Customer Success Manager

The Customer Success Manager is responsible for proactively and prescriptively driving customer post sale activities to ensure customers receive maximum value from their purchases. This role orchestrates an organization’s capability to deliver an appropriate and integrated customer experience and executes programs to drive adoption and positive business outcomes, ensuring retention, creating the conditions for expansion, and enabling customer loyalty. The Customer Success Manager leverages account intelligence to drive best practices throughout the customer lifecycle.

Roles/Responsibilities

• Drive customer adoption and success within the existing install base (can be within a defined geographic region and/or set of customers)
• Understand a customer’s overall use of the organization’s products, services, education, and support services
• Capture a customer’s business priorities, overall technology landscape, and organization to drive positive business outcomes through joint customer success plans
• Establish strong relationships with decision-makers, influencers, and key stakeholders within assigned accounts, engaging them with the right programs and people in the organization
• Act as an internal advocate between customers and business functions (e.g., customer support, professional services, education) to ensure the appropriate resources are engaged to address specific obstacles impeding product/service adoption
• Provide proactive onboarding support to ensure a positive customer experience and expedite time to first value with a new product or solution
• Identify customer case studies and recruit potential advocates to serve as references, and facilitate introductions to the appropriate program team
• Leverage customer health data to identify expansion opportunities, churn risks, and impacts on outcomes achievement and value realization
• Drive renewal readiness efforts and align account teams by documenting licensed technology; executive sponsors, champions, and/or retention group members; outcomes achievement; usage status; and adoption
• Forecast renewals, identify risk, and maintain a strong customer renewal rate in partnership with the account team
• Understand and document the adoption and relevance of all licensed products or services for assigned accounts through customer success platforms and/or sales account management software; ensure internal stakeholders are aware of any limitations to adoption or risks to renewal
• Coordinate adoption-enhancing activities to mitigate any identified risk
• Build and maintain strong working relationships with colleagues in sales, customer marketing, services, support, operations, product development, and product marketing to cultivate cooperation in customer activities

Success Metrics

• Customer outcomes achievement
• Customer retention rate
• Customer churn rate
• Expansion opportunities
• Development of customer advocates and/or references
• Multithreaded account profiles
• Customer value attainment
• Customer health

Education

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent is required
• Master’s degree/MBA or equivalent is a plus

Background/Experience

• Three to five years of experience in customer success, account management, sales, service/support, or a related area in the same industry or a similar/adjacent industry
• Experience in managing a book of customer relationships with proven ability to drive alignment within customer environments at executive and functional levels
• Management and achievement of retention, growth, and profitability goals
• Experience in driving customers toward achievement of desired business outcomes
• Experience in building collaborative relationships internally across sales, marketing, product, and support to facilitate a seamless customer experience

Competencies

Skills

• Ability to communicate effectively at all levels — including senior management and technical personnel
• Ability to work within a fast-paced and dynamic environment
• Ability to multitask and stay organized
• Proven time-management skills
• Proven customer-relationship skills
• Demonstrated strong communication, collaboration, and presentation skills
• Ability to be agile and manage change
• Demonstrated proficiency in Microsoft 365, relevant SFA systems, and customer success technologies
• Demonstrated consultative skills
• Strong analytical skills
• Ability to manage and coordinate escalations

Behaviors

• Collaborative
• Customer-centric orientation
• Cross-functional leader
• Strong decision-maker
• Desire to design and improve processes
• Data and insights driven
• Goal oriented
• Empathetic
• Clear communicator
• High level of intellectual curiosity
• Comfortable working under tight deadlines
• Able to solve problems and meet goals in creative ways — sometimes with limited resources
• Able to identify and leverage resources outside the direct reporting structure

Knowledge

• The organization, its product/solution offerings, and its value proposition
• Key industries and market segments
• Customer lifecycle methodology and key processes
• Customer account buying and retention roles and personas
• Customer success technologies, platforms, and tools
• Customer success metrics