Customer Success Summit 2016 Breakout Session Presented by: Anjanette Hill-Mendoza, VP of Customer Success, Glassdoor

1. Customer Success
Managers: The Unicorns of
the Professional World

2. How did I get here?
• Anjanette Hill-Mendoza, Glassdoor
VP of Customer Success
• Almost 2 decades experience leading
Customer Success teams
• Multiple verticals, platforms, services, and
companies such as Cisco WebEx, Hightail,
Extole, and Advent Software
• Literally thousands of interviews with
candidates

3. to help people everywhere find
a job and company they love
Mission:

4. Reviews
Salaries
Benefits
“Exceptional benefits package”
Interviews
Photos
CEO Approval
+JOBS
Powerful Combination

5. We Are
• People First
• Passionate
• Humble
• Innovators
• Authentic
• Scrappy
• Integrity Based
• Respectful
• Collaborative
• Courageous
• Accountable
• Playing to Win!
• Sell-outs
• Superficial
• Arrogant
• Unimaginative
• Fake
• Bureaucratic
• Deceptive
• Mean
• Territorial
• Afraid
• Irresponsible
• Playing for second
We Are Not

6. We are a BYOD* culture
*Build
your
own
desk

7. It’s an employees’ market
>2000 CSM jobs posted on
Glassdoor right now

8. Our #1 Challenge

9. The easy answer
•Hire people with Customer Success
experience
•Who can deliver business value and
delight the customer

10. Don’t give up yet

11. The formula is actually that simple
Experience + Soft Skills =
Excellence in Customer Success

12. Experience aligned to purpose & goals
What purpose does Customer
Success serve in your
organization?

13. Determining purpose
• What is your company trying to do?
• What major problems are you facing as an org?
• What are your customers saying they need?
• What support do cross-functional teams need for customers’
success?
• Answers could be grow, nurture, retain, react…

14. The good news
• While supply hasn’t equaled demand and many years of
specific experience are hard to come by
• Aligning by purpose opens the door for other professionals to
dip their toes in Customer Success

15. Cross-functional integrations
Totango’s Customer Success Salary Survey & State of the
Profession
• 2013: No conversation re background of CSMs
• 2014: 17% Sales; 19% from Account Management and
Support Services
• 2015: 95% of CSMs responding came from other professions
and backgrounds

16. Imagination is more
important than knowledge.
- Albert Einstein

17. Areas with biggest impact
• Customer DNA at their core
• Alignment with your Company and Culture are essential
• Believe in and really care about the value you provide
to your customers
• Fit in to your company culture

18. Think functionality
• Actions taken to perform a task; transferred from job to
job
• Killer CSMs have:
• Amazing task and time management
• A+ organizational skills
• Excellent communication, listening, speaking, writing
• Innate ability to facilitate meetings and lead discussions
• Ability to analyze data, define, and execute a plan based on that
• Outstanding project manager
• Think and qualitatively and quantitatively

19. Hire on Personality too

20. Sorry, Elon’s already taken but…
• Entrepreneurial mindset
• Works super hard
• Love of and hunger for learning
• Sky is the limit - literally
• Invests in themselves
• Collaborative team player
• Excited and excitable
• Motivated, self-starter
• Non-political & thick-skinned
• Creative, doesn’t care about keeping up with trends

21. When all else fails

22. Use the Airplane Test Compliments Tom Gimbel, Founder &
CEO of LaSalle Networks

23. Would you want to spend 4
hours on a plane in coach
sitting beside this person?

24. Your unicorn is out there

25. Q&A

26. Interesting other topics:
Interview questions
Company culture
Employer branding
For more information see
Glassdoor.com