The Customer Success Professional's Handbook: How to Thrive in One of the World's Fastest Growing Careers--While Driving Growth for Your Company (Hardcover)

Contributors

Foreword

Part I What is Customer Success and Why is It a Great Career?

Chapter 1 Customer Success Management: The Birth of a New Profession

The Age of the Customer

The Critical Missing Function

The Birth of the Customer Success Manager

Chapter 2 Defining the Customer Success Manager Role

Goals: Increase Retention, Reduce Churn, Drive Growth

The Consumption Gap

The Customer Success Equation

What Customer Success Management is Not

A Career or a Springboard to a Real Profession?

Part 2 The Core Skills of a Great CSM

Chapter 3 A Day in the Life of a Customer Success Manager

Putting Customer Success into Practice

Being a Customer Success Manager—A Personal Testimonial

The Three Core CSM Competencies

Chapter 4 The CSM Skills Required in an Ever-Evolving Business World

How to Develop Your Industry and Category Knowledge

Network with Mentors and Industry Experts

Product Expertise Is Your Ticket to Greatness

Chapter 5 Learn How to Empathize and Build Relationships with Customers

1. Be Introspective and Self-Aware

2. Communicate With Intent, Precision, and Persuasion: Be a Trusted Advisor

3. Consistently Follow-Up to Create and Grow Trust

4. Know How to Respond When You Don’t Know the Answer

5. Stay Focused and Positive When Situations Are Difficult; Learn From Them

6. Read People In-Depth And With a #HumanFirst Lens Of Compassion

7. Genuinely Connect With Customers: It Is Personal and it is Your Business

Part 3 Operationalizing Customer Success

Chapter 6 Preparing for Your Engagements and Asking Questions Like a Problem-Solving Consultant

The Need for a 360^o View of the Customer

Do Your Homework: Prepare for Every Customer Engagement

THE ART OF DISCOVERY: Asking the Right Questions to Get to the Heart of the Customer’s Problem

Chapter 7 Defining the Journey to Customer Outcomes

Customer Lifecycle, Journey Map, Customer Journey

Segment Your Customers

Chapter 8 Operationalize Your Customer Journey with Moments of Truth

Identifying Your Moments of Truth

Sales to Onboarding Handoff

Welcome the Customer and Onboarding Kickoff

Launch or Go-Live

New Customer Executive or Champion

Business Reviews: For the Executive and More

Renewals

Chapter 9 Using Customer Health Scores to Manage Your Customers

Health Scores: How to know if your customers are doing well

Designing Your Outcomes Health Score

Designing Your Experience Health Score

Setting the Right Thresholds

Other Frameworks to Design Your Health Score

Putting Health Scores to Work for You

The Future and Human-Element of Customer Health Scorecards

Chapter 10 Voice of the Customer and your Tech Touch Strategy

How to Get Meaningful Customer Feedback

The Hidden Value of Customer Feedback

Tech Touch: The Secrets of Low-Touch Customer Success

Onboarding Tech Touch Workflow

Renewals Management Tech Touch Workflow

Risk Management Tech Touch Workflow

Advocacy Management Tech Touch Workflow

Chapter 11 Help Customers Achieve Their Business Goals

Adoption Management: How to Proactively Manage Product Use and Adoption

Success Planning: Make Sure the Customer Gets the Long-Term Results They Expect

Identify Business Objectives

Strategy Session

Document the Plan

Track Value

Product Experience—Improving Your Product is Your #1 Priority

Part 4 Retaining and Developing The Best CSMs

Chapter 12 Drive Revenue Growth Through Engagement, Proactive Risk Management, Churn Analysis, Renewals, Expansion and Advocacy

Stakeholder Alignment: How to Manage Executive Sponsors and Other Customer Stakeholders

Risk Management: What to Do When a Customer is Trending Toward Cancelling: How to Proactively Escalate Risk and Save the Customer

Reduce Churn with a Deep Understanding of Why Your Customers Have Left

Expansion Management: Understanding whitespace in your customer base to upsell and cross-sell your products and services

Advocacy Management: How to Turn Your Best Customers into Evangelists

Chapter 13 Managing a Customer Success Team

Segmentation and aligning a Customer Success Manager to the right customer

Determining the Best Customer Success Manager: Customer Ratio and CSM Profiles

Compensating Your Customer Success Managers

Dashboards to Manage the Customer Success Team

Chapter 14 Creating Career Paths for your Customer Success Managers

Designing CSM as a Career

Creating Career Paths within the CS Function

Conducting a Comprehensive Talent Review Process

Creating Career Paths Between Functions

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Index