Customer success is a hot topic in the business world right now. But what exactly is customer success? And what does a customer success analyst do? I recently made the switch to a career in customer success after working in sales for many years. The transition wasn’t easy, but it was definitely worth it. I absolutely love my new job and I feel like I’m making a difference every day. As a customer success analyst, my job is to help our clients achieve their desired outcomes.
This involves everything from providing training and support, to conducting data analysis and creating reports. Basically, whatever our clients need to be successful, that’s what I try to provide.It’s challenging work, but also very rewarding. Seeing our clients succeed thanks in part to my efforts is an incredible feeling. If you’re thinking about making the switch to customer success yourself, or are just curious about what does a customer success analyst do, then read on!
What Does a Customer Success Analyst Do?
The main goal of a customer success analyst is to help keep customers satisfied with a company’s products or services.
They achieve this by analyzing customer feedback, identifying areas of improvement, and developing strategies to increase customer satisfaction.
In some cases, customer success specialists may also be responsible for training customer service representatives on how to best handle customer inquiries and complaints.
What is Customer Success?
At its core, customer success is about ensuring that your customers get the most value out of your product. This means proactively helping them to use your product in the most effective way possible, and continually monitoring their usage and engagement to identify any areas where they may need assistance. By taking a holistic and technology-driven approach to customer success, you can ensure that your customers will receive ongoing value from your product throughout their lifetime as a customer.
The Five Major Customer Success Job Responsibilities
While the role of a CSM can vary from company to company, there are some common themes that all customer success managers share.
Some CSMs will focus solely on a few, while others will do it all.
It’s up to each company to decide how to organize their Customer Success teams. Some companies have mature CS departments, while others have newer ones.
Onboarding and Implementation
The onboarding process is critical to the success of your product. Getting new customers set up, importing data, configuring their account, training users and getting them live is essential to creating a positive first impression.
On-boarding is everything that happens from when a contract is signed to when a customer is using your software on a day-to-day basis. On-boarding is incredibly important because it creates a first impression of your company and product.
Some sales professionals focus on that stage of the customer lifecycle.
Training, Education, and Enablement
A customer success role that falls under operations is training and educating customers.
As a Customer Operations Specialist role, your responsibilities will be to lead training webinars, write knowledge base articles and create messaging for customers. Your goal is to ensure that they understand how to use the customer success tool in front of them for different purposes. Depending on the company, this could be a one-to-one in-person training or it could be building on-demand content that can be consumed by hundreds of customers at once.
Customer Adoption and Change Management
Adoption and Change Management are other common roles for CSMs. These positions are more common for complex products where a lot of changes are required before a customer can fully adopt the solution.
If you’re working with a customer that is going to be impacted by your technology, it’s important to have a structured approach to change management. This will help them adopt your product and make the necessary changes to their day-to-day activities.
Account Management
Traditional Account Management is a huge part of the Customer Success role. You are doing tasks like understanding the organizational structure of your client’s company so you know who the stakeholders and decision makers are.
As a CSM, one of your key responsibilities is to build strong relationships with customers. This involves really understanding their business and needs so that you can be seen as a trusted advisor. By having this deeper impact on the organization, you can help them get more value out of your product.
As a CSM, it is important to understand the customer’s business in order to provide value and be regarded as a trusted advisor. You must be able to see how the customer can use your product to their benefit and help connect the dots between the two.
Customer Support
Part of the job is client service.
Customer support is a key part of helping customers be successful. This may be a discrete job function within a company, but it typically reports into the Customer Success organization and works very closely with CSMs.Solving small customer problems quickly and efficiently is an important part of keeping them satisfied and ensuring their success. If you can’t handle the little things, they’ll start to doubt your ability to take care of the big things too. That’s why customer support is such an integral part of any successful customer success strategy.
What Makes a Great Customer Success Manager?
There are a lot of skills you need as a customer success manager.
While there’s a lot that goes into the job, there are some key things to keep in mind no matter what stage you’re at in your customer success career.
Staying Cool Under Pressure
Being a good Customer Success Manager means being able to stay calm and collected when things go wrong. Being able to influence people when everything’s going wrong is a trait that all good CSMs have.
No matter what happens, the customer service rep must remain calm.
CSM Training – Thoughtfulness
Being mindful means gathering information, considering your options, and making a decision.
This skill is important because it allows you to take the time to think through a situation and offer well thought out answers or options. This will always be better received than a quick response.
Your customer will appreciate the thoughtfulness you put into your work, unless it is a mission critical circumstance where seconds or minutes mean the difference between life or death.
Persuasive CSM
Being a good communicator and influencer is not only important for customer-facing roles, but for sales, marketing, and product as well.
It’s not about making sales pitches, it’s about understanding people’s psychology and motivations so that you can influence them.
Almost every human interaction involves some sort of attempt to sway the other person to your point of view.
If a CSM cannot persuasively communicate with a customer, it will be difficult to set expectations or convince them that a workaround is actually a better solution. In order to be successful, CSMs must learn how to effectively communicate and persuade customers.
Closing The Customer
If you’re able to close with the customer and confirm that they’ve achieved their goal or that their issue has been addressed, you’ll be able to move on to the next subject.
If you can’t close with the customer and move on, you’ll never make any progress.
This is about gaining concurrence on whatever it is you’re addressing or dealing with, closing that out, and then moving on to the next topic.
Active Listening and Empathy
The ability to fully concentrate and listen to your customer is crucial for being successful.When working with customers, it’s important not only to hear what they have to say but also express that you understand and share their feelings about a need, pain point or situation. Empathy shouldn’t appear contrived; it needs to be genuine. The ability to fully concentrate and listen to your customer is crucial for success.
Listening carefully to customer needs is crucial to being a successful salesperson.
When you are speaking with someone, it is important to be aware of their current mood, patience level, and personality. This will help you to keep the interaction positive.
Product Knowledge & Domain Expertise
If you want to build trust and credibility with your customers, make sure you have a deep understanding of how your product or service works. Your customers will appreciate your knowledge and expertise, and this will help solidify your relationship with them.
You won’t have deep knowledge or expertise right away, but anyone in a customer-facing role should spend some time understanding the product and its various nuances. This will help you be more effective when interacting with customers.
Conclusion: Customer Success
A career in customer success is a great choice for anyone who wants to make a difference. If you’re looking for a challenging and rewarding job, then consider becoming a customer success analyst. But what does a customer success analyst do? A customer success analyst helps clients achieve their desired outcomes and see the results of their efforts firsthand. So what are you waiting for? Start your new career today!
