When the deal is closed and a prospect officially becomes a customer, envisioning them seamlessly adopting a new product is a nice thought. But, that’s not often reality.
Enter customer success teams. Their role is to listen to customer concerns and challenges and provide solutions that fit clients’ unique needs.
That sounds simple enough. But it’s not. Customer success isn’t just a quick Q&A about how to use a tool. It’s a relationship, and that requires maintenance.
CS professionals need people skills and must effectively listen, communicate and ideate. But they also need an unwavering commitment to making customers happy.
“You need the ability to de-escalate situations, do research and collaborate with other departments to find a solution for customers,” said Maria Jump, director, owner success, at Evolve.
There’s no cookie-cutter method for developing these skills, and there’s not necessarily a clear-cut or linear path to a CS role. Jump developed some of those skills as a teen working in food service. Nathan Bracy, manager, support specialist, at Sovrn transitioned his content marketing skills into CS.
“What I love about customer success is that you’re never locked into one type of job,” Jump said. “The important core skills, like a desire to help people, critical thinking and problem solving, are transferable to any industry.”
Built In Colorado spoke with Jump and Bracy to find out more about their professional journey and how they developed the skills to make other’s lives easier.
Evolve makes vacation rentals easy. Its hospitality team works on both sides of a stay: Evolve offers solutions like property management expertise and marketing for vacation home owners and support for guests.
Tell us about your career progression into customer success. What relevant skills did you already have, and what skills did you need to develop on the job?
My career in customer service started when I was 16 working at a local pizza place. I was very lucky to have mentors who helped me grow my skills. After graduating college, I knew that customer success was the career path I wanted to take. I started in retail, where I worked my way up to a trainer role, then store manager and district manager. From there, I made the decision to transition to education where I worked for several years, before joining Evolve as the director of owner success.
Transitioning into a hospitality role that leverages phone calls and digital communication like texts and emails versus face-to-face interactions is an adjustment. It can be more challenging to understand and react to customers because you don’t have visual and verbal cues to evaluate a customer’s true demeanor. That means communication and comprehension skills are more important than ever.
We’re there to understand the needs of both our customers and the business and match them in a way that works for everyone.”
What’s a common mistake that customer success professionals often make early in their career, and how can they avoid it?
Underestimating the number of skills it takes to help someone. There’s an assumption that customer service jobs are easy and you’re just talking to people. In reality, it’s much more than that. Developing communication and research skills is necessary so you can own the situation, solve problems and find solutions so a customer walks away with a good experience.
I’ve also seen early-career customer success professionals get too hung up on policy and rules; they assume every customer must be treated the same with no exceptions. It’s important to follow policies and guidelines, but every situation is unique. Our jobs are to dig in, identify problems and find solutions. We’re there to understand the needs of both our customers and the business and match them in a way that works for everyone. At Evolve, we provide the framework and empower our teammates to determine the right solution that’s specific to our guests and owners so that we’re delivering five-star customer experiences each time.
What resources or opportunities does Evolve make available to help you build your skills?
Our new hires go through two weeks of training with our learning and enablement team. Then, they shadow teammates, listen to calls and receive coaching from managers for another two weeks. In the final step, a veteran teammate shadows them. New hire training, especially shadowing, allows new teammates to see how we do things and provides an opportunity for them to learn from their peers. Our priority is making sure that before they interact with customers, they feel comfortable and confident enough to provide a quality experience.
After onboarding, managers focus on helping new teammates find success in their roles. Managers set expectations, provide coaching and feedback and have regular conversations about professional development. Beyond training and onboarding, team members have more opportunities to learn and grow during their career with us. Every Evolver has access to Evolve Academy, an internal learning management system that hosts our learning plans and training, plus access to LinkedIn Learning.
Learning and growing is a key pillar at Evolve. “Learn every day” is one of our core values.
Sovrn provides products and services to help content creators understand, operate and grow their online businesses. The adtech company’s platform provides tools and technologies for creators to grow their revenue plus real-time data.
Tell us about your career progression into customer success. What relevant skills did you already have, and what skills did you need to develop on the job?
I started my professional career in content marketing, and I learned a ton about business writing. I helped my clients create content for their audiences and helped my colleagues write about the work we were doing for our clients. But I became disinterested in my work, and I sought out a career change. I applied for a customer support specialist role at Sovrn, and after joining the team, I quickly learned that customer success was right for me. Though answering support tickets was a bit tedious at times, I helped our customers leverage Sovrn technology to increase their revenue stream.
When I joined Sovrn, I had the writing skills, and I’m quite tech-savvy and wanted to be in a profession that helps others. It seemed to be a perfect fit. What I didn’t have — and what I still try to develop every day — is skills to navigate uncertainty. Sovrn has acquired a few businesses since I joined, and it’s my job to learn the finer details of each product. I’ve become more comfortable not knowing things and learning as I go.
The single biggest mistake that I see from customer success professionals is that they don’t realize how important they are.”
What’s a common mistake that customer success professionals often make early in their career, and how can they avoid it?
The single biggest mistake that I see from customer success professionals is that they don’t realize how important they are. Our entire role is to help our clients be successful, and that allows us to do so many different things.
Good documentation is paramount to customer success, so you can help your organization with documentation.Identify technical issues in your day-to-day interactions with customers, and spend time with the engineering team to understand how to escalate those issues. If you write the same email over and over, you can draft a template for your team to use to work more efficiently. Your work with the sales team and what you learn from them can help you transition into a career in sales, or you can apply that knowledge to your company’s marketing efforts. Customer success professionals can take what they’ve learned and translate it to just about any career.
What resources or opportunities does Sovrn make available to help you build your skills?
My role at Sovrn has changed over the last four years, but the opportunities to build my skills have only increased. I have been able to grow and develop my customer success skills. I’ve been a salesperson, marketer, product manager, account manager and many other different roles all in one.
My experience is specific to customer support, and each day brings different customers in need of assistance to me and my team. Sovrn has acquired new customers, and the customer onboarding process is exciting but turbulent. During the acquisition process, I learn how the customer will fit with Sovrn, and specifically, how the support team will play a role in the customer acquisition.
I’ve drawn upon my skills from my content marketing days to help create and edit internal and external documentation. I created content on our internal spaces and our external knowledge base. I also volunteered to lead others, and those experiences led to my promotion to team lead and then to manager. My favorite thing about my job is training my team members so they can become invaluable members of the customer success organization.
