Role of a customer success manager
A SaaS company often looks for a customer success manager and the roles are expanding for a CSM. Initially, it started as a promise to change the mindset of customer engagement from reactive to proactive.
Nowadays, the roles have taken a new place. There are a lot of new responsibilities associated with them and contribute a lot towards the growth of a SaaS organization. Basically, they are the growth hackers of any SaaS organization.
Here are some roles that CSM has to deal with throughout his career in a SaaS agency.
- Renewals
Existing customers make up a lot of business to a SaaS company. Moreover, revenue keeps recurring through customer renewals only. Hence, it is no less than a business lifeline for a SaaS company. Therefore, for a CSM, it is extremely important to follow up.
A CSM needs to follow up on the renewals so that they don’t get any last-minute problems. Moreover, they also need to look after the long term contracts for renewal. Hence, they require putting in more effort, considering the size of the contract.
Sometimes, they also need to deal with the paperwork for the renewal of a large-term contract.
- On-boarding of customers
As the name suggests, a CSM desperately needs to make new customer and that’s what his main task is. However, even a single mistake by a CSM in this process can incur heavy losses for the company. Therefore, this process needs to be done with extreme care.
For instance, your customers need not know everything about your product. Instead, he just wants to know the features that will benefit him in a way or two. Therefore, as a customer success manager, you need to tell your customers only those features that can help them.
Moreover, the customer should see the value in your product as fast as possible. That’s because a customer always demands a return of investment and it is the faster the better. Hence, they will get to know how important your product is for them.
Therefore, a CSM also needs to develop a framework for the process of customer on-boarding. Hence, it tells how the life of a customer can be made easy. So, a customer won’t hesitate to make his investment in your product.
- Conducting health checks
A CSM has to even look after the healthiest and the oldest customer. Therefore, a CSM needs to calculate the health of all of its customers and this keeps on increasing with time. Moreover, it lets the CSM know what makes the customer unhappy about their products.
Hence, the CSM can plan the steps accordingly to fix those steps. However, it is not possible to track the happiness status of all the customers. Therefore, it is better for a CSM to use a customer success platform which helps greatly with the monitoring process. Ultimately, it increases your productivity greatly.
- Escalation of accounts
Alerts and poor health status often keep coming in the work of a CSM. Therefore, he always needs to look after those red flags. This can range from support tickets to a customer approaching you directly with a problem.
Therefore, you always need to condemn their problems and work upon their solutions. Moreover, you also need to let the customer know that you will always be there in case of any emergency or help. Therefore, you will also need to build a good relationship as a CSM with your customers.
Hence, your company will be benefitted from the renewals that the customer makes because of your stable support and healthy relationship.
- Advocating the customers
As stated above, maintaining a good relationship with the customers is also a part of the role of a customer success manager. Therefore, a CSM also needs to know how this relationship can turn into advocacy.
For example, you may need to do an NPS survey or a case study on your customers. In a nutshell, your financial growth depends highly on the way you build a relationship with your customers. Hence, it is a core part of the responsibilities of a CSM.
Bottom Line
With no doubt, CSM’s role in a SaaS company is extremely crucial. Therefore, if you are looking to work as a CSM, you surely need to know how the things stated above are done. That’s all we have for today.
