How to properly support Customer Success Manager teams?

With the explosion of SaaS solutions in recent years, a new position has emerged, that of CSM. Its role is mainly to support prospects in their transition to becoming a user of the solution. This is the reference contact for the customer in the use of the product as well as in follow-up.

What is a Customer Success Manager (CSM)?

The main role of the customer success manager, also known as customer manager or customer service manager, is to ensure customer satisfaction, but also to develop their customer portfolio. Its task is therefore to create and maintain a good relationship between the customer and the brand/product. To do this, the CSM uses various pre- and post-sales loyalty strategies. The customer success manager is therefore a significant player in the development of the company.

What are the main missions of a CSM?

The CSM makes every effort to retain and develop the customer portfolio. To do this, he must establish a relationship of trust with customers and be in constant interaction with internal services (sales, product, marketing) to have a 360° vision and thus be able to anticipate his tasks to promote satisfaction. The CSM positions itself as a partner to its client and the spokesperson for the customer’s voice within its company.

To be recognized as a trusted partner by his client, the CSM needs to have an overview of his client, and to be able to plan and share his own actions.

However, here are the difficulties often encountered by CSMs even in the best structured companies

Need for synchronization regarding

• Pre-sales information to understand the customer’s journey to signature
• Interactions with sales to avoid misunderstandings
• Information regarding the product roadmap, the latest updates.
• Support interactions

With Kantree, you can synchronize workspaces to display existing data, for example the contract renewal date without needing to re-enter it and above all it will always be synchronized.

Need to follow the steps of a project

Monitor the progress of the project from signature: onboarding / training / run / lost

With Kantree, you will have a clear vision of the status of a project. Everything is customizable in Kantree, you choose the number and title of the reports.

Need to manage your daily to do

Within the same workspace or in a dedicated one, transversal view of tasks.

Need to report to the team manager

No additional work, the head of has access to a view that you define together.

In general, the duties of a CSM or Customer Success Specialist are very different in the job description:

• Train and support the customer in product/service management,
• Manage the company’s customer portfolio,
• Listen to customers to identify and respond to their needs,
• Develop a customer loyalty strategy,
• Collect feedback and analyze user experience to recommend improvements,
• Ensure customer development,
• Provide services to customers to improve their satisfaction (upselling or cross-selling),
• Manage customer complaints,
• Write reports and update customer accounts,
• Follow the action plan and analyze the results and KPIs,
• Coordinate and unify working groups, etc.

How to help a CSM in their daily work with Kantree?

Advanced SaaS companies have well-thought-out processes for customer lifecycle stages. Most companies do some sort of onboarding, some have structured methods they call acceptance or delivery phase, and most have their own account renewal methodology. The challenge is to plan in time the tasks incumbent on the CSMs for all of the tens, hundreds or thousands of customers that the sales team will recruit, such as for example launch meeting, holding internal review, contacting a new user, setting up an account, etc.

CRM type tools are not suitable for SaaS companies because they are often too complex and with administration not directly accessible as for Kantree (customization of structures, fields, display, etc.). A tool with proactive and adaptive capacity is needed to help CSM teams prioritize their daily tasks and be aware of the customer’s situation at all times.

Thanks to Kantree, you can have a single flow of events, such as last interactions with the sales department or the support department which thus avoids unnecessary entry, which gives a 360° view of your customers, all in a single and only solution.

It has been observed in the market that successful SaaS companies have developed their customer success methodology and linked it to a well-defined customer lifecycle. Churn rate doesn’t just depend on how much your customers use your product. Customer success requires account planning, successful onboarding, putting the right people in the right accounts, and ensuring users are engaged with your product. More importantly, it is about having a holistic view of customer health, where different dimensions (satisfaction, usage, integration, etc.) are put into context in relation to each other.