Who are customer success managers?

Customer success is one of the most dynamic and diverse fields that I’m aware of. At least within Edtech, Customer Success covers a wide range of titles including: 

1. Customer Success Manager

2. Customer Success Representative

3. Customer Success Coordinator

4. Customer Support Manager

5. Client Success Manager

6. Account Success Representative

(and there are a ton more than just these)

 

The other things that make this career field so interesting is that the responsibilities vary as much between roles and companies as the titles. For example

– Customer Success Manager (CSM) at company A may be expected to a product expert and serve as a training and implementation partner for a customer/district/account

– while a CSM at company B functions more as a business development representative while listening to pain points that could be met with add ons from the company’s suite of services and products

– while a CSM at company C may function more as a liaison between the customer/district/account and critical partners within the company, like support, sales, and product. 

 

A dive into job descriptions

EdTech

Using this job search, I pulled 7 Customer Success positions from the EdTech space. 

Some examples include:

  • “Build strong relationships with faculty and administrators”
  • “Consult with instructors on implementation and curriculum design”
  • “Drive and support pilots across the territory”
  • “Collaborate with sales teams on State and Local District submissions to ensure all materials are complete”
  • “work in a team to convert potential customer into paying customer”
  • “Evaluate and analyze customer needs and build trust and transparency with clients”
  • “Manage and grow existing clients and partnerships”

Mixed Careers

To compare EdTech against Customer Success in other fields, I used this job search. I pulled 8 Customer Success positions from a wide variety of fields – anything from a talent management agency to a warehouse management company to a soft services (sanitizing and lab services) agency. 

Some examples include:

  • “Work with clients to take them from a foundational understanding of the technology and grows them into master users”
  • “Explore and find creative solutions to meet our users’ needs”
  • “Deliver positive customer experience by focusing on excellence in communication, process, and compliance”
  • “Review customer orders for accuracy to ensure information is accurate for billing and account requirements”
  • “Identify, trouble-shoot and escalate any tool/platform-related technical issues and find solutions in partnership with internal teams to drive engagements forward”
  • “Drive retention and growth among our most valuable customer by understanding their business needs and helping them succeed”
  • “Collaborate closely with Sales to support pilot customer, renewals, and expansion opportunities”

Sound kind of familiar? 

While there may be some more technical responsibilities on the Mixed Careers list (at least that was my impression) – these jobs, when aggregated seem very similar in spread. Just bear in mind that the difference between some of the job responsibilities can be pretty intense.  (s

Visual Learner?

Compare the two images. The word clouds are the responsibilities list that I fed into a word cloud generator. Despite a little bit of jargon that might be unknown to a layperson on the Mixed Careers side of things, the image is nearly identical (minus the color palette.) 

EdTech Word Cloud

Mixed Careers Word Cloud

Do they need a portfolio?

Let's ask ourselves some important qualifying questions.

Does this job have content creation as a focus? 

No. 

Unless the position or type of Customer Success you’re applying to is very niche, I have yet to come across a Customer Success field that is heavy into content creation. More often than not they may curate content or support as an SME or maybe as a critical member of an SOP creation team but in terms of generation content I never did that in CS, and I don’t know anyone in CS that does that as a primary function of their role. (I did take a lot of notes when I was in CS but I would not count that as content creation.)

Should someone applying to this job highlight a process they’ve created? 

Maybe. 

But more likely someone working in CS is supporting in creating a process or weighing in on the outcome or effects of a procedure and not directly righting processes and procedures themselves. 

This might be different for someone going into an upper management Customer Success role or someone going into some kind of internal Customer Success onboarding role (though I would class that as an L&D role and not CS).

Is this a job for which you should highlight any work (i.e. publications, blogs, podcasts, creative materials, etc.) that they’ve already created? 

Probably not. 

That isn’t to say that if you have a blog or podcast that it wouldn’t be helpful but I wouldn’t go out of your way to create one. 

Now that we've established that they probably DO NOT need a portfolio, what's should they do instead?

If you don’t need a portfolio, what can you do to showcase your field-readiness instead? 

1. Identify hard skills and technology certifications that demonstrate field-readiness

Look at what kinds of technologies you’ll be expected to use. 

I’m willing to bet you’ll need to know a CRM like Salesforce and probably a Customer Success CRM extension like Gainsight. 

You’ll probably also need to know some kind of ticketing system like Zendesk. 

You’ll also probably need to know how to navigate a project management tool like Jira, Asana, Trello, Monday, or Click-up. 

If you’re planning on applying to a couple of specific companies and happen to know that their CSMs are product experts, learn about their products and see if they offer certs. 

Any kind of certificates, badges, or courses that you can (the freer the better!) and add to your LinkedIn or other social profiles help make you a stronger candidate. It lets a hiring manager know that you should be just that much easier to onboard. 

Cautionary tip: it can be really tempting to jam all those courses on your resume or CV – don’t. Add the really beefy meaningful ones. Otherwise, make them available on your public facing profiles, maybe even make a link on your resume to a place where they’re all aggregated for ease of access but do not add a whole page to your resume for your 120 certs. 

2. Post about your using a company’s product or service innovatively 

Want to be a stand out, particularly to a small company? Post about how your using their materials and tag the company. You never know who’s monitoring their social account and everyone loves to hear that their product is doing good out in the world. Frame your experience through the lens of Customer Success and explain how this product has worked for your and your team, your students, your parents, etc. You can even turn it into a series – though for the sake of pestering, I would spread posts out so that you aren’t tagging a company 3 times a week or something like that. 

3. Your Resume

The tried true method: your resume. Use your past experiences and metrics to show that you have the chops to make it in the realm of Customer Success – because you do. Customer Success is all about forging relationships, identifying needs, bridging gaps, keeping people happy while you solve a problem, and ultimately repeating that cycle. Teaching has a lot of analogous features but it’s up to you to show, via your resume, metrics, and skills, how your experience in the classroom has prepared you to translate your ability to support students, parents, and educators into the ability to support customers and accounts. 

Think you might need some support creating or working on your portfolio?

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