Organization Structure & Career Path

Archives for October 2020

CSM Career
CSM Career
Hi All. Just joined the community. I attended a Meet up for CSM the other night and they recommended I get involved with this community. I am looking to get into Customer Success Management and to that end my resume is attached. I have years of customer facing experience in IT and SaaS and leading teams, and this seems…
How do you define the differences between Associate/CSM/Senior?
Hi Leaders, I'd love to crowdsource some ideas, in particular actual examples and descriptions, of how you define your CSM levels? I.e. if you've got Associate CSM, Customer Success Manager, and Senior CSM, what categories do you use to delineate the three? For example, Gitlab has L&D and Performance goals to level up from…
Incentives for clients to complete the training and other critical onboarding activities at the user
From our CS Leadership Office Hours... Incentives for clients to complete the training and other critical onboarding activities at the user level @Bertil Weil @Shane Correa @Devon Lee @Shari Srebnick
How do you calculate CTR (Cost to Retain) & margin on low touch segments?
From our CS Leadership Office Hours today... How do you calculate CTR (Cost to Retain) & margin on low touch segments? @Andrew Marks @Paddy Carr @Andreas Knoefel @Ed Powers @David Jackson @David Ellin @Bertil Weil
Setting SLA's (CSM or only Support Teams)?
This is a follow up on @Bridget Lamb recent post (Responding to Support Tickets) We have a defined SLA's and UpTime currently in our contracts, but how the team works to those SLA's is still in the air. I have a few questions to see what others think. 1) Should SLA's vary based on contract size? 2) Has anyone spelled out…
Owning customer communications
In a world where CS owns adoption and AM's own upsell& renewals, how do you manage the who owns the customer relationship communication? I have seen the tug of war between the AM and CS for a long time and wondered if anyone ever cracked the code. With aggressive upsell and annual renewals there is no way an AM can take a…
1:many job description
There have been a number of folks we've talked with recently who are trying to develop the "1:many" job description. The role that is part CSM, part marketer, part business analyst, part program manager. I wanted to get this into the community to see if there are any job description examples that we could share to help.
Scaling Customer Success
I am currently in the process of a Customer Success and Customer Support reset project. Our products are complex, highly configurable, have a 12-24 month sales cycle and we have an average 2.6-year contract length. We have 10 CSMs globally and a small customer marketing team. While we sell to MM, our focus is on…
Does anyone participate in a deal review process allowing "approval" of a good fit customer?
From our CS Leadership Office Hours... Does anyone participate in a deal review process allowing "approval" of a good fit customer?
Experienced consultant wanting to break into CSM!
Experienced consultant wanting to break into CSM!
Hi everybody, To introduce myself, I am Jen and I am eagerly looking to break into the MarTech SaaS industry, focused on Customer Success. I recently qualified as a certified Advanced Customer Success Professional with Gainsight, which I thoroughly enjoyed. My experience spans from founding and running my own marketing and…
What's your favorite CSM analogy?
How do you describe the CSM role? What analogies do you use? I had a brainstorm for a new analogy while working with a client yesterday and I thought you might like it: CSMs are like professional golf caddies. For those unfamiliar, professional golfers have very special relationships with their caddies. They are the unsung…
Tone of E mail Communication
"I do not appreciate the tone of this mail" Have you ever got such a message from any of your clients? If yes, then how did you react and closed this concern ? A genuine question for all the #CSMs there. I think many of us can relate to this #statement. Specially in today's time when we are not meeting each other and are…
Making the career move into Customer Success
Hey Everyone, Having been in the CS world for nearly 5 years in Australia, I was early in what is one of the fastest-growing roles in the Australian job market (if not the world). I have friends ask me all the time how they are best to make the move into Customer Success especially if you work in an industry that is not…
Responding to Support Tickets: Internal and Customer-Facing Processes
Hi everyone, I'm fairly new at a small technology company, serving as the Director of Customer Success. I've discovered a significant gap in our process for handling customer support tickets. I'd appreciate hearing how others manage the process from an internal perspective and from a customer-facing perspective. Here's the…
New Here....Let's give you a proper welcome
If you're new and want to introduce yourself, drop a quick comment on this thread. Tell us about yourself and what you're hoping to get out of the community. Thank you for being part of this growing community - we're thrilled to be on this journey with you! #Career
Governance of customer email communications
First of all, this is my first GGR post - so excited! Huge congrats to Jeff, Jay and others for building this forum. We've observed a great deal of confusion within companies about how to govern email communications. On one extreme, some might say "all communications go through Marketing," but that's fundamentally not…
Names for customer facing function
What do you call your customer facing function - ie: the function your CCO leads? I've heard Customer Success, Customers for Life, etc, but curious as to what you call it. The challenge we have is that our entire customer/post-sale function is called Customer Success and the team I lead (CSMs) is also called Customer…

Upcoming Events

Gain Grow Retain Live - Boston
GGR Live: Boston | Scaled Customer Success | June 7 Effective Strategies to Reduce Cost via Scaled Customer Success In a time where “doing more with less” is top of mind for leaders, come together with your peers to discuss effective strategies and best practices to scale and meet your organizational goals without…
June 8 Leadership Office Hours
When Thursday, June 8 11:00am - 12:00pm EST Who Customer Success Leaders who are building and scaling at B2B SaaS companies What * learn from each other in breakout room discussions * talk about Doing More with Less * sign up for specific dates or the whole series Expand your network and leave with one new idea to…
Gain Grow Retain Live - New York
THE VAULT: Secrets of CS Leaders "Doing the right things" Its a cliche as old as time — “doing more with less” — we'd rather think about it as "doing the right things". Every business is different and every customer success leader has different challenges - but do we really? Join us in THE VAULT for an evening where…
June 22 Leadership Office Hours
When Thursday, June 22 11:00am - 12:00pm EST Who Customer Success Leaders who are building and scaling at B2B SaaS companies What * learn from each other in breakout room discussions * talk about Doing More with Less * sign up for specific dates or the whole series Expand your network and leave with one new idea to…
July 6 Leadership Office Hours
When Thursday, July 6 11:00am - 12:00pm EST Who Customer Success Leaders who are building and scaling at B2B SaaS companies What * learn from each other in breakout room discussions * talk about Doing More with Less * sign up for specific dates or the whole series Expand your network and leave with one new idea to…

Organization Structure & Career Path

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