What Do You Do Again? with a Customer Success Manager
By: Chelsea Lee
Tags: Customer Success, Careers, Tech, Business

What is your job title?

Commercial Customer Success Manager.

What’s that mean?

I’m responsible for everything that happens with a customer, post-initial sale. Customers can be (in order of company size) small / medium businesses, mid-market companies, or enterprise customers.

What is your day to day?

It’s a balance that depends on time of year.

The beginning of the year is focused on onboarding, because we are grounding customers that signed during the fourth quarter of the previous year. We focus on implementation calls, setting best practices from the first day, and crafting account plans for long-term success.

Once onboarding is complete, we spend more time on adoption, themed calls, and in-person meetings. The goal after onboarding is to be strategic, versus just tactical. Tactical is focusing on details (project management, technical setup, delegation of users, tasks). Strategic is quantifying the impact of all of those things on the business you’re serving, to know whether or not your tactics are actually moving the needle.

There’s a constant flow of internal meetings as well. In my 1:1s, I’m diving deeper with my manager using dashboards and account notes to manage my book of business. In team meetings, I’m learning from my team’s customer relationships and personal expertise. In cross-functional meetings, I’m hearing what other departments (Sales, Marketing, Product) are working on.

Right now, a perfect work day for me would be spent on account planning, because it allows me to look at each customer holistically and set proactive goals for their customized success. Having downtime to be creative and thoughtful is critical, to me.

What did you study in college?

Writing major with a Philosophy Minor at Loyola Marymount University.

I actually didn’t mean to be a Philosophy minor, but I took so many philosophy classes as electives that I ended up with a minor at graduation!

Businesses used to tell consumers what to think or what to buy; now, that power dynamic has shifted, and consumers hold that power.

Do you think that helped?

Yes. Writing taught me to be more aware of my surroundings, to observe how people act and move, not just what they say. It taught me to write with meaning, and mindful communication is something the world needs, deeply. Writing also opened a lot of doors for creative problem-solving; when you’re creating a poem or a story or blog article, you have so much power in the world you create and the problems you address. Creative problem-solving is something you need as a CSM; the role is all about resilience and execution.

Philosophy helped me harness my creative energy by connecting the dots between different ideas. That honed my analytical skills, which I’m constantly using at work, as I dig deeper for subtext on what customers are trying to achieve, compared to the bigger concepts they’re sharing with me. Going one layer deeper is something CSMs do constantly, to understand the impact (and not just the tasks) that customers want to catalyze.

My academic work also tied in nicely with the way the business landscape started to change in 2010, when I graduated. Businesses used to tell consumers what to think or what to buy; now, that power dynamic has shifted, and consumers hold that power. They tell business what they want, and businesses have to make it happen, to attain or retain them. With that shift, there’s a bigger emphasis on relationships and achievement. It’s not just about a feature or discount — people want to be part of a bigger story. They want to trust the person managing them.

This really resonates with me on a personal level too, growing up in a culture that is very entrepreneurial, tight-knit, and expressive [Jenn is a first-generation Lebanese woman!]. I was raised to value authentic connections in life and in business. Having bonds with customers is rewarding, but it also holds me accountable for how I communicate, and help them reach their goals.

What crossroads of majors would you job fall under?

Philosophy / Psychology / Business / Marketing / Sociology / Accounting / Communication

Is there something else you could have studied to get here?

I know it’s cliche, but study what you’re passionate about. Customer Success is an open-ended industry for people with different backgrounds. Whatever your passion or superpower is, that will be the value you bring to the team.

For example, if you’re passionate about marketing, you’ll be the CSM that partners with the marketing team around customer communications, shaping the marketing calendar on behalf of CS. If you’re interested in computer science, you’ll be the technical CSM, piecing together how different systems work. Pick a major you love, because you’ll be spending a lot of time, energy, and money on it. Make sure it’s something meaningful that you’ll look back on and be proud of.

What courses really prepared you for what you do now?

“Dialogue for Scene Writing” — We crafted scenes with multiple characters who had specific motivations, and we could only express their motivations through dialogue and environmental descriptors. I started thinking a lot more about the different layers of communication, subtext, and body language. Nurturing that writer’s eye for detail helped me become more observant and aware in all my interactions.

Philosophy / Research Papers — Writing any analytical paper with a thesis is an invaluable practice. At work, I constantly use the metaphor of establishing a thesis (your business goal), and having everything — every meeting, call, and project — correspond to that thesis (goal). Start with what you’re trying to accomplish, then work backwards and lay out all the details that support that end goal.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a writer, short fiction and poetry. To me, good writing shouldn’t be esoteric or overly-intellectualized; it should move anyone who picks it up, regardless of background.

That passion for creative universality keeps me aligned with the creative side of business, like professional communication or using data for deeper storytelling. I try to use writing as a bridge, so I’m in my happy place when I’m working on creative / communications-based projects.

Where do you hope to grow next?

There are a few different paths to take. Typically, CSMs are coached to be the next level of CSM: a senior CSM, enterprise CSM, or an eventual manager.

These would be great opportunities for me, but I’m also intrigued by customer marketing, where teams are now focusing on meaningful communication to existing customers (not just prospects). Existing customers can make up 80% of your company’s revenue over time; as a company, you can drive value on an individual level with Customer Success, but you also need to scale storytelling and adoption through communication with a clear call to action. Scaled storytelling seems like a huge win-win as vendors and customers continue to grow rapidly.

Whatever your passion or superpower is, that will be the value you bring to the team.

Where will Customer Success grow?

I went to a panel recently called How Customer Success will Affect the Future of Business, by two professors in an MBA program. They’ve started incorporating Customer Success topics into their coursework, creating a whole curriculum to drive learning and exposure. That’s so hard, because there are no textbooks and no benchmarks for the Customer Success field. I found it inspiring that they’re thinking about Customer Success academically, preparing students for that in advance. It’s really important to give students something valuable they can take with them into the business world when they graduate, and Customer Success skills are broadly applicable to almost any role.

Professionally, I see Customer Success becoming more consultative, and competitive.

Consultative, because as time goes on, people are reframing this role from being an account manager who comes in at renewal time, to being a meaningful partner who is focused on outcomes AND relationships. As much as you connect with your customers, you also have to deliver on their investment. You have to actively cultivate the insight and influence to do that.

Competitive, because companies are recognizing how important recurring revenue is, which means the expectations of a CSM are higher. It won’t be enough to just check in or have “good” calls; the need for analytical, communicative, and influential CSMs is now heightened. With artificial intelligence in the mix, I anticipate more of the administrative tasks in account management becoming automated, which will just reinforce how much of your value will have to come from the meaning and execution you bring to the table.

What’s an unexpected perk about your role?

We talk a lot about gender disparity in tech, but being in a relationship-driven field means I’ve had the chance to be around a lot of powerful female leaders. When I look back on my career, I owe a lot of my opportunities to amazing women who have taught me confidence, bravery, and vision. I’m so lucky to work in a field and company that prioritizes female leadership, when that’s not always the case in the tech space.

What Do You Do Again?

I drive relationships with results.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.