What do you love most about Customer Success?

I love the change management aspects of CS particularly in the enterprise and am drawn to the strategic nature of helping customers achieve their business objectives with a given product. At its core, CS is a value-driven function where the team’s directive is to help customers achieve success and realize value, serving as the human bridge between people and technology. When I led sales teams, I coached my teams on things like objection handling, discovery, boosting pipeline, converting best cases to commit deals, and negotiation. That was great but I really enjoy coaching CSMs on figuring out the puzzle pieces to drive customers to adoption, maturity, and value and mitigating risks along the way.

What programs did you roll out at Zendesk or Slack that had the most significant impact on the business? Why was that?

One that was essential in our early days at Slack was our voice of the customer programs such as our Product Gaps program, where CSMs, AEs and SEs could surface prioritized feedback from our customers to our Product leadership. The impact of this early on was huge given we were launching our first iteration of our Enterprise Grid product and learned an incredible amount from our customers directly about what they needed. Cementing a strong loop and partnership between Go To Market and Product was a competitive differentiator for  Slack. One of the core jobs of CS is to advocate for the customer and bring their voice into the room to shape the product roadmap.

What elements of the CS go-to-market particularly changed as you shifted your attention towards enterprise customers?

CS positioning has to evolve upmarket to meet more demanding customer expectations. First, enterprise customers need more than out of the box CSM support and so CS teams need to enhance their CS go to market to include paid, bespoke ProfServ packages and scale that with SI partners.  Second, the core out of the box CSM offering also has to evolve upmarket; it’s important to be crystal clear on what the high impact activities are that CSMs should focus on that will best support the enterprise. Last, there’s operational changes such as global account management frameworks and Premium Support offerings with heightened SLAs, dedicated reps, and real-time technical support for triaging bugs, incidents and outages.  

How did CSMs need to evolve in moving from supporting SMB/MM customers and into Enterprise? 

For individual CSMs, there’s a huge shift in the CS motion. Downmarket, there’s some focus on single handedly being the product expert to drive forward use cases and best practices. Upmarket, you shift into a strategic partnership role where your job is to understand the customer’s business, landscape and challenges and co-create a roadmap for how to meet their goals. For the enterprise, this often means you have multiple success plans happening across different stakeholders and departments you’re working with within a company or even across subsidiaries. You build relationships with senior executives like CIOs and VPs, and work to create more embedded multi-threaded stakeholder maps and drive increasing value stories across that enterprise. You become a quarterback internally at your company to champion the customer’s needs and rally resources and true team selling across Product/Engineering, sales, ProfServ, execs etc.

How has diversity shaped your experience in Sales & Customer Success? 

It is a huge part of my experience! Early in my career, I was often the only Asian, or one of few women, or one of few people of color on my team and sometimes in the CS org. There were many obstacles I overcame in my journey. I believe diversity enhances a team and is also everyone’s responsibility to improve and own. For my part, I am committed to being part of change and spend 10% of my time every month dedicated to enhancing D&I. I started Slack’s programs for women and people of color in sales and outside of Slack, I lead a community called the Society for Asians in Sales & Success. I mentor for SV Academy which is brining underrepresented minorities in entry level CSM roles.

What is one thing Sales & Customer Success professionals can do to create a more inclusive environment?

First, don’t shy away from recognizing you and your team have room to grow here. I find sales leaders can be sensitive on this topic. Everyone inherently understands diversity is important and will say it verbally, but some may feel that’s enough and become sensitive when pushed on this. Let’s call out the facts that sales is historically firstly, a white male dominated industry and secondly, a field influenced by existing relationships and rolledexes. We are primed to be exclusive as a field, so you have to own the mirror and spot where the gaps are and who is not in the room. Be comprehensive and look across all planes at how you are doing in leadership roles, entry level roles, and internal promotion, development and retention. Second, diversity is absolutely not exclusive to gender. When you solve for D&I by solely focusing on adding more or promoting more women, you bandaid over the deepest and largest challenges in diversity. It’s easier to talk about gender and it’s harder to talk about race, sexual orientation, etc. Third, we’re in sales so we should be following our own playbook- set targets/goals, create a roadmap with playbooks and plans, and report and discuss how you’re doing regularly. Anything less is not meeting our potential as a field for the type of execution, urgency, and ambition that sales & cs professionals are capable of.

What advice would you give to someone interested in pursuing a career in Customer Success? 

If you’re trying to enter customer success, find CS mentors who can help you shape your narrative and lean into your relevant strengths. Look for CS roles where your current experience, industry and SME domain may be a value add to the company. For example, if you have an analytical bent, consider companies that create analytics solutions. Or if you have worked with a lot of Automotive businesses and understand that space, look for a company that has a gap serving that market. If you don’t have relevant experience, read CS job postings and build towards taking on roles that will lead to those requirements and skills.