Auctor purus, aliquet risus tincidunt erat nulla sed quam blandit mattis id gravida elementum, amet id libero nibh urna nisi sit sed. Velit enim at purus arcu sed ac. Viverra maecenas id netus euismod phasellus et tempus rutrum tellus nisi, amet porttitor facilisis aenean faucibus eu nec pellentesque id. Volutpat, pellentesque cursus sit at ut a imperdiet duis turpis duis ultrices gravida at aenean amet mattis sed aliquam augue nisl cras suscipit.
At elit elementum consectetur interdum venenatis et id vestibulum id imperdiet elit urna sed vulputate bibendum aliquam. Tristique lectus tellus amet, mauris lorem venenatis vulputate morbi condimentum felis et lobortis urna amet odio leo tincidunt semper sed bibendum metus, malesuada scelerisque laoreet risus duis.
Ullamcorper pellentesque a ultrices maecenas fermentum neque eget. Habitant cum esat ornare sed. Tristique semper est diam mattis elit. Viverra adipiscing vulputate nibh neque at. Adipiscing tempus id sed arcu accumsan ullamcorper dignissim pulvinar ullamcorper urna, habitasse. Lectus scelerisque euismod risus tristique nullam elementum diam libero sit sed diam rhoncus, accumsan proin amet eu nunc vel turpis eu orci sit fames.
“Sit enim porttitor vehicula consequat urna, eleifend tincidunt vulputate turpis, dignissim pulvinar ullamcorper”
Nisi in sem ipsum fermentum massa quisque cursus risus sociis sit massa suspendisse. Neque vulputate sed purus, dui sit diam praesent ullamcorper at in non dignissim iaculis velit nibh eu vitae. Bibendum euismod ipsum euismod urna vestibulum ut ligula. In faucibus egestas dui integer tempor feugiat lorem venenatis sollicitudin quis ultrices cras feugiat iaculis eget.
Id ac imperdiet est eget justo viverra nunc faucibus tempus tempus porttitor commodo sodales sed tellus eu donec enim. Lectus eu viverra ullamcorper ultricies et lacinia nisl ut at aliquet lacus blandit dui arcu at in id amet orci egestas commodo sagittis in. Vel risus magna nibh elementum pellentesque feugiat netus sit donec tellus nunc gravida feugiat nullam dignissim rutrum lacus felis morbi nisi interdum tincidunt. Vestibulum pellentesque cursus magna pulvinar est at quis nisi nam et sed in hac quis vulputate vitae in et sit. Interdum etiam nulla lorem lorem feugiat cursus etiam massa facilisi ut.
Welcome to our blog series CSM from the Trenches, a community for frontline Customer Success Managers (CSMs) that discusses trends, best practices, and advice for the frontline.
Being on the CSM frontline allows us to directly influence the success of our clients. I love that; as our clients are successful, we’re successful. Each day we learn from the trenches what it takes to make clients happy and successful.
This segment of the series focuses on 7 mentor questions for the frontline. The goal is that by sharing our experiences we’ll be able to learn and apply more practical advice / practices to our careers.
Let’s get started with this week’s post!
Believe in the work hard - play hard philosophy, I think we forget the second part with customers. Recently had the opportunity during our user conference week to set up an offsite team building event with one of our strategic clients. I believe this not only allowed for some fun, but the outcome was an additional level of both trust and partnership!
I check dashboards for possible shift in trends with accounts, keep in tune with sales leadership on expansion deals and set key objectives for the day.
I recently had the opportunity to see Richard Branson speak and strongly believe in his employee-centric thought-leadership: “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”
Employee centric leadership translates to expressing value, appreciation and support for employees which increases the CSMs engagement leading to improved accountability, performance and outcomes. The values in which we instill in the company culture and employees will be not only reflected internally but also to customers externally.
From my Kaizen-Six Sigma training, the concept of continuous improvement has been engrained- and each "failure" is a learning event. Failure provides the opportunity to keep getting better, leverage the "rearview mirror" and use data (BI) to separate facts from emotions.
At a prior organization, we had a customer Go-Live that was unfortunately riddled with issues (for various reasons- not all product related), we leveraged data and drilling deep into the 5 "Whys" of root cause analysis - to understand how future deployments would avoid the same errors. This shows the customer we are a learning organization - which continues on the journey to trust, partnership and advocacy.
Staying engaged with clients (specially onsite visits) helps you internalize their business objectives, challenges and drive outcomes. Absolutely love helping people achieve their goals, employees first - which translates to client achieved outcomes.
Empathy - walk in your customers shoes, understand their business challenges, objectives and how best to achieve those effectively and efficiently.
I live by Karma - the cycle of cause and effect. Ralph Waldo Emerson most elegantly wrote: "Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed."
While Karma in its simplest form translates to cause and effect, understanding what actions we are taking and why (cause) are critical for the desired outcome (effect).
——————————————————————————————————–
Here are other customer success resources:
Customer Success eBooks:
Customer Success as a Culture: Customer Success Leaders Edition
Ultimate Guide to SaaS Customer Success Metrics
Other CSM from the Trenches Posts:
Sam Feil, ClientSuccess – 11 Books Frontline Customer Success Managers Should Read Right Now
Cole Sanders, ClientSuccess – 3 Principles I Learned in My First Year as a CSM
Mieke Maes, Intuo – 5 Keys to an Effective Customer Apology
Learn more about how ClientSuccess can help your company develop a strong customer success methodology and strategy with easy-to-use customer success software by requesting a 30-minute demo.
