5 Questions to Answer to Clearly Define the Role of a Customer Success Manager

If you’re a Customer Success professional, I’m sure you’ve experienced the awkward conversations of trying to briefly explain the strategic and important nature of your role that you are so passionate about. And some of your friends just stare at you and think you are glorifying what you do to sound really important. And then you hear their response...

“Oh, ok, so you answer phone calls from your customers about what your company does?”

It’s at this point that you decide if you care enough to dig deeper to educate the “unknowing” while holding back the deserving eye roll.

Sound familiar?

I just recently had a similar conversation with a friend who is a software developer at a neighboring software company with a large Customer Success team. His comment: “Oh, I thought Customer Success was just a fancy way of saying call center.”

Regardless of what response you get (because I know there is a wide variety we’ve all experienced), it’s very clear that Customer Success is having its own identity crisis. And to a degree, it’s our own fault. Check out this Gainsight article by Arjun Devgan or this Medium article by Chad Horenfeldt for great explanations of why.

But does this really even matter? We know what we do, so who cares?!

I do. And you should too. And here’s why.

• "Without role clarity for the Customer Success function, a vacuum will form and anything near the vacuum will get sucked in. By the time you realize it, it may feel too late to ‘change’, but the longer you wait, the harder it will be." - Nils Vinje, Founder of Glide Consulting
• “Without this strategic clarity, customer success often plays second fiddle to other functions.” (“Introducing customer success 2.0: The new growth engine”, McKinsey&Company)
• “The risk of assuming tasks is that toes will be stepped on and people will feel less value in their work.” (“How to charter customer success within your organization”, CIO Online)

And I’m a firm believer that nothing has more of an impact (positive or negative) on the customer experience than the employee experience we create for those who interact with our customers day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. The impact of this role confusion goes well beyond employee experience and internal friction. It absolutely extends into the customer experience.

• “...Many organizations fail to obtain full value from their CSMs because they don’t clearly define the role in relation to the broader GTM strategy…” (“Introducing customer success 2.0: The new growth engine”, McKinsey&Company)
• “If a business doesn't have clarity about the customer experience function, then your efforts to positively influence the experience of your customers is left to chance…” (“Do businesses understand what customer experience teams do?”, MyCustomer.com)

To summarize, lack of role clarity about what CSMs do not only makes CSMs feel less valuable in their role but also limits the amount of value they can and are capable of delivering to each of your customers.

So what can we do about it?

There are some macro challenges we need to address as a Customer Success community but it’s not my intent to solve for that here.

There is something more immediate we can do within the walls (literal or figurative) of our own organizations: Ask these 5 questions to clarify the role of the CSM at your company.

The answers to these five questions make up what I call a Role Profile.

For my next few posts, I’ll share my perspective on why each of these five questions are critical to clarifying the CSM role, eliminating unnecessary confusion and ultimately improving your customer experience.

Stay tuned for the next article..., "Why Does the CSM Role Exist at Our Company?"