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TL;DR: Customer Success Managers (CSMs) guide customers from the sales process through ongoing support, building relationships and ensuring customers achieve their goals. They're crucial for retention and growth in subscription-based business models.
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Meet the new form of account management: customer success. As increasing proportions of business models move to subscription, companies need to provide ongoing support to customers to help them adapt and realize value. In fact, over 40% of high-tech companies now have CSMs.
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Customer success is all about building relationships and keeping your customers happy. In a 2019 survey conducted by LinkedIn, Customer Success was identified as the 2nd most promising job.
Most commonly seen in SaaS companies, customer success managers (CSMs) guide customers from the sales process to the support phase. They form direct, personal relationships with customers and ensure that everything runs smoothly after a purchase. CSMs answer any questions customers may have, provide the right tools, and work closely with customers to resolve any issues.
As the direct point-of-contact for customers, CSMs have an in-depth understanding of customers' needs and are responsible for communicating common customer behaviors to sales, marketing, and product teams. They ensure customers are receiving the tools and support they need to achieve their goals. CSMs are crucial to building trust with customers and retaining them over time.
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The Real Power of a Great CSM: The real power of a great CSM comes from their soft skills—empathy, communication, problem-solving, and relationship-building are more important than technical expertise.
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