How to Become a Customer Success Manager: All You Need to Know

Nowadays, it seems that acquiring each new customer calls for celebration. Yet, their choosing you over competition is merely the beginning of a beautiful friendship, as retaining them is equally, or usually even more, difficult. 

Keeping customers engaged, well-educated, informed, and supported requires a team of people with the same goal – customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty. The person who keeps the machine running and is able to unify the sales and success teams is called a customer success manager. 

If you wish to know how to become a customer success manager and what job responsibilities the role includes, we recommend you stay with us as we will dive deep into the topic. 

What is a Customer Success Manager?

Although customer success is a relatively new trend, many SaaS companies invest in their CS efforts. 

A customer success manager (CSM) is a person responsible for ensuring that customers achieve their goals within your platform. The CSM’s role is to provide necessary support to help customers transition smoothly from the point of purchase to becoming active users. 

The primary goal of customer success managers in SaaS is to drive and improve customer retention and growth by building and nurturing strong relationships with customers. This is why it is crucial that customer success managers truly enjoy creating and maintaining customer relationships since the other scenario would do more harm than good.

What Does a Customer Success Manager Do?

Key customer success manager responsibilities include all the crucial aspects related to customer relationships and satisfaction in the realm of onboarding, customer support, advocacy, customer service, engagement, renewals, and more. Now, let’s list and explain each responsibility:

• Help with the onboarding 
  • After the sales team has successfully finished their jobs, customer success managers take over and help with onboarding. It is their goal to help them get started as soon as possible and monitor their satisfaction level as they go. 
• Building strong customer relationships 
  • A customer success manager is like a mentor to a customer. They become the first point of contact within the company and help them navigate through the complex world of new software. One of the surest ways to get to know your customer base to the core is to perform customer segmentation. With customer success platforms like Akita, you can do that much more rapidly and easily. Akita serves as a hub for all your customer data,  where you can set automated triggers for at-risk customers and successfully predict and prevent churn. It is easily integrated with over 100 leading SaaS applications, comes with advanced health scoring options, allowing you to automate your customer success workflows to free up time for more important tasks. 
• Ensuring customers get rapid time-to-value 
  • That “aha” moment when customers realize why they chose you over the competition should come as close to the start of the customer journey as possible. CSM should ensure that the gap between the initial sign-up and the customer’s first milestone and success is as small as possible. If the customer doesn’t learn how to use the platform in the shortest time, there is a chance they will lose interest and churn. Customer success managers must guide them through the process, making sure they are not left in the dark. 
• Keeping customers engaged and monitoring engagement
  • One of the key customer success manager job descriptions is to check in with the customers to make sure they are using the product and getting value from it. Monitoring customer usage and engagement gives the necessary proof. 
• Identifying upselling opportunities
  • Based on the customer data, CSM can identify the customers who might respond positively to upselling opportunities. 
• Building customer loyalty
  • Improving customer retention and reducing churn are essential for SaaS, and this is where client success managers must truly shine. They must earn customer trust and loyalty by building meaningful relationships with them and providing ongoing assistance and support to customers, helping them achieve their goals and troubleshooting issues. 
• Being customer’s advocate
  • The customer success manager is a link between the customer and the company and should always be advocating for customer needs and feedback within the organization. 
• Managing the renewal process
  • CSM makes sure that the customer contracts are renewed on time and that the renewal process passes as smoothly as possible for both parties.
• Tracking and analyzing key customer success metrics and KPIs
  • Managers must stay familiar with the metrics and KPIs to be able to introduce any necessary modifications into the current CS strategies and plans. Metrics like customer churn rate, renewal rate, Net Promoter Score, Monthly Recurring Revenue, and others should be assessed and analyzed as frequently as possible. 
• Customer success manager qualifications
  • Besides adequate education in the fields of business, marketing, communication, and similar, previous experience in project management, sales, or account management is often required. CSM should have strong communication skills and customer focus, as well as excellent problem-solving and technical skills. 
  • A customer success position requires that a given person can collaborate effectively with multiple teams, from sales and marketing to product development. Finally, organizational skills are a must and the ability to adapt to changing dynamics is also desirable. 

How to Get Into Customer Success?

Getting into customer success requires a unique combination of skills, experience, knowledge, and a customer-centric approach. 

First, take some time to truly understand the role. Read through the key responsibilities and qualifications we mentioned before, and see where you stand. 

Customer success requires strong communication and problem-solving skills, but maybe even more importantly, it requires superb interpersonal skills. CS managers should identify potential issues even before they arise, but they should also keep in touch with customers and nurture the relationship constantly. 

If you need more experience, look for opportunities in customer service, sales, marketing, customer support, or account management. These positions can help you gain the knowledge and skills needed for customer success roles. Understand the industry you wish to work in, and network with professionals in the CS field to gain valuable insights into the industry and job opportunities. 

Always look for educational and training resource opportunities. A lot of good ones can be found online! Finally, when you feel ready to apply for customer success roles, just do it! Like any other dynamic field, customer success requires continuous growth and training, so never miss a chance to learn new skills and improve the old ones. 

How to Be a Customer Success Manager?

If you wish to learn how to become a customer success manager, you probably already have sufficient education and, hopefully, experience. 

One of the essential things that can help you get into the customer success world quickly is networking. Get to know the people from CS, ask them about the industry, listen to them carefully, and never miss a chance to promote yourself and show how interested you are. 

One good piece of advice is to familiarize yourself with customer relationship management software (CRM) even before you start working in the customer success department. Also, never forget that you are the connection between the company and the client, so make sure that each of your actions brings benefits to both sides. 

Conclusion

Becoming a customer success manager requires a combination of skills and experience, but above all, it demands patience. Develop customer-centered skills, gain the necessary industry knowledge, and network with professionals in the CS field, and you are surely one step closer to learning how to become a customer success manager and eventually becoming one. 

Take time to learn about the CS tools that you can benefit the most from, like Akita and CRM software. The more you know before you enter the game, the greater the possibility of success!