Customer Success Team Roles and Responsibilities

When you imagine Customer Success (CS), people who contact you when you need support about a product or service are popping into your mind, right? It shouldn’t! The CS team does so much more! They are involved in creating sustainable customer relationships, enabling customers to get maximum benefits from a given product, and ensuring they are happy to continue using it. 

We will explain the function of a customer success team and why every one of those particular roles and responsibilities is important, and describe how this organization may vary depending on the size of the enterprise and the segment of the economy the enterprise belongs to.

The role of the customer success team

The members of the CS team build and maintain different kinds of customer relations. The team values customer value and customer satisfaction to improve the communication of the value delivery system. While the sales department only targets clients, the support department only aims to persuade customers to continue using the company’s products by handling challenges as they arise. CS is proactive and seems to query how success can be achieved before working on it from the customer acquisition level.

Customer success teams typically focus on three main pillars:

• Product adoption—Educating customers on how to use the product and initial and subsequent training to allow them to understand how to use the product optimally.
• Customer maintenance—Watching customers’ needs and searching for possible problems and ways to make them happier.
• Growth and advocacy—Foster relationships that lead to brand ambassadors, creating a pool of references for cases, tests, and referrals.

The importance of having a diverse team

Customer needs vary widely depending on industry, size, and use case. That’s why a CS team needs to consist of diverse competencies and approaches to the work performed. By being eclectic, team members can recognize and solve various customer issues. CS requires people with different skills, which can be obtained through previous experience in sales, marketing support, data analysis, and product development. These skills enable the CS team to serve different segments of customers.

What’s the difference between customer success and support/service

There is a common misconception of customer success, which is associated with customer support or service teams. However, they have different functions. Here’s a quick breakdown:

• Customer success is about playing offense, not defense. CS teams are more concerned with the length of a firm’s relationship with users, customers’ uptake of its products and usage. It means those organizations interact with customers in every stage of their life cycle and assist them in attaining continuous success.
• Customer support is reactive. Several support teams come in handy when something has gone wrong with consumers' expectations. They work to solve and fix specific issues but also need to follow up and interact with the customer after the problem has been dealt with.
• The sales concept is mainly concerned with acquisition. Sales professionals generate sales and ensure they create and clinch business deals. However, they can affiliate with CS to discover potential upsells; they are majorly concerned with acquiring new customers for the company.

Reviewing these differences gives you a perspective on how customer success fits a business. Now, let’s examine the various positions in a customer success team.

Key roles in a Customer Success team

A CS team can consist of several positions with specific corresponding tasks. Here are some of the most common positions and what they bring to the table:

1. Chief Customer Officer (CCO)

The CCO is the most senior officer in an organization that is mandated with the responsibility of managing customer related matters. They share the responsibility of the customer at the executive level that make sure the customer success strategies reflect the goals of the firm. The main function of CCO is also the direction of the current and future activities of CS as well as the support of its customer-oriented goals.

Key responsibilities:

• Strategic leadership: Ensures that the CS team understands the organization’s goals and objectives. They specialize in creating and enhancing plans to attain, encourage, and maintain customer loyalty, retention, and advocacy.
• Customer advocacy: Supports activities that enhance the customer experience. They could work closely with other departments, such as product, marketing, and sales, so customer feedback should be considered.
• Overseeing the CS department: Comprises recruiting the team, developing appropriate human resources, and training or mentoring the staff within the CS department. They pay attention to department performance and make an effort to enhance that.
• Driving customer-centric strategies: Sponsor a customer orientation in the organization. Cultivators strive to build a unifying goal of customer success, and this mindset permeates an organization.

2. Customer Success Manager (CSM)

Customer Success Managers, or CSMs, are the general advocates for customers. Relations with customers are also very close, being more than a vendor-customer relationship—they help customers achieve better results with the help of the product and attend to any aspects that may be needed. CSMs are involved in introducing health checks, anniversaries, upgrade sales, and customer orientation by creating a plan to unlock the full potential of the customer’s value.

Key responsibilities:

• Onboarding new customers: Takes responsibility for onboarding since customers need support to commence. This could be individual or group training, help installing equipment, or the first plans for proceeding.
• Monitoring customer health: Monitors customers' activity, looking for when they are satisfied or dissatisfied enough to leave. It is usually done by using tools to track usage activity, satisfaction ratings, and other signs of "customer health."
• Proactive engagement: Proactively tackles all relevant issues through check-ins. They look for areas for improvement and try to improve the customer’s experience.
• Renewals and upsells: Renewals discussions and searching for more ways to sell new products or offer customer-related services. They endeavour to make their customers happy and satisfied so that they will embrace the business relationship that is being fostered.

3. Onboarding/Implementation Specialist

The Onboarding Manager or Implementation Specialist confirms to the satisfaction of the new customers who they are and how to get a hold of the product. They are beneficial in the lower part of the customer’s journey as they help customers configure what they have bought and make sure the customer gets value-added almost immediately.

Key responsibilities:

• Initial setup and configuration: Helps install the product according to the customer’s taste. This might involve configuring the tool, transferring data from another application, or customizing the tool with other applications.
• Training and education: Provides information to help customers understand how to utilize the product. This may include instructions on how to do a specific thing, training on using the software, and even videos or written material that describes how it works.
• Reaching value milestones: Assists customers in achieving value rapidly and guides them through defining their services and accomplishing early goals. This minimizes the early churn rate and sets the groundwork for a good business partnership.

4. Customer Success Operations (CS Ops)

The Customer Success Operations or CS Ops is behind the scenes, supporting the processes, data, and tools of the CS Team. They enable effective working of the CS team while offering such information that can help improve the customer experience.

Key responsibilities:

• Managing CS tools and technology: Makes sure that the CS team’s tools that are selected and deployed are fully assigned correctly. Such things as CRM systems, customer health check systems, and automation fall under this category.
• Reporting and analytics: Responsible for monitoring customer health score, churn rate and or customer satisfaction score. They use it to provide information and to assist the CS team in making decisions.
• Process improvement: Determines how to minimize time spent on tasks, erase time losses in awakening repetitive tasks, and, overall, assist the CS team become much more efficient. The awareness that efficiency gains can be achieved frees the CS team to expand in consonance with the pace of the overall developing business.

5. Account Manager (AM)

The AM and CSM functions are sometimes merged, but in organizations with greater complexity, AMs are responsible for the commercial side of the customer relationship. They interact with customers to renew customers’ contracts, sell more, and take up new business to reinforce the customer’s loyalty to products.

Key responsibilities:

• Managing commercial relationships: Handles the financial side of the overall customer relationship. They are, for example, accountable for managing renewals, negotiating contracts, and maintaining discussions on pricing.
• Identifying expansion opportunities: Identifies opportunities to develop relationships when working closely with customers. This may include offering extra features or convincing the customer to buy another product.
• Collaboration with CSMs: Manages the relationship at a higher strategic level while CSMs are responsible for continuing to interact with customers. This helps create a positive perception of the product in customers’ eyes and makes them willing to invest more.

Evolving roles in customer success

As customer needs and expectations evolve, so do the roles in CS. Here are a few emerging roles:

• Customer success engineer: This technical role is associated with seamlessly integrated and bespoke customers with application scenarios beyond the ins and outs.
• Community manager: They are active players in communities created for users. They stimulate user activity, usually moderate user groups, provide communities, host or coordinate webinars and collect users.
• Customer engagement manager: They develop and manage customer relationships, individualized communication, and advertising.

The potential impact of AI and automation on CS teams

Artificial intelligence is no longer a theoretical concept for today—it actively shapes the tendencies of customer success in companies. AI keeps CS teams from being stuck in mundane, basic tasks while they work on important, high-priority ones instead. Also, it can provide more detailed information about consumers’ features to help CS teams analyze their needs and prevent potential concerns.

• Automated customer health monitoring: One of the customer success team's primary and most essential tasks is the health check. Previously, CSMs needed to schedule contacts with customers, estimate their usage data and search for any signs of customer disappointment or inactivity. Now, many intelligent tools can constantly track customers’ health by detecting product usage, submitted ticket frequency, and engagement levels.
• Personalized customer engagement: Most customers expect customized and precisely targeted communication. Emerging technologies in artificial intelligence enable organizations to offer unique customer touchpoints at scale.
• Enhanced onboarding experiences: Onboarding is one of the essential phases of the customer cycle. AI can improve this process by offering tailor-made onboarding experiences based on the customer's profile, industry, and use case.
• Customer sentiment analysis: Customer satisfaction is critical for relationship management, but it is difficult to capture customers’ emotional experiences from written feedback. AI can analyze customer data from tickets, surveys, and social media posts to determine the overall sentiment and trends.

Best practices for structuring your CS team

You should understand your customers' journey well to build an excellent strategy. Here are several best practices to consider when structuring your CS team:

1. Define roles based on your company’s needs and customer base.

The first step is to analyze your customer journey and identify potential key touch points. Small businesses require fewer generalists than large businesses. At Flowla, there is one person who is solely in charge of all communication between the company and its customers. This person works with the product team and with the company’s CEO. These strategies can be operational or tactical, strategic, or shared across divisions in the interest of the customer.

2. Leverage AI and automation for efficiency.

Simple software tools such as Flowla can be significant assets to the CS team since they help with effective management of the workload by freeing up time that would otherwise be spent on carrying out mundane tasks while at the same time providing artificial intelligence suggestions on the best course of action. Through onboarding, follow-ups and customer health monitoring, Flowla Autopilot enables CS professionals to optimize and spend most of their time on more strategic and differential work. Self-service leads to more personal and standardized customer communications, which are challenging to achieve with increased workloads in CS teams.

3. Encourage cross-training and flexibility.

In small teams, cross-training is a critical technique because there will always be times when team members will have to work according to each other’s prescriptions. This flexibility helps the team meet customer requirements when they arise while encouraging people to share their skills. Cross-training also enables one team member to learn the various aspects of others, thus enhancing overall team cohesiveness and organization.

4. Invest in scalable technology.

As a customer base increases, scaling becomes necessary to sustain good results. Technological tools will help outbound and enable CS teams to deal with growing customers while maintaining quality. Platforms like Flowla offer tools that support CS teams in managing larger customer volumes without sacrificing quality. For instance, Flowla’s digital sales rooms enable you to replicate your onboarding, sales, or CS room for different companies with one click.

5. Prioritize customer feedback and data-driven decisions.

The routine collection of feedback can help improve the existing and future CS plans. Feedback surveys, supporting interactions, and measures such as NPS or customer satisfaction should be conducted live. Revenue Intelligence at Flowla gives you a clear vision of what is going on regarding leveraging them and enhancing your operations. The customer feedback loop should always be present to fulfil the customer's needs and communicate with the core CS team.

6. Maintain a customer-centric culture across the organization.

Customer success has to be adopted and applied best as a culture within an organization. Stimulate cooperation between the CS team and practically all other organizational subdivisions, including sales, marketing, and product divisions, as this would assist in developing strategies based on the customer data collected. When everyone in the organization pays attention to the customer's needs, it is possible to achieve the organization's goal, which is to ensure the customer's satisfaction.

Conclusion

Core components of a good customer success model are customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty. By spending time and effort to properly structure your team and define responsibilities for each memeber, incorporating automation where possible, businesses can build a CS organization that can handle customers’ interactions at all stages.

Tools like Flowla can take your team to a new level of productivity and help customers succeed with your product. So, when investing your money in the CS team and the right tools and applications, believe you are keeping the customers and making them loyal to the extent of contributing to the company’s success.