Explore strategies, methods, critical skills that top CSMs exhibit in delivering well-designed, proactive customer success services, fostering lasting customer relationships and sowing the seeds for advocacy
Key Features
- Master the art of driving measurable customer value, a cornerstone of business success
- Explore techniques to ensure your work is relevant, stimulating, and aligns with the evolving needs of your customers and business
- Ratchet up your understanding of building and operating dynamic and resilient CS organizations
- Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook
Book Description
The rapidly evolving customer success landscape has left many Customer Success Managers (CSMs) struggling to keep pace with the complexities of this dynamic role. This Customer Success book bridges the gap by providing a comprehensive framework for mastering the essential skills required to excel.
You'll find out why the Customer Success function is indispensable today and gain expert insights into account segmentation, financial tiering, ideal customer profiles, and the complexity of customer engagement process design. You'll then delve into playbook development, where you'll find practical guidance for CSMs and Customer Success Operations Managers who want to improve their ability to drive desired business outcomes. Through insightful case studies, the authors illustrate their own experience of successful Customer Success implementation, showing you what it takes to exceed customer expectations with well-designed, proactive services. The journey doesn't end there-it extends to highlighting the resilience required to build and operate successful Customer Success organizations.
By the end of this guide, you'll be equipped with the tactics and mindset necessary to stand out as a world-class Customer Success leader in your organization, driving growth at every turn.
What you will learn
- Drive higher customer retention and expansion rates with a customer-centric strategy
- Understand the essential role of measurement in achieving service delivery excellence
- Recognize the importance of the human dimension in vendor-customer relationships in the age of AI
- Refine engagement models by incorporating observations of customer behavior
- Discover techniques for creating ideal customer profiles
- Leverage technology to boost business relevance of CSMs
- Identify how to drive successful customer outcomes through collaboration
Who this book is for
This book is for aspiring and established Customer Success professionals who want to learn how to develop and refine service delivery in customer engagements. Professionals embarking on a journey to excellence will be able to master the evolving business landscape of Customer Success and foster relationships with other internal organizations and external partners.
A foundational understanding of business basics, typical B2B structures, and Customer Success concepts is necessary to get started. Intermediate to advanced customer engagement skills from customer-facing roles will prove useful.
Author(s): Jeff Mar | Peter Armaly
Edition: 1
Publisher: Packt Publishing Ltd
Year: 2024
Language: English
Pages: 171
Mastering Customer Success
Foreword
Contributors
About the authors
About the reviewers
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Conventions used
Get in touch
Share Your Thoughts
Download a free PDF copy of this book
Part 1: Foundational Concepts for Business Success
1
Optimizing Your Key Metrics for Growth
Understanding the S.M.A.R.T. approach to metrics goals
Aligning CS with business goals
Individual versus team goals in CS metrics
Customer engagement metrics
Quantitative metrics – where evidence emerges
Qualitative metrics – how evidence takes on a human dimension
Customer lifetime value
Summary
2
Building a Strong Foundation – Key Knowledge for Success
Strategies for effective customer prioritization
Looking into the details of segmentation and tiering
Understanding CLTV
Soft skills of exceptional CSMs
Empathy
Communication
Building relationships
Analytical skills
Learning to manage time
Feedback
Looking at a few interrelated skills
Public speaking
CSM-specific and CS operations-specific skills
Summary
3
Strategies for Effective Book of Business Management
Proactive versus reactive
How to be more proactive
Strategies for effective customer prioritization
Preliminary considerations
Segmentation
Strategic importance
Scaling for success
Building your sales partnerships
Relationship
Account planning and management
Growth and development
Summary
Part 2: Optimizing Customer-Centric Strategies
4
Streamlining Onboarding and Boosting Engagement
Onboarding
Driving engagement
Key considerations for driving engagement
Summary
5
Building Referenceable Customers
Why referenceable customers are key to success
Strategies for building referenceable customers
Identifying potential advocates
Cultivating advocates
Showcasing your advocates
Summary
6
Leveraging Data for Customer Success
Data for CS through an internal lens
Understanding user/customer behaviors and patterns of product use
A short dive into consumption analytics
Assessing risk and developing predictive customer retention strategies
Risk variables
Refining personalization for more precise expansion approaches
Data for CS through an external lens
Improving the quality of product guidance for customers to drive deeper trust
Strengthening long-term customer relationships and nurturing the growth of customer advocacy
Measuring customer progress toward the successful attainment of desired outcomes
Summary
7
Building Your Customer Success Inner Circle
Determining the right relationships to build internally
Product development and engineering
Sales
Support and technical assistance
Marketing
Training and education
Finance and legal
Executive leadership
How to build internal relationships
Initiating internal relationships
Nurturing internal relationships
Summary
Part 3: Navigating the Customer Success Landscape
8
Strategies for Retention and Expansion in Your Business
The math of retention and expansion
Land and expand is more involved than people think
Exhibiting excellence as individual CSMs in retention and expansion
How to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities
Summary
9
Mastering Crisis Management for Business Resilience
Identifying crises
Preparing for crises
Effective communication during a crisis
Post-crisis management
Summary
10
The Exciting Future of Customer Success
Shifting toward more personalized and proactive customer engagements
Expanding career opportunities
The evolving skill requirements of CSMs
Summary
Index
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