{"id":7701,"date":"2021-11-08T23:43:18","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T07:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zightwebprd.wpengine.com\/6-tips-for-beginning-customer-success-employees\/"},"modified":"2023-10-26T08:45:03","modified_gmt":"2023-10-26T15:45:03","slug":"customer-success-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zight.com\/blog\/customer-success-manager\/","title":{"rendered":"What Makes a Good Customer Success Manager? Top 10 Tips"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
You can no longer rely on your good product and competitive prices to retain loyal customers.<\/a> Seeing that your customers have different needs and uses for your product or service, you must also provide the best customer experience to keep them satisfied. That’s why it’s good to have the best customer success teams starting from a great customer success manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what makes a good customer success manager?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Customer satisfaction doesn’t just happen; it’s crafted, nurtured, and carefully managed by your customer success manager. They should understand your customers’ needs even before the customers do, and set them up to get the most value out of your product. Why? Because when your customers succeed, so do you. According to Forbes<\/a>, customer success will identify and nurture high-value prospects into paid customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This article will cover the best tips a customer success manager can use to improve your business. Read on also to see how to use Zight for a better customer experience<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n A customer success manager<\/a> guides customers through a successful customer experience with a specific company and increases the value of their purchase. As business models evolve into consumption-based and subscription formats, the focus has shifted to ongoing customer satisfaction<\/a> and retention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, the aim of successful customer success managers should not be to make a one-time sale – but to develop a lasting relationship with consumers where everyone\u2019s goals and needs are met continuously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A customer success manager\u2019s job is to work on behalf of both the brand and the customer to determine how your company best fits the current needs. As demand and products change, customer success managers must continue guiding consumers toward valuable options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But here’s the thing – your customer success manager must never sound like a salesperson pushing their agenda. They must listen and assess each unique situation to build customer trust. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Honesty is crucial. As a client success manager establishes a strong rapport with customers, conversations must organically offer valuable insights that guide customers to a path of success – even if that doesn\u2019t generate additional revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s vital to identify efficiencies while delivering an incredible customer experience. Customer success is a real-time, proactive sales strategy<\/a> that entails building relationships with existing clients, having an in-depth understanding of your business and product goals, and helping customers meet their goals through regular contact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each customer has unique needs and uses for your service or product, so it\u2019s up to your customer success manager to thoroughly understand each existing customer and to be their champion throughout the client journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, customer success is not to be confused with customer support<\/a>. The latter seeks to solve individual customer issues or offer product guidance to specific customers. Often, customer support is reactive because the customer usually calls to report a problem they\u2019re facing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are more tips that can make great customer success managers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developing effective customer relationships largely depends on how well employees and managers communicate with existing customers. Again, every customer faces unique obstacles throughout their entire customer journey, and it\u2019s critical for them to feel heard. Successful customer success managers and teams know how to listen to understand customers\u2019 problems and communicate viable solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, effective communication alone can endear customer success managers and their teams to customers. They can coax a resolution from difficult customers and assess situations before problems arise. Persuasion is a key component: help customers believe that the solution will work!<\/p>\n\n\n\n A customer success manager with excellent communication skills can even convert a product drawback to an advantage for your business by getting the customer to work past the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Communication is more than just a skill for customer success managers. You want to empower them with the best tools to reach customers – and communicate better while at it. That’s why a tool like Zight is essential.<\/p>\n\n\n With a range of features specifically designed to enhance visual communication<\/a>, Zight empowers customer success managers to connect with clients more meaningfully and effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After downloading Zight for Mac, Windows, and Chrome extension, here’s how to use it for better communication:<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you can see, Zight is your Swiss Army knife for communication! It makes it easier for customer success managers to create meaningful customer relationships, avoid lengthy email threads, and improve team collaboration. With Zight, you improve communication to understand your customers and be proactive when offering continuous support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Client onboarding<\/a> is one of the most essential tasks your customer success manager will undertake. Their close relationship with existing customers gives them an advantage in finding the best ways to offer value to each customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your customer success manager can start with using Zight to record an onboarding welcome video or use other features like screenshots, GIFs, and impeccable annotations to create exciting onboarding content<\/a> for your customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, this doesn\u2019t mean that your customer success team<\/a> should carry the entire burden of client onboarding; rather, they must focus on the initial interaction to get customers to their goals and then hand the process off to your customer support or customer onboarding team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By building an onboarding framework, you can take most of the burden of client onboarding from your customer success team. An effective onboarding framework must apply broadly across all your existing customers. Then, you can tweak and improve that framework as needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To help your customers succeed, let them drive the improvements and changes to your product. This strategy is referred to as the customer feedback<\/a> loop. It\u2019s a fundamental part of the customer success philosophy. It involves constantly gathering feedback, segmenting it, acting on it, and presenting the results to your existing customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gathering customer feedback helps you zone in on the challenges in your product and the customer experience. Studies show that 86% of consumers<\/a> don\u2019t mind paying for an excellent customer experience. That means gathering feedback from customers can ultimately improve your recurring revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To collect customer feedback, you must build platforms where customers can leave their complaints, give praise, and offer suggestions. Effective tools for gathering customer feedback include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n With adequate feedback available, analyze it, act on it, and execute the changes your existing customers want to see. Then, get back to your customers by having your customer success manager reach out or publish release notes to present the improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, the people using your product should have a say in how your product improves!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout the customer journey, customers will have many interactions with your brand. If you can offer value and high-quality service to your customer relationship at every interaction, you\u2019ll have a loyal client base that appreciates your product or service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Providing value at every interaction sounds daunting. However, if you develop a playbook of best practices for your customer success manager and employees, providing value to your customers will become second nature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What provides value and quality for customers? Here are a few things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Often, interactions with customers are fast and all about making purchasing decisions. This is especially true with customer service interactions and early sales calls. Providing value during these interactions is a sure way to stand out from prospective competitors and positively make customer interactions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Customer engagement is where customer information is turned into actions that influence the customer experience – an important skill for your customer success manager to understand. By identifying the right customer engagement<\/a> strategy, you can deliver value to your customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Effective engagement strategies include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can achieve customer success and improve customer experience by leveraging one of these engagement strategies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Learning and understanding your customer\u2019s needs, the goals they\u2019re trying to achieve, and the pain points they\u2019re trying to solve is fundamental knowledge for every customer success team member. Knowing your existing customers better must be a core responsibility of your customer success manager and employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You must conduct customer research to understand your customer\u2019s needs and challenges better. Essentially, before you make any product or business decisions, you must have solid evidence from your customer research proving that your existing customers want and need what you plan to offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Customer research shouldn\u2019t end after you gather this information. Your entire customer success team\u2019s analysis and dissemination of this information are just as important as gathering it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Every customer success manager must know who your existing customer is and their challenges and needs. This makes everyone better at their job and better at creating solutions that will help your customers succeed, which is the primary reason for your company\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A good customer success manager uses data to improve customer experience. Analytics can help you with concrete insights to make informed decisions. Here’s how you can leverage data analytics effectively:<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you incorporate these data-driven approaches, you can tailor your customer success strategies to meet individual needs, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A customer success manager interacts directly with customers, so it is imperative to build trust. One big challenge for this customer success role is to make promises you can keep. How, you wonder?<\/p>\n\n\n\n By consistently keeping promises, a customer success manager will build a strong foundation of trust that makes all other aspects of customer success much easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While keeping customers informed is crucial, there’s a fine line between being helpful and overwhelming them with information. Here’s how to strike the right balance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n With these tips, you ensure your communication enriches the customer experience without becoming a nuisance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a senior customer success manager, the temptation to micromanage every client relationship can be strong, especially when you’re aiming for perfection. However, it’s essential to remember that customer success is a team effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, collaboration is key – and you can do it as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach can create a more cohesive and effective customer experience that lightens your load and ensures customers receive well-rounded support and guidance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Great customer success managers and employees aim to help customers succeed, improve retention by reducing churn rate, and improve customer lifetime value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Your business\u2019s top priority must be your existing customers. Know what they need to succeed to improve customer retention and reduce churn rate. Next, expand your focus across the client lifecycle, from customer acquisition to onboarding and upselling.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHow Do You Succeed As A Customer Success Manager?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Stellar Communication<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How Zight Enhances Stellar Communication for Customer Success Managers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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2. Optimize Your Onboarding Process<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
3. Get Feedback from Customers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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4. Focus On Value And Quality<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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5. Identify An Effective Engagement Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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6. Learn And Understand Your Customers\u2019 Challenges And Needs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
7. Leverage Data Analytics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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8. Keep Promises<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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9. Don\u2019t over-communicate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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10. Collaborate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n