Customer success manager

What is a customer success manager?

A customer success manager is a person that makes sure the customers remain with the company by continuously providing value. This job position comes after the post-sale phase. The client success manager is a relatively new job position and is mainly known in SaaS companies. Moreover, the managers usually provide technical support for improved customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty.

What is customer success?

“Customer success is the business method ensuring customers achieve success, their desired outcomes while using your product or service.”

What does a customer success manager do?

The responsibilities of a CSM greatly vary based on the company. However, this position is predominantly in SaaS business, so here are a few key responsibilities;

• Develop a strategy for customer retention
• Improve customer satisfaction daily
• Provide technical support (handle escalations)
• Evaluate customer complaints to improve CX
• Provide product demos 
• Promote up-selling services/campaigns
• Prevent high churn

4 Tips to hire the Best Customer Success Manager

If you are looking for a client success manager, there are certain things to consider before opening a customer success manager job. As with other job positions, this should be also evaluated closely. If not, it can be a costly mistake.

Since the candidates applying for the job are usually really charismatic people, you might be prone to hire them immediately. Why charismatic? Well, they are trying to fill in the position, which deals with customer relationships, so the ability to influence people can come naturally to them.

However, even though this natural ability is great to have, you should consider other aspects. Here are our 4 tips on how to fill the customer success manager job in the best way.

1. Internal or external customer success manager?

Before you open a position for a customer success manager job, look around in your company. Many dedicated, hard-working customer service/support employees might be just the right candidates for this position. In the end, the employee who already knows the company culture, product/service, and has the right skills is the best choice. Thus, look inside your company before you hire external people.

2. Company culture

If you do not manage to find an already working employee to fill in the customer success manager job, make sure the potential employee aligns with your company culture. Therefore, write down at least 3 key principles of your company culture, which you’ll look out for in a potential candidate. For instance, the customer success manager has to be: assertive, driven, and curious to learn.

3. Customer success manager skills

Searching for a customer success manager can seem like a difficult task at first. Since this is a relatively new position on the market, here are must-have customer success manager skills that can ease the process:

• Exceptional communication and social skills
• Previous experience in customer service/sales/support
• Curiosity and willingness to learn 
• Organizational skills
• Team player
• MS Office proficiency
• Analytical thinking

4. Be open-minded

Our last tip is to stay open-minded. As much as the customer success manager’s job experience is valued more, do not eliminate the candidates only based on this fact. Plenty of candidates with the right skills and mindset can surprise you on how much they can learn in a short period since they are driven and fit your company culture. Look at the candidates globally and try to remove all the potential biases.

How can help desk software make you a better customer success manager?

Reaching out to customers as well as figuring out strategies for customer loyalty is a daily routine. So, how does help desk software help a customer success manager? First of all, let’s address what help desk software/ customer success software is. Help desk software is a system that unifies all your customer communication in one platform/interface.

This multichannel solution combines Live Chat, Email, Calls, Customer portal, SoMe, and more. Moreover, it provides you with in-depth customer service reports and tools, which can help your company provide the best customer service possible.

Help desk Features that help Client Success Managers:

Automated ticket distribution

Automated ticket distribution is a feature that enables client success managers to set a preferred way of customer inquiry distribution between agents.

SLAs

Setting up SLAs ensures that the customer reps provide quality customer service. How? Well, for instance, as a customer success manager, you can set first-time responses to improve satisfaction.

Time Rules

Time Rules can prevent customer frustration. You won’t forget about the customer inquiries and will respond on time.

Email Templates

Email templates are a great addition to any customer service help desk. It can ensure that even new-hires professionally represent the company. Thus, the customer success manager can improve the CX by providing quality customer service.

CRM

Having a centralized CRM can help your agents promptly retrieve customer information to assist efficiently and effectively.

Canned responses

If you are struggling to improve the response time to improve customer satisfaction, then canned replies will save your customer success team. These pre-made responses can save your agents a lot of time, especially when dealing with a repetitive inquiry. Don’t worry you can still customize the message before replying to provide a personal experience.

Split tickets

A Split ticket helps your agents work more efficiently. Let’s take a look at an example. The customer inquiry is about 2 issues. In LiveAgent, you can easily split the ticket in the software and provide the help promptly.

Ticket history

Ticket history is a previous customer communication history. As a result, you can view all the necessary details about past customer inquiries, which enhances the overall customer experience.

Want to learn more? Discover all LiveAgent Features.

Business benefits:

• Improved CX
• Increased sales
• Better customer satisfaction
• Effective customer service agents