How to measure your success as a Customer Success Manager
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As CSMs, we can usually rattle off a number of metrics and statistics that we use to measure our customer's health and success -- but it gets a little less standardized when others ask us how we measure our own success. Renewals and churn are both important metrics to keep an eye on, but they're not the only ones. In this webinar, we’ve partnered with Sparkcentral to discuss: - The benefits of a top-down approach when re-evaluating CS team goals - The importance of CSAT metrics - Which KPIs to measure if Account Management and CS roles are combined - Which questions to ask yourself when exploring and assessing your team’s current KPIs and goals Join Krysta Gahagen and Julia Burnett, two Customer Success Managers from Sparkcentral, for the rundown of which KPIs are truly key for CSMs, and why.
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How to measure your success as a Customer Success Manager
- 1. How to measure your success as a Customer Success Manager @GetAmity #CSMSuccess How to measure your success as a Customer Success Manager Julia Burnett Customer Success Manager Krysta Gahagen Senior Customer Success Manager
- 2. How to measure your success as a Customer Success Manager @GetAmity #CSMSuccess Housekeeping! Get your tweet on and join the conversation #CSMSuccess @GetAmity @Sparkcentral We’ll send the recording Q&A at the end - ask them in the questions box! (If we run out of time, tweet or email us!)
- 3. How to measure your success as a Customer Success Manager @GetAmity #CSMSuccess How to measure your success as a Customer Success Manager Julia Burnett Customer Success Manager Krysta Gahagen Senior Customer Success Manager
- 4. The Sparkcentral Customer Engagement Platform enables you to exceed customer service expectations across any channel. Contextual interactions Optimized workflow Proactive engagement Channel agnostic engagement
- 5. Getting Started / Reevaluating KPI’s Ah- ha!!!
- 9. Top Down Approach Company Success Team Support CSM AM
- 10. Are there elements of community management, account management, or general support to be included in the Customer Success Manager's KPIs?
- 11. Customer Success Department Breakdown Account Management Customer Support Customer Success Revenue Account Maturation Renewal Product Usage
- 12. Should you use CSAT to help measure your goals?
- 13. CSAT Metrics
- 14. CSAT Metrics Begin with an onboarding survey
- 15. CSAT Metrics Begin with an onboarding survey Develop a regular cadence of surveying
- 16. CSAT Metrics Begin with an onboarding survey Develop a regular cadence of surveying Survey software users as well as stakeholders
- 17. CSAT Metrics Begin with an onboarding survey Develop a regular cadence of surveying Survey software users as well as stakeholders Track trends throughout the life of the customer
- 18. How does product usage play a part in customer happiness, and ultimately your goals as a CSM?
- 19. Usage ● Increase adoption of key features
- 20. Usage ● Increase adoption of key features ● Track usage trends and predict churn
- 21. Usage ● Increase adoption of key features ● Track usage trends and predict churn ● Increase renewals and expansions
- 22. Usage ● Increase adoption of key features ● Track usage trends and predict churn ● Increase renewals and expansions ● Provide invaluable insights to Product and Engineering
- 23. How are your goals and your customer’s goals related?
- 24. Customer goals are not (always) CSM goals Company Goals Company Goals CustomerGoals CustomerGoals Customer goals: ● Quickly respond to customers ● Optimize agent productivity ● Showcase team’s efforts ● Scale customer care efforts
- 25. Customer goals are not (always) CSM goals Company Goals Company Goals CustomerGoals CustomerGoals Customer goals: ● Quickly respond to customers ● Optimize agent productivity ● Showcase team’s efforts ● Scale customer care efforts CSM goals: ● Adoption ● Usage ● CSAT ● Growth
- 26. How do we hold CSMs accountable for nurturing their accounts and ongoing training?
- 27. Source: Totango 2016 Customer Success Salary Survey & State of the Profession Report Customer Success Teams Using a Customer Success Platform 2015: 25% of CSM teams 2016: 36% of CSM teams
- 28. Should we create metrics around customer advocacy -- their willingness to refer new businesses and/or participate in marketing efforts?
- 29. Example of Quarterly Customer Success Manager Goals Continuous Goals: 70% Training & Onboarding CSAT Onboarding Score of X Complete customer cycles on time Adoption: X-X% - # of seats/ # of actual users Usage: operational metrics, use of key functionality Quarterly Customer-Facing Objectives: 15% X strategic customer visits/ quarter X Quarterly Business Reviews Quarterly Growth Goals: 10% Number of case studies Number of beta launches Nurture Community (Customer Advisory Board, webinars, other forums) Personal Growth: 5% Learn a new skill
- 30. How to measure your success as a Customer Success Manager @GetAmity #CSMSuccess Q&A #CSMSuccess
- 31. How to measure your success as a Customer Success Manager @GetAmity #CSMSuccess Thank you to our presenters! Julia Burnett Customer Success Manager Krysta Gahagen Senior Customer Success Manager
- 32. How to measure your success as a Customer Success Manager @GetAmity #CSMSuccess Join our upcoming webinar on August 10 at 7am & 1pm ET: 10 Best Practices For Calculating Your Customer Health Scores
- 33. How to measure your success as a Customer Success Manager @GetAmity #CSMSuccess Thank you for being here! #CSMSuccess
Editor's Notes
- For those of you who are unfamiliar with us, Sparkcentral is an Enterprise Customer Engagement Platform. We help you connect with your customers on social and mobile channels to resolve their issues, have meaningful conversations, and deliver delightful experiences to each and every one at scale. We’ve had a customer success team for a few years at Sparkcentral - and boy has our team changed a bunch in the last year! We’ve quadrupled in size and now have a team made up of Customer Success Managers, Customer Support Managers, Account Managers, as well as a VP and Director.
- J: With our growth, and newly defined roles and shift in responsibilities came a bit of a challenge… How does a CSM, AM or anyone in our department know if they are successful? It’s an interesting question, and one that I think many Success Departments struggle with. I mean, how can you quantify a customer’s a-ha moment or big win? For our team, it took a bit of time and tinkering but I think we’ve finally have a great way of measuring success and setting goals. Our goal for this webinar is to share what’s worked for us as CSM’s and help you either get started measuring your goals or reevaluate ones that you currently have in place. We are going to go through some questions that were raised when we were setting our goals and explain how we tackled them. Then at the very end we will share a good example of CSM goals and have time for some Q&A. As you are listening, if you think of a question, or would like to revisit something we discussed, please just type your question or comment into the question box.
- Our very first question we came to was - where to start, which in all honesty can be a bit overwhelming.
- J: We decided to go with the top down approach. Whether you are just getting started or reevaluating your current goals, the top down approach is a wonderful way to make sure that your goals are aligned with your company’s direction and grand vision. Let me explain a bit how it works. In the top down approach you start with the Company’s goal. Company’s goals: might be to become profitable, or make X amount of dollars in revenue, maybe even be acquired. From there, you move down the Department Goals
- What can the departments do to help the company reach it’s goal? So if it is make X amount of dollars in revenue, the success department helps the company meet that goal by keeping the customers we have and reducing churn.
- Then how does each role play a part in the department goals… So how do support managers, customer success managers and account managers all help to keep the customers we have: CSM’s are responsible for/ should set their goals around Training & Onboarding: keeping their csat onboarding score high Continued Success: Csat score, complete # of strategic visits per quarter, complete customer cycles on time (there are certain steps we take in onboarding, 1st year, and beyond success cycles- so we measure what Post training csat score, X# of strategic customer visits every quarter (based on their success score, renewal, upcoming strategic projects) Usage - make sure customers are using key pieces of functionality correctly Advocacy - NPS Account Managers - renewals and upsells. Support Managers - response time, and other support specific metrics. The beauty about the top down approach is that every quarter, year as your company grows and priorities might shift, you will have a really easy way to recalibrate your goals as a CSM.
- K: *read question* We’re really lucky at Sparkcentral to have all three roles that sometimes unfortunately get condensed or distilled into one role. Some of our audience today has this team structure, so we want to make sure we address those other metrics! If you’re responsible for community management metrics, like community (online or otherwise) sentiment, customer discussions, or social media brand engagement, you might be on a marketing team or at a B2C company. But elements of community management come up a lot in customer success management. If you’re unsure, ask yourself - do you need to reserve a portion of your goals for community management or customer forum work? For most established customer success teams, you’re also going to see account management and customer support metrics appear when relevant. Each of these roles is integral to the customer’s continued success - we’re just lucky to have our nebulous customer success title, while account management and customer support are more traditional roles. Here’s how they’re all different, but important...
- K: Account Manager role included: Renewals Expansions/growth Partnership opportunities - marketing, amongst current customers Support Manager role included: Time to reply SLA CSAT for support interactions Updating support resources Strictly CSM Usage CSAT Adoption Wrap up for slide on surveying customers. At the root of this is the reason we all get out of bed in the morning - our customers. So enough about us for now… let’s talk about how they’re feeling...
- ABSOLUTELY! At the end of the day, as the Customer Success Manager you are directly responsible for your customer’s happiness and satisfaction.
- Whether you are a B2C or B2C company, the data that you can gather from measuring CSAT is invaluable.
- We recommend that you start sending out CSAT surveys as soon as our customer finishes training and onboarding. This score and feedback will give you insights into a couple of things. One, you will be able to see where you can personally improve your training technique. And two, it will allow you to correct or provide additional training or resources if there is an education gap.
- After the initial csat onboarding survey, you should develop a regular cadence of sending out surveys. This could be every 30, 60, 90 days etc. You want to find the perfect balance - so you can stay up-to-date on how your customer is feeling and at the same time not bombard them with survey after survey.
- J: Be sure to survey both users and stakeholders. You want to make sure that all folks who touch your product are having a positive experience. K: Stakeholders - have control over renewal, they should feel like they are getting money’s worth and that there is a strong business value in using your software. If you conduct a survey and have a low CSAT score with stakeholders, take action immediately. This is a huge red flag and should be addressed right away. As for users - never forget that the squeaky wheel gets the grease so if there are customers who are not feeling satisfied or who are frustrated, they could damage your relationship with your stakeholders. Delightful experiences lead to improved team member productivity, which helps your customer save money. Don’t freak out every time you receive a low CSAT with a non-stakeholding user, but do investigate as you’re able to understand if there is an easy way to increase CSAT here. In some cases, continuing education is a way to combat low CSAT. If you see many users from the same customer brand are submitting low CSAT responses, that can indicate a major workflow issue and an opportunity to impact satisfaction in a positive way as a customer success manager.
- K: You will also want to track CSAT over time. If a previously self-reported “satisfied” customer begins to submit diminished CSAT scores, you should know as a customer success manager. These numbers can do more than predict churn - they inform the company about the CSM’s effectiveness and can allow for course correction and workflow improvements. Which is why it’s important to include those in your goals.
- In addition to CSAT, how customers use and adopt your product is telling on how successful a CSM is at training and continuous education.
- Usage allows you to read between the lines. You will get insight into what your customer is actually doing VS what they tell you they are doing… This will allow you to: Increase adoption of key features Guide your customer on aspects of the product that might be missing out or under-utilizing. Do they need additional training?
- Track usage trends and predict churn Were your customers once using functionality that they are now not?
- Increase renewals and expansions Know when your customer is ready to grow with your product through understanding what they’re doing currently and where you can drive business value
- Provide product feedback That usage data is also invaluable for your product and engineering team. It can guide them in product development in everywhere from short term bug fixes to long term planning and design.
- K: *read question* As a customer success manager, your customer is your compass. If your customer is already doing a really great job, and they want a goal to be promoted. You could set a goal to get your customer promoted, and bake that into your metrics for the quarter. Does your customer need help with the basics? Make sure continued education is part of your quarterly objectives. Although customer goals are not always CSM goals, they can be a good indicator that you are meeting or excelling with your goals. You can use your customer’s goals as a guide when evaluating your own.
- K: Sparkcentral customers have goals that are related to social customer care. Here are examples of customer goals we hear from almost every team with which we work. A mistake teams often make when initially considering customer success manager goals is to lump them under customer goals. This is not effective because it only shows how well your customer is doing, not how well your customer success manager is doing. This limits potential career growth and does not help CSMs take ownership of their own work. As the account’s Customer Success Manager, your responsibility is to drive adoption and product usage - to become an integral part of your customer’s workflow, to improve their day-to-day experience, and to make their job easier (this is the goal of technology - its purpose is to enable, not complicate) If you have a strong grasp on what your customers see as success, you can take a step back and quantify how their goals play into yours. As a customer success manager, you have to translate these customer goals into CSM goals.
- K: If your customer is trained on the product, is using it, is satisfied, and is growing, you will have better odds at success. If they are lacking in one of these fundamental categories, they will fall short of their goals. At the end of the day, these metrics are not the same for every customer, but they are a great framework for every CSM. If a customer is experiencing issues reaching their goals, place a higher emphasis on that CSM goal or goals that have the most impact on helping your customer. While your goals are directly tied to your customer’s goals (if a customer feels they are unsuccessful, they are at a high risk of churning, which is the thing we want to prevent most as a customer success manager), your CSM goals must be tactical and informative to your own performance.
- K: Question: How do we hold CSM’s accountable for nurturing their accounts and ongoing training? In order to keep track of your efforts, monitor your customer’s health over time, and generally not go insane with the mountain of responsibilities we have as customer success managers, you will need to invest in software to stay organized. For teams just starting off, that could be as basic as a spreadsheet or product like Trello or Asana. More mature teams will require better metrics, more robust features, and a scalable product. We use a customer success software that allows us to keep track of each customer and where they are in their success cycle. We’ve defined what “happy” customers typically do within our platform, and have clear process for CSMs to follow to foster engagement, adoption, and growth.
- A report by Totango revealed that only 36% of customer success teams are using a customer success platform. While that’s a significant increase over 2015’s 25% of customer success teams, it’s still pretty low! If you’re not tracking your customer’s success, how can you track your own success?
- J: Some teams track the number of reviews or customer case studies they provide to marketing teams. This is usually a team-wide goal that each CSM plays into on a smaller scale. For instance, if a team handling 300 customers has a goal to get 25% of customers to write a positive review on a site like TrustRadius, CSMs might be responsible for getting a certain percentage of their customers to participate in some sort of customer advocacy - case studies, reviews etc. Or they might have individual numbers based on customer type or numbers of customers built into their quarterly goals. In addition to reviews, referrals, and case studies, you can also look at metrics like NPS here.
- J: Here is an example of how CSM goals can be outlined based on what we’ve covered today. An important thing to keep in mind is that each of these goals requires strategic thinking and a tactical approach. Don’t blindly throw metrics together and hope for the best. Take the time to carefully consider your areas of impact as a CSM and work from there. K: If you already have goals, we hope this has been informative and gives you a great place to start if you are reevaluating your current goals. If you are just starting out, best of luck and we hope this was helpful! We’re so excited for you! J: If you have any questions about customer success metrics or what we’re doing with Customer Success at Sparkcentral K: especially if you’re interested in applying for our open CSM role- yes we are hiring J: don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Twitter or LinkedIn!