior to me becoming a CSM and I naturally gravitated to the duties that colleagues did. Duties included transfer policies, forecasting, monitoring and reporting, churn analysis, and renewal trends.
Professional Services
Professional Services teams concentrate on maximizing product usage and aiding customers in achieving their desired outcomes. Offering services such as onboarding and ongoing consulting, they delve deeper into product functionality and service offerings, compared to CSMs. While these services often come as an additional cost, they provide invaluable insights into customer satisfaction and revenue generation opportunities.
Joining this team can transform you into a product/service expert within your organization. Having been on consulting contracts prior to coming into CS, I was excited to join a Professional Services team since I understood the metrics, day-to-day, and opportunities for advancement. What I did not realize was the wealth of growth I experienced in learning other businesses, and helping those customers map their business processes and system architecture through the tools that I had knowledge of. This certainly set me up for my current position as an executive, and helped me understand the nature of business.
Customer Support
Customer Support forms the backbone of a Customer Success department. This team generally takes a reactive motion, being available for customers to contact them for any issues pertaining to your organization’s products/services. Subsequently, this team usually possesses extensive product knowledge to address customer queries and troubleshoot issues promptly. It’s an ideal starting point for individuals new to the technology industry, offering invaluable exposure to the professional world.
Renewal Management
Renewal management plays a critical part in ensuring customer retention. Tasked with negotiating renewal terms as customers approach their contract end dates, this team focuses on revenue preservation and growth. Joining this team provides firsthand experience in understanding SaaS economics and the importance of customer retention to an overall organization’s financial sustainability and profitability.
This team enters the customer journey as the customer approaches their renewal date with your products/services, to negotiate terms for them to continue remaining with your company.
Customer Marketing
While Customer Marketing may fall under the Marketing department, its tasks naturally intersect with Customer Success. This team specializes in crafting communications tailored to existing customers, disseminating best practices, and gathering feedback on customer sentiment. Being on a Customer Marketing team can give you first hand experience on how to enhance customer satisfaction, drive new sales, automate previously manual tasks to aide your team’s capacity, and insights into customer evolving needs.
Embarking on a career in Customer Success offers a myriad of opportunities for growth and specialization. Subsequently, understanding and exploring the teams within the discipline can give you clarity and invaluable experience. This can provide you with a pathway to refine your skills, and carve out a rewarding career tailored to your interests and strengths.
This blog post expresses the opinions of the author, not South Asian Success.
