-
Now Open - Job Board Community
Hi GGR Members! The number one request that we receive at GGR is around helping CS Leaders fill open positions on their teams. We've kept this at arm's length because there are already job boards galore out there. Honestly, I thought we could avoid this forever – but this community is here to provide value to YOU. So, here…
-
How's everyone enjoying their experience with Gain Grow Retain?
Good Morning - How's everyone enjoying their experience with Gain Grow Retain? The content. The group. The site. Anything we can do to keep you folks here for years? Drop us a line below.
-
Do You Map Competencies or Skills for All the Roles in Your CS Org?
I'm really curious to hear from folks whether they map out the competencies or skills for all the roles in their orgs. I know this is a common practice in Sales but I've seen it less frequently in Customer Success.
-
Types of CSM?
I recently discovered about Enterprise CSMs and while I am still a little unclear about how that role differs from your normal CSM, I was curious about how many other types of Customer Success Managers there are?
-
Levels & Progression of CSMs
One area of thinking for me in the 2nd half of the year is how we structure our CSM team in terms of seniority and the relevant career progress within role. I am thinking: * Entry/junior : Customer Success Manager * Mid : Senior Customer Success Manager * Experienced : Customer Success Director What does everyone else do…
-
Sharing Reference Contact Info w/ Sales
Hello, I've been putting new processes into place for our company's reference program and we're getting some pushback from the sales department. I'd really love to hear feedback from this community on best practices for sharing our reference contact information with the sales department. Our current process has sales…
-
Focused Strategic (1:1 to 1:3) CSM Value
I've been thinking a lot about how an extremely focused resource (1:1 to 1:3) could help our largest, most strategic customers achieve their goals and become stickier. Has anyone worked with a model like this? What are your thoughts? I would also love to see any job descriptions for roles like this. I've done some online…
-
First month in new job
I am excited to be starting a new job at a company in a few weeks. I will be overseeing the post sales team and inheriting about 8 people. This is across customer service, onboarding, training, and CSMs. What do you think I should make sure to accomplish in the first week? First month? Learning will of course be a major…
-
Drawing the line between Professional Services and Technical Customer Success Management
We have had customers want to retract their PS services because of the technical knowledge and support their T-CSMs can provide. How should technical CSM teams handle the boundaries between Professional Services and CSMs? What is the best way to ensure our T-CSMs aren't negatively affecting revenue if they are technical…
-
Interviewing for CSM's: Presentation Required?
What is current thinking around requiring a preso when interviewing for a standard Customer Success Manager? I'd love to hear POV's from hiring managers, recruiters and also from the other side. When has a preso been helpful in deciding on a candidate? When has it been helpful AS a candidate? Thanks GGR community!
-
Career transition
Hi ! I am new to the Gain. Grow. Retain platform. I am current an Assistant Vice President at an investment bank and previously in consulting at KPMG. I am looking to transition into customer success and would love to network and learn from all of you.
-
Customer Communication Positioning - Moving from Assigned CSM to Pooled CS Model
A portion of our business is moving from an assigned CSM to a pooled CS model. I'm curious to hear from others that have gone through the process and what the communication was to customers regarding the move. If you have examples of messaging that worked and ones that didn't, I would appreciate the help.
-
Individual Contributor or Leadership Career Path?
Hi GGR community! As a CSM, I've been an IC for the my entire career in Customer Success. As I am looking to progress in my career, I am debating what path I want to go through. I love helping others achieve their goals and coaching them towards those positive outcomes, both customers and my team whenever I have the…
-
Advice for Service-focused CS department
Hi all, Great to be part of this community. I'm looking for some advice/general understanding from anyone who has worked in a CS department that sits in a service-focused company as opposed to a product-focused company? It'd be useful to know the extent to which you've gotten involved in delivering the service (again, as…
-
Comp/Bonus Plan for Upsells/Cross-Sells in a non-Saas Company
Hi I am happy to have this network to lean on. I manage a Client Service team at a programmatic agency. We manage digital campaigns not a SaaS product or software. I am trying to craft a comp plan for the team that will reward them for upsells. Currently, there is nothing in place as CS is a new department for the org. CS…
-
POLL: Where should customer success live within a SaaS based company?
I posted this poll on LinkedIn and have seen a wide array of opinions. I would like to gather more data and was wondering if my CS peeps here can help. since there is no Poll format here, I just put the options with numbers. Just comment with the number and if you want to add a comment feel free to do so. The discussion is…
-
Looking for Examples/Templates of CS Team Playbooks, Engagement Model documentation, and Accountabil
We've got a CS Leader who's in the midst of building much of customer success from scratch. Looking to leverage this community to see if there are tools and templates that can be useful as this leader gets started on their way. So Community. What do we have that we can share?
-
CS Operations Compensation Structure
Hi All - I'm working on a compensation structure for a CS Operations & Strategy position and I'm interested to hear about some structures others have used in the past. Was there a portion of variable compensation that was tied to Strategic OKRs or is the industry standard to be salary only?
-
GGR Office Hours Topic: CS Team Supporting Multiple Product Lines
Would love to hear from companies that have a single CS team supporting multiple product lines and how you define engagement model across areas of the product.
-
How To Find A Mentor
Hi all! I am new to the platform and was told to join the community by a fellow CX individual. After reading many articles and books on CS ( I have been in it for about 3 years now ) I keep reading and hearing about the importance of mentors, but not how to get them. Any suggestions?
-
What separates Partner Success from traditional Customer Success?
Hi everyone, At CloudHealth, we have two routes to market, Direct and Partner (mostly focused on MSPs). My team and I have had tremendous success investing early in Partner Customer Success, making it a separate team under the larger CS organization. For us, Partner CS is the Partner enablement (technically and…
-
Seeking input on using CSAT to evaluate onboarding team as part of bonus
Hello. We are looking to include the post-onboarding CSAT score as part of the onboarding team's bonus calculation. I want to make sure that the questions we ask give us an read on the onboarding manager's performance as well as the company's overall performance with onboarding new clients. Given this, what (quantitative)…
-
Customer Success Managers negotiating contract pricing
I feel like this topic may have been touched upon earlier but I can't find the exact thread I am looking for (maybe I am wrong and it hasn't) - so I apologize if this is a repeat. I am wondering how others handle contract negotiations. Not upsells or starting the discussion about the contract renewal, but rather…
-
First Time CSM
Hey GGR community, I'd love some advice! I discovered customer success a few months ago and I've been avidly researching it ever since. I've worked as a 911 Dispatcher for the last few years but customer success ignited a passion in me that I didn't know I had. I'm so excited to say that I just accepted a CSM position and…
-
Does anyone have Value Consulting as part of their CS delivery model?
I would like to build out a framework for: Value Consultant- at an exec level to define the plan & value across the organization CSM - Deliver and Mange plan Has anyone done this? Was it successful? How did the Consultant and CSM work together to define roles and handoffs?
-
Strategic Advisory Team for Expansion and Retention
Hi All, I'm researching in-house Strategic Advisory teams within our organization. To be clear, these are not product advisors rather people that have worked in the industry that we sell to - i.e. customers. The reason behind this is that although we have brilliant CSMs, they are not from our customer base and therefore…
-
CS - Revenue or Operations?
I had an interesting conversation with my CEO last week and have been thinking about this a lot. He asked me - long term do you see customer success living under Revenue or Operations? CS for us is onboarding, training, CSMs, customer service, etc. all living under the CS umbrella. We own renewals, upsells, downgrades, and…
-
Hybrid Marketing & CX Role?
Hi All - We're a smaller team (currently 3 CSMs, myself included). As things stand today, our CSMs are directly assigned to accounts in a pretty dedicated and traditional fashion (~75+ accounts per CSM). We focus mostly on SMBs giving us a high number of customers making it not scalable to have a dedicated CSM for all…
-
CSM vs TAM
I thought this question had been asked already but I can't find it. What are the main differences between a CSM and TAM? I have a meeting monday with my manager to discuss my professional development plan. Currently working as a CSM, but part of a new team that is just getting organized. There are parts of the job I really…
-
Hoping to connect with people in CX roles
Happy Wednesday everyone. I'm hoping to conduct a couple of 20-30 minute informational interviews with people who have held senior Customer Experience roles - current or previous experience - for an internal project I am working on. A big thank you in advance! simon@campminder.com
-
Looking to transition into Customer Success Operations
Good morning! I'm looking to take the next step in my career and pursue Customer Success Operations roles. I've been trying to do some research on other folks currently in this type of role and what I'm finding is having experience with CRM tool sets like Salesforce, Gainsight, etc. An obstacle I'm running into is my…
-
CS Ops Communication Cadence
Hi everyone, If you have a dedicated CS Ops function, what is your communication cadence with them? And vice versa - if you are in a CS Ops function how (what channels and how frequently) do you communicate with the CS Leadership and CS teams? We've established CS Ops (1 analyst - me) this summer and are struggling to find…