Leadership in Customer Success Operations demands a unique blend of skills. Uncover the five essential qualities that can transform an ordinary CS Ops leader into an extraordinary one, driving both team performance and customer satisfaction to new heights.
There is a lack of clarity and standardization of hiring requirements, guidelines, and experience. As a result, details often overlap and can seem confusing.
There is no one path to most positions in CS. While every company is different with varied needs, Gainsight is always working towards industry standardization.
The Asset of Listening
As a CS Ops professional, you must be permanently poised to listen and learn from your customers and team.
- You must be able to understand them through a compassionate perspective and act accordingly on the insight provided, even when you don’t have direct contact with customers
- Learn from your intuitive sense and all other inputs to help the customer, team, organization, and company
Leadership
Establish team structure and create a tier system for existing customers
- Enable CSM by providing them with tools, resources, materials, and data to help them become more effective
- Define customer success objectives, strategy, and tactics and then implement those processes that scale
Systems and Data
Establish a systemized way to capture your customer’s data
- Use the data produced by the system to tell a story about your customers
- Communicate past results, renewals, and upsell forecasts to executives above and below you
- Have an absolute understanding of the Customer Lifecycle
- Be informed to recommend and determine the timing and content of touchpoints for CSMs along the customer journey
Characteristics of a True CS Ops Professional
Passion for being in the trenches
- Need to be willing to dig into complex operations and get their hands dirty
- Be a transparent and commanding communicator
- Have strong listening skills and openness to input from other team members and departments
Communication
You will need to uncover the priorities and preferences of leaders across functions and up and down the hierarchy, and then gather insights to inform them
- The ability to distill data and make process recommendations will test the communication skills of even the most eloquent leaders
- While your CS leaders are your most important stakeholders, you’ll want to establish strong rapport with your onboarding team in short order
- With regards to external communications, you will have to coordinate 1:Many information delivery
