Career Ladder?

Tanya Strauss

CS Pros,

I searched the archives and didn't find anything on career ladders. I'm building this for my new team - does anyone have a cleansed template I could borrow (plagiarize?)?

Thanks so much!
Tanya

Chadd Rivera

Hi Tanya –

I think this answer depends on how your business is structured. For companies that segment their customer base into market sizes, I've seen the CS title ladder align with the market they support. The more senior people being Enterprise Customer Success Managers, supporting the larger/more strategic customers. At GYANT (my company), we aren't big enough to break out customers like that (yet). Our CS people support all segments. We structured ours as CSM, Senior CSM, and Lead CSM for individual contributors.

I hope that helps!

Chadd

Tine Van Dyck

Hi Chadd, 

I like this approach a lot. We also serve all segments, but with a different approach (high-touch vs low-touch). Especially when hiring more junior CSMs, it's a good idea to let them focus first on the smaller/more standard customers before throwing them into the deep with the larger/more complex customers. Thanks for the idea!

Tine

Tanya Strauss

Thanks Chadd! The project I'm working on is the competencies for each level (Associate CSM, CSM, Sr CSM, etc.). I've got some good material but would love to see how others structure. I think you're right that much of it depends on segmentation, but for the most part, the IC leveling should be similar across companies, much like how engineering competencies would be similar.

Tanya Strauss

I thought I'd follow up to my own post to share a great CSM career ladder I recently found. I hope it's valuable!