Essential Roles of a Customer Success Manager

Customer success managers are the secret sauce behind many of today's successful SaaS businesses. They are the glue that holds together a company's customer service, marketing, and sales teams—ensuring that your clients get the most out of their purchases and stay loyal to your brand.
 
But what exactly does a customer success professional do to achieve all this? What roles do they play in a typical SaaS business model? And how do you find the right one for your company? In this article, we'll explore the answers to these questions and more!

What Is a Customer Success Manager?

Customer success managers (CSMs) are a growing breed of professionals who help companies keep their customers happy. Their responsibilities include relationship management and customer education, with the aim of improving retention rates and driving more sales.
 
CSMs are essential in establishing, maintaining, and growing your customer base. As technology becomes more sophisticated, so do your customers' needs. CSMs help you meet those needs by offering customer support tailored to each customer's unique requirements.

The Difference Between Customer Success and Customer Support

Customer success and customer support are often used interchangeably, but they're not the same thing. Customer support is about solving customers' issues with their products, services, or experience with your company. It can also be referred to as customer service or technical support.
 
On the other hand, the CSM job description focuses on helping customers use your product in the best way possible so that they get value out of it and have a positive experience with your company. They play a more preventative role and help customers before they have a problem. This can include educating them on how to use your product or service, providing valuable resources, and answering questions about items unrelated to customer support.

Responsibilities of a Customer Success Manager

Customer success professionals are key to the success of your business. To understand what they do, we must look at how they came into existence.
 
In the past, customers were just happy to get the product or service they wanted. They didn't care if it was from you or someone else. But then companies started realizing that customer loyalty is more than just a good feeling—it's an asset that can be harnessed and turned into profits!
 
It became clear that winning over customers wasn't enough; you also had to keep them coming back for more. And that's where the customer success role comes in: CSMs help businesses retain their clients by working with them on an ongoing basis, providing guidance and support along the way.

Advocate for The Company

A good customer success manager is, first and foremost, a customer advocate—meaning they advocate for the customer, not just the product or service being sold.
 
To do this, CSMs need to have genuine empathy for their customers. They need to listen carefully and ask questions before jumping into problem-solving mode. This helps build a lasting relationship with your business and makes customers feel heard and valued—increasing the likelihood that they'll continue to use your product or service.

Onboarding New Customers

A crucial part of a CSM's role is to help new customers become familiar with the company's product. This means walking them through the customer onboarding process so that they understand how everything works once they sign up.
 
For instance, when sending a welcome email to new customers, including links to common features and how they work is an effective way of introducing them to essential information.
 
CSMs also schedule time with each customer during their first week of using the product so that they have an opportunity to ask any questions they might have.

Building Strong Customer Relationships

In addition to helping new customers get up and running, CSMs are responsible for building solid relationships with the people they interact with.
 
This often means going above and beyond what's required to ensure customers have a positive experience using your product. They can do this by responding quickly to followup emails and phone calls, as well as following up after every conversation.
 
CSMs should also work towards building relationships between customers and support staff, making it easier for users to get assistance with small or short-term issues.

Reduce Churn Rate

One of a CSM's most important and bottom-line impacting responsibilities is to reduce churn. This means helping customers understand why they should stay with your company, as well as what value they're receiving from the relationship. It's also crucial for CSMs to spot signs that customers are unhappy with their current service or product and act on them quickly before they leave.

Upselling and Cross-selling

While some companies might think of upsells and cross-sells as strategies that are best left to sales reps, it's essential for CSMs to understand how these tactics can benefit their organization.
 
CSMs should be able to identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling, such as when a customer calls in to cancel their subscription over pricing issues but is still on the line with the support team. This is an ideal chance for CSMs to learn more about the customer's experience and find out if there are any products or services that they could be interested in.
 
Similarly, cross-selling can introduce new customers to related products or services, such as when a customer signs up for an email newsletter.

Collecting, Understanding, and Analyzing Feedback

CSMs are organized, observant, and detail-oriented—as they must collect, understand, and analyze customer feedback daily.
 
This data helps them identify areas for improvement and inform their strategies for handling customer complaints or questions about products or services. They also need to be able to use this information in order to address pain points and improve the customer experience overall.

Act as The Voice of The Customer

CSMs should be able to act as the voice of the customer, speaking on their behalf and representing them in all interactions with other employees and team members.
 
This includes presenting customer feedback in a way that makes it clear that it comes from real people; CSMs should avoid using impersonal language when talking about customers or using data about them that may seem cold or impersonal.

Key Customer Success Metrics

CSMs use a variety of metrics and dashboards to track their success in improving the customer journey. These metrics include both qualitative and quantitative customer data, as well as information about customer satisfaction, churn rate, revenue growth, and more.
Metrics such as:

• Customer satisfaction: Customer satisfaction is a key indicator of customer success because it tells how customers feel about their experience with your company. You can use surveys, interviews, and other tools to measure customer satisfaction and identify areas where they are unsatisfied.
  
  
• Customer acquisition rate: Your customer acquisition rate is the monthly number of new customers you attract. This metric can help you determine whether your marketing campaign is working and if it's worth continuing to spend money on it.
  
  
• Churn rate: Your churn rate measures the percentage of customers who cancel their renewals or leave your company each month or year. It's essential to track this metric so that you can identify trends in customer behavior that may indicate trouble ahead.
  
  
• Customer retention rate: This metric observes the percentage of customers who stay with your company for a specified period of time. You can use this data to determine whether your campaigns are increasing customer retention and helping you retain more customers over time.

With these and other metrics, CSMs can get a clearer picture of where they should focus their efforts, as well as identify future marketing initiatives and expansion opportunities.

Customer Success Manager Skills and Qualifications

Ultimately, the customer success manager role helps customers get the most value from a product or service. They do this by working with customers before, during, and after they purchase your product.
 
The best client success managers (and those with the highest salary) possess both hard and soft skills that help them work closely with clients throughout the lifecycle of their relationships with your organization.
 
When considering this career path, CSMs should be excellent communicators, passionate about helping customers succeed, and have a knack for building authentic relationships. A marketing bachelor's degree or a sales or customer service representative background is especially valuable.
 
The job has its challenges—there are a lot of moving parts to keep track of! But if you've got someone on staff who can do it well, it will pay off in spades.