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Customer Success (Manager)

This isn’t a new role/department but is a part of Marketing and not many are aware of it. It is still nascent but picking pace in the tech sector due to the toughness in retaining existing customers. Every company looks to increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) and this department ensures it. In simple words, CLTV or CLV refers to the prediction of the net-profit earned through customer relationship. It involves the use of complex predictive analysis techniques.


A June 1 analysis of LinkedIn data found 14,523 open jobs in the United States for customer success managers, and nearly 6,000 more in other countries. What's striking is that right now, only about 62,000 LinkedIn members worldwide already carry that job title. So the posted appetite for new hires in customer success amounts to nearly a third of the current workforce in the field.


By now, you must be worrying what exactly is Customer Success (CS) and what kind of job is it and how different it is from Customer Support. So to be precise, CS deals with customers and testifies how well they are satisfied with the product they are using. This department ensures all its customers understand the product/solution completely, are satisfied and guides them on how to utilise it to its maximum. Regular surveys, emails, calls, texts etc. are exchanged between the company and the customers to measure their happiness quotient. They will work to increase adoption of the solution, ensure renewal and expansion of contracts and manage executive relations.


Presently, the customer success function within most organizations is embodied in the customer success manager (CSM) job title.

The CSM acts as a trusted advisor for the customer from the vendor side as well as bridge the gap between the customers and the vendors as they are the one ultimately responsible and accountable for that customer's success. The function may share many of the same functions of traditional account managers, relationship managers, project managers, and technical account managers, but their mode of operations tend to be much more focused on long-term value-generation to the customer. At its core, it is about maximizing the value the customer generates from utilizing the solutions of the vendor, while enabling the vendor the ability to derive high return from the customer value. To enable that, the CSM must monitor the customer's usage of and satisfaction from the solutions of the vendor, identify opportunities and challenges from the way the customer engages with the solution and take action to help resolve challenges and foster expansion of the usage as well as the value from the solutions (to both sides) over time.


In general customer support is reactive but customer success is proactive. Customers ask for support/service but here the company ensures it provides the best on its own without waiting for the customer to reach out. Hopefully by now you have an understanding what a CS Manger would be doing.


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