CSM- Hourly

Jacqueline Murillo

Hey Community- I recently joined an org to lead their CSM team. The CSM team has operated as an onboarding/ service team and not a true model of what CSM in a tech org would look like. They are all hourly employees who keep their calendars super full. We are running into a huge hiccup that when the CSM is OOO for an emergency day, our clients are all abandoned that day and the earliest these can be rescheduled is usually 7 days later because of their schedule. This is not a good client experience and I can't wrap my mind around how to solve for this solution. They are currently each taking around 6-8 appointments varying between 30 mins to an hour. Does anyone have any suggestions that does not overload the team and still allow for those emergencies. (also in my first 2 weeks we have had emergencies 5 days) 

Jeffrey Kushmerek

wow- I have seen this before, but I had to convince the C-team the following:

- split CSM from onboard/implementation (2 different skill sets)
- don't have hourly employees
- Charge for implementation

There seems to be a deeper problem here- what are the emergencies? Is the product buggy? Are they not being set up correctly? 

Craig Jackson

Hi Jaqueline

It sounds like you have a really tough challenge on your hands. Not knowing a great deal about your company to me it seems that their is potentially a lack of sight or understanding to the role of your CSM's from your predecessor. I agree @Jeffrey Kushmerek and I would almost consider starting again to align the purpose of the team to the business goals. 

- Start with getting a clear picture of what good looks like, how does a great interaction look for both you and the customer? how do customers currently feel about the service and present back how that impacts churn. Are the emergency days company related or personal days?

- Separate onboarding from CSM - Naturally the team will be very close knit but onboarding is a transactional service and as such have 2 very different goals than a CSM who monitor continual customer health. 

- Remove the hourly employees - you currently run the risk of the employees focussing on their own needs of pay rather than seeing the customer become successful, you may also find that employees will be reluctant to resolve issues swiftly or efficiently through fear of efficiency reducing their pay. take away the issue of pay and your team will naturally become more innovative and bought in to change.