How To Choose A Customer Success Leader
Your company is making a huge decision! It’s time to bring in a Customer Success Leader to ramp up your efforts and align for success. Which poses a great question: How do you choose a Customer Success Leader?
I have been seeing some innovative companies that hire Customer Success early and often, but that’s still the exception. In my experiences, most companies invest in Customer Success to plug and/or prevent a churn problem; this involves hiring a Customer Success Manager or two. The decision to bring in a Customer Success Leader is generally made down the road as the company scales and it sees the value in bringing in a leadership role. The exceptions to this have been when the Customer Success Leader is one of the co-founders or when the focus on Customer Success is an especially important part of the cultural DNA.
I firmly believe that Customer Success Leaders should be brought in to own the relational longevity of the account-base. I’m not just talking about renewals; I’m talking about the entire relationship. Upsell and renewal should be a side effect of handling the relationship correctly throughout the entire journey.
The reality is that the primary responsibilities of Customer Success Leaders will vary company by company. I’ve seen some leaders who own their own P & L, others who directly own revenue from upsells and cross-sells, some who are purposely not tied to a revenue figure to maintain that “trusted advisor” role, some who report to CEOs, some who report to Sales, and everything in between.
Even if it’s tough to bucket the strategic responsibilities that Customer Success Leaders will face, there are some common tactical challenges most or all will face. These challenges include:
- Defining the renewal process
- Defining and strategizing the customer lifecycle
- Delivering best practice content
Customer Success Leaders are also likely responsible for the customer experience – in terms of how the customers view and engage with the brand (not from a User Interface perspective).
The Qualities of A Customer Success Leader
The first decision is to decide whether you want to promote from within or bring in an outside candidate. If you’re promoting from within, I recommend having a clear succession plan and leaning on the 9-box grid methodology for helping you choose (9-box is a very quick way to assess readiness for promotion). An external hire widens your pool of candidates but they may lack the tribal knowledge that makes your company special.
It’s pretty obvious that a candidate with prior Customer Success Management or Customer Success Leadership experience has a leg up. Barring that, strong experience in the company’s industry coupled with some form of client services will go a long way. Anything with strong customer-facing requirements. Support, Services, and Sales can be a solid background for choosing a Customer Success Leader.
Having domain experience is a plus but I don’t subscribe to the idea of a Customer Success Leader necessarily having to be a domain expert off the bat. If I’m hiring at a project management software company and my choices are between someone with strong experience in project management and someone with strong experience in Customer Success, I’m going with the Success candidate.
In terms of the skillsets that make a Customer Success Leader, you’re going to want the qualities like effective communications skills, the capacity to delegate, the ability to inspire and others. I’d also factor in this person’s ability to relate to the customer’s needs and require that they have a high level of integrity.
I can’t stress that last element enough because it’s very easy to placate customers by promising the moon but if you don’t actually follow up on it, that’s a recipe for churn. A strong Customer Success leader has to say what they mean, deliver on what they say, and be able to say “no” or push back with customers and peers alike in a manner that still maintains a strong relationship.
Unfortunately, there’s no clear metric for measuring integrity, so you’ll really have to trust in your interview process. I’ve found that asking, “Tell me about a time a customer of yours was wrong … Why were they wrong? How did you handle that?” can provide some very telling answers.
The leader has to be able to drive the tactical side of hitting the quarterly goals but you also need this person to be capable of understanding, supporting and contributing to the larger, strategic vision. Whether the Customer Success leader has a seat at the executive table or not, they will have influence in where the organization goes. That’s why you want this person to have strong vision.
How do you know when a Customer Success Manager is ready to take on the leadership role? Of course, there are a myriad of telling traits. One of my favorites to look for is a person who can successfully impart their will on others, particularly when their coworkers don’t report to them. A person that can get their leaders, coworkers, and subordinates excited about something and get behind them on a project/thought/idea/etc., and get the job done has the potential to be a particularly strong leader.
