Drawing the line between Professional Services and Technical Customer Success Management

dsquires4406

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 enough to have this happen?

Michelle Wideman

Hi @dsquires4406, do you have an internal chart that defines what PSO provides vs. T-CSMs?  I find that's typically a missing component in a lot of companies or if they do have it, they need to continually do enablement around it, for think of the dynamic of Success people they want to help and I believe have a harder time saying No.  If these things exist and it's still occurring, do you know "why" it's still occurring? Ex:  it's hard to position buying PSO when a customer is on fire.   And have you done enablement/role playing with your team to educate them on how to position PSO in heated conversations.  Or even have a rainy day fund to leverage PSO resources for free, customer sees how incredible you are and they buy more once they've realized the value.  

Also, if you have these things internally, do you use them in onboarding as well, so you're setting proper expectations with your customers.  Ex:  Have a slide in onboarding that outlines the role of:  Success, Support(level someone bought), PSO.  It also sets the stage for incremental earlier on in the sale process.  Ex-you bought implementation services which is great for where you are now, but we also have advisory services, health check services, architecture/growth services, etc, etc.  

Lastly, do your T-CSMs even realize they are negatively affectively revenue?  Seems like a good enablement opportunity to go back to them and say, "Did you realize in this convo you did x, y, z, and the impact it had.  Next time how would you feel positioning it this way...."