What are /r/CustomerSuccess' favorite Products & Services?

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Start by learning a bit about Customer Success, a good place to start would be by reading this book

Next you would want to look for companies hiring in your region, look for specific skills that they are looking for eg: tech, data analysis, sales etc. I would highly recommend brushing up your Excel skills.

Reach out to the CSM's already working in those companies via LinkedIn to know more about their day to day work, this should give you a lot of insights. Here you can also learn about the tools that they use and how they use it eg: Asana for Project Management, HubSpot or Pipedrive for CRM.

Get familiar with how CRM's work, analytics tools like Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, Tableau, etc. (you can do this by watching videos on YouTube) as CSM roles are highly data driven.

There are tons of free content online on CS, checkout gainsight.com they have high quality content.

Next, you'd want to create your resume tailored for CSM roles and start applying to those companies.

The initial transition might be a bit difficult but keep working on upgrading your skills and you'll get through eventually.

If you need any help feel free to DM, I'd be happy to help.

The CS team at Slack actually automated the creation of QBR decks through a really nifty Slack integration. It spits out a Google slide deck customized to your customer with all their usage data. https://slack.com/intl/en-ca/blog/productivity/slack-app-saves-sales-team-5000-hours-a-month

Start by learning a bit about Customer Success, a good place to start would be by reading this book

Next, you would want to look for companies hiring in your region, look for specific skills that they are looking for eg: tech, data analysis, sales, etc. I would highly recommend brushing up your Excel skills.

Reach out to the CSM's already working in those companies via LinkedIn to know more about their day to day work, this should give you a lot of insights. Here you can also learn about the tools that they use and how they use it eg: Asana for Project Management, HubSpot, or Pipedrive for CRM.

Get familiar with how CRM's work, analytics tools like Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, Tableau, etc. (you can do this by watching videos on YouTube) as CSM roles are highly data-driven.

There are tons of free content online on CS, check out gainsight.com they have high-quality content, follow blog posts by Lincoln Murphy.

Next, you'd want to create your resume tailored for CSM roles and start applying to those companies.

The initial transition might be a bit difficult but keep working on upgrading your skills and you'll get through eventually.

If you need any help feel free to DM, I'd be happy to help.

A general reading list I love to show people exists: Lincoln Murphy's Book List.

Right now I'm reading The Customer Support Handbook with my support team. While it's not focused on Success, I'm finding some of the learnings can be transferred to my Success team too.

Could you be more specific for process building? What sorts of processes do you want to build? What subject are you looking for best practices on?

Excellent article. Every modern business needs to know how to map their customer lifecycle, and to effectively identify every kind of customer, in order to provide a better experience, and therefore, maximize the results.

As you point out, when a business or organization is small, it is easier to keep track on your customers. However, when your business starts growing, things get a lot more complex, and you need to equip yourself with the best equipment in the market to make this work much easier to handle.

Many companies rely on legacy tools or help desk software, but truth is, they don't make things easier, and in many cases, they make things even harder to handle. A nightmare. You must avoid it at all cost.

Nonetheless, there are solutions that can help you to provide exceptional customer service and gather all the information necessary to map your customer lifecycle and come up with all the necessary solutions that your business needs. The most practical and powerful is Kayako... but why?

What makes it different? First off, it allows you to visualize your Customer Journey and check everything they have said and done. This is the most valuable information you can get, because it allows you to customize interactions to feel personal and create the solutions your business needs to grow.

Furthermore, it is very easy to use and to customize. You can adapt it to meet the needs and objectives of your organization. It is powerful, versatile and makes everything effortless to manage. That is why many companies use it and you will find great benefit in everything it has to offer you.

It is crucial to demonstrate the value of your product to your customers if you wish to retain them and make them loyal clients that will stick with what you offer and even go to the extend of defending it. That is the goal, and I think that your article nails it with actionable tips that anyone can translate to reality.

Furthermore, I also believe that bringing a good customer support service plays a role in how people perceive your company. If they feel that you are there only to take their money and then don't pay attention to their questions and inquiries, you will generate a negative feeling, and that's not good. That is why it is a good idea to invest in a proper customer support software for example Kayako, Intercom, Zendesk, etc. However, you should check out Kayako, because as of now, it is the preferred option by many important companies in many industries.

Live chat can be an incredible tool for boosting conversions and bringing a better support and experience to your customers, but as you point out, there are some mistakes that can completely ruin its purpose and make it backfire to you.

I believe that it all starts with choosing the right option. I know that "right" is kind of subjective, because the market has several solid options, but by that I mean something that will adapt to your business and workflow. For example, Kayako has its own Live Chat Tool, which is great, and I'm sure that it will be good for many businesses out there, however, for some others Olark will be better. For others, Intercom will be the ideal choice. It is a matter of sitting down, comparing and benchmarking and picking a winner.

Furthermore, adding some degree of personalization can be excellent for bringing a better experience. It is a trend nowadays and it yields solid results.

Finally, I'd like to mention how important it is not to be invasive, and it is great that you mentioned it. Some people believe that a live chat is another sales channel that they can use aggressively, but if you abuse of it, then it will backfire big time, and the outcome won't be nice.

Absolutely it's possible, especially if you are skilled at interpersonal connections. CS is about building relationships so if you can sell yourself and talk a little shop you'll get your foot in the door. Do research, lean about SaaS, read this book and create a LinkedIn profile of you don't already have one. I feel pretty confident that if you have charisma, your lack of experience in paper is irrelevant. I was asked to do CS, never heard of it before being offered an internal gig. I did CS for 1.5 years and now I'm a Product Manager. You can do this.

I'm glad people have found this comment fruitful. These resources have been advocated before on this sub before, but I highly recommend reading the following books:

https://www.amazon.com/Customer-Success-Innovative-Companies-Recurring/dp/1119167965/ref=sr_1_5?crid=BFFR1S4XDIFD&keywords=Customer+success&qid=1664000626&sprefix=customer+success%2Caps%2C84&sr=8-5 Is great to get a base understanding of Customer Success in today's market

https://www.amazon.com/Customer-Success-Professionals-Handbook-Careers_While/dp/1119624614/ref=sr_1_7?crid=GNQLPWDLEJ3F&keywords=Customer+success&qid=1664000658&sprefix=customer+success%2Caps%2C79&sr=8-7 Is the next in their series that goes into more detail on expected day-to-day activities of a CSM

These two books gave me a great foundation. They helped me understand the job better and gave me enough vocabulary to pass the interview:

- The Customer Success Professional's Handbook

- The Trusted Advisor

Look for a CS role in a company that services the banking industry. Your knowledge of that sector is what will give you the edge. Good luck.

🔥 Hey team! Nik here at http://welovenocode.com (0 => $3M ARR in a year) We are closing our $4m Seed round and looking for a Head of Customer Success to help us to get to $24M ARR within a year: https://airtable.com/shrsE56v17LWB6g2u

We offer a huge pile of stock options + competitive salary.

Interested? Just send me our CV/Linkedin profile to (I don’t read pm)

Don’t have it? Drop me your top-3 achievements

Have someone to recommend? Drop me with that person’s link and get $2k within 2 weeks if we end up hiring that person

Hubspot now has the option to not include that for certain email types.

Also, customer.io is the tool we use for communication that we don't allow customers to unsubscribe from, but you have to be careful with that for GDPR and other similar laws.

The knowledge is a great starting point and broad to cover customer success from a wide variety of industries. I would recommend their material but also recommend the book their CEO, Nick Mehta, wrote Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue. It definitely opened my eyes and shaped and solidified my view on the field even further as someone relatively new to the workforce and CS itself. It can definitely get repetitive, but at the same time, the points Mehta repeats are salient enough to be repeated.

In terms of the service itself, it's definitely helpful in my day to day and the only gripe I have with it is that I wish it integrated even better with SF and some things were less manual to input.

Such a difficult task, I feel the best moment to try to engage with them is exactly when they are trying to buy in your site, get to know them, try to re-engage them!
Check this out: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/vidiwise
Its free! Let me know if you feel could be valuable for this!

We are launching this feature on Product Hunt and would be great to receive your feedback

Does it make sense to your business?

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/froged-knowledge-base

THIS JUST IN!

Hey fellow CSers!

My company officially launched our Digital Adoption Platform, LOU, on ProductHunt this morning.

LOU is a turnkey solution that enables SaaS companies to boost engagement by streamlining user onboarding & training through code-free interactive tutorials.

We're offering an exclusive free one month trial for new users, so if you're serious about customer success and retention, then take a look:

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/interactive-tutorials-by-lou

Support, feedback and comments are welcome!

I believe you can use Zapier to connect your forms or client's information capture to google slides and create a copy and update your templates. https://zapier.com/apps/google-slides/integrations

if I may make a recommendation, I think this book does a pretty solid job. Since I read it, and started being transparent about renewing, expanding, and turning clients into advocates, I've maintained a 96% renewal rate and the highest on my team:
https://www.amazon.com/Never-Lose-Customer-Again-Lifelong/dp/0735220034

If you compare Zendesk and Freshdesk, you'll notice that the latter is an excellent alternative, especially in terms of a live chat system. It will help you resolve all the above-mentioned issues, but make sure that all its features suit your company's needs.

What is important to say is that Freshdesk's ticketing system has a helpful feature called Discuss Tab that allows team members to communicate directly withing a specific ticket. You can also create canned responses that will save you loads of time when replying to similar tickets.

These features may seem small, but they can really change the pace of your customer support. So, I recommend getting at least a free trial from Freshdesk to test it out.

Hello, from my experience HubSpot isn't good for Customer Success, that said, it's amazing for mkt, sales and customer support.

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What are you current needs? Because I don't see Salesforce as a potential candidates to solve Customer Success pain points.

As a Starting point I'd recommend Froged.com, maybe also Intercom or Crisp depending on your budget.

You can try froged.com out, they're quite new in the industry but doing an amazing job to build an entire platform focused on customer success and support. Also you have the other tools like Intercom, freshworks, etc...

I'd suggest you to use the polling option included in Slack by default, but it is very basic, and perhaps, it won't have the features you need to accomplish what you want. Therefore, I'd say that Google Forms is the way to go.

Nonetheless, you will have to mess around with coding and APIs to accomplish what you need, and things will get even harder if you ever need to automate processes, or let alone create workflows.

If you would like to make things easier, then I'd recommend you to use a Help Desk that allows automatic integration with apps like Google Forms, without having to deal with coding, especially if it allows you to set up automation and workflows easily.

For example, Kayako makes the process very easy thanks to Zapier, which allows you to integrate Google Forms and set up all the actions you need without writing a single line of code. You can automate all the processes you need and create the workflows your company requires easily.

It also allows you to integrate it with other apps, which will make it much easier to set up exactly what you need.

If you would like to get a custom demo to test it yourself (100% free), then you can claim it here: https://www.kayako.com/demo-request

I hope that helps!

I believe that most people would rather not mess up with custom dashboards, because most are not very technical-savvy, especially if we talk about open-source projects.

This is why many Help Desk software make it possible to customize dashboards without having to touch code at all, take Kayako as an example, which allows you to personalize your dashboards, reports and more without any coding knowledge. You can even integrate external apps, automate functions and create workflows.

However, I know that there are things that require a more technical and specialized approach (and will likely require someone well-versed to adapt your Help Desk software of choice), but as I said, most people don't really want to deal with that, especially those small business owners, early-stage startups or one-man operations who have to take care of Customer Support and Customer Success on their own.

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I understand you, because Tettra can get the job done, but it lacks many features that a proper Knowledge Base and Help Center need.

As you need sub-folders, and hence an easy way to structure your KB as you please, I'd recommend you a modern solution like Kayako, because its unified help desk system includes a Knowledge Base software that can do exactly what you need.

You will also like that it's been built especially for internal support, and yes, it is very intuitive, especially because its search bar auto-suggest content, so your agents have an easy time finding the articles they need.

Furthermore, it is very easy to set up, and you can personalize it aesthetically speaking.

In addition, it also includes a feedback system, which consists of comments and ratings, so you can evaluate the performance of your content in your KB. Its insightful reports will bring you exactly what you need to improve.

Finally, its editor is very easy to use and lets you customize everything with no problem at all. You can add media and attach files as you please, and yes, it is also very easy to update your articles, so you can keep your content up to date.

You can try it for free and even request your own custom demo right here: https://www.kayako.com/demo-request

I hope that helps!

Live chat is a must for every website, because it is an excellent way to bring immediate support and solve last-minute objections which can prevent customers from completing a purchase.

You wrote a very straightforward and helpful summary on what Kayako can do for any company. Speaking about its live chat software, it is easy to use for your customers, it is easy to customize and it is connected to the other support channels: email and social media, so you can track everything and bring cross-channel support with ease.

Its live chat is similar to the way your customers text their friends and family, so they will know how to use it right off the bat.

Furthermore, as you point out, it offers a superior advantage: it allows you to track the performance of your agents, to know where you can improve. This is excellent for improving the effectiveness of your live chat support. In addition, you can automate processes and set up workflows, and easily collaborate with your teammates, to deliver solutions in a fast and effortless way.

Also, it includes Customer's Journey, a feature that allows your agents to check everything your customers have done and said, to quickly address their problems and solve them as soon as possible.

You can give it a try for free right here, so you can check if it is what your business needs:

https://www.kayako.com/free-trial

I hope that helps!

Excellent article, thanks for sharing it.

Of course, there is always room for improvement and customer success is not the exception. All businesses in these modern times need to strive for excellence for a competitive edge, and your article nails it.

"Rules are made to be broken" - a bold statement, but it is true. Innovation is a must, and in the customer success department, it can take you to the next level, something that your customers will be grateful for. Because it is essential for providing a better service, and yes, it is also key for your business growth. It is something that many companies, regardless of their industry, are beginning to note: Customer Success is a must, not an option.

As you point out, every single customer is different. Therefore, it is important to understand them, and even better if you have tracked their history: things they have done and things they have said.

That is why it is essential to equip your website with a help desk software that allows you to do so. I'm sure you must have heard of Kayako, which in my opinion, is the best solution out there. To make it even better, you can get a 100% free 14-day trial by visiting the following link: https://www.kayako.com/free-trial so you can try it without risking anything. It is totally free.

Technology is essential for innovation, and it is what is needed to make Customer Success even more successful. To expand you need to retain your client base, you are right on it, and that is why it is essential to invest in Customer Success, because it is what will allow you to understand your clients better and engage them in the right way.

You can also use a software that allows you to manage all the aspects of customer support, and that includes routing customer support tickets to the most appropriate persons in your team.

This is where the battle begins: what software to use? There is a wide myriad of options in the market, so it can be tricky to choose one, but worry not, because I can recommend you one in specific and it is Kayako. But why? Because they have a strong presence in the industry, several years of experience and solid products for customer support service.

I believe that you can connect the great tips in that article with the software solutions of Kayako for a smooth and practical solution.

Customer support is such an important area in any business, and these tips are great, because saving even only a few seconds can make a huge difference, especially the bigger your company is.

Using autoresponders is a great hack to save time, and depending on how you set it up, you can end up saving even more than 30 seconds, but as I can see, that mark is only an average.

Sending proactive notices is another magnificent way to save time, because you will make things clear right off the bat, and therefore, avoid answering questions or inquiries that you could have solved with a timely-sent proactive notice.

Finally, sending automatic follow-ups on the status of a ticket, so you can check if the customers found the solution to their problem, is another way to save time and make your customer support service smooth and easy.

I also believe that add a customer support tool can be of great help, because you need a software capable of automating processes and making it easy for your team to serve your customers.

Intercom is good, but it has some serious flaws: the load times from page to page is slow and setting up automated emails, you will find that it is a real challenge to do it. It is also worth it to consider that it is hard to send manual messages and the cost will increase considerably as your contact volume grows.

Finally, regarding the cons, it is important to mention that the analytics need some serious attention, because they don't work properly, and if you can't track, then you can't find out what's working and what's not.

That is why this article on the 13 best Intercom alternatives is spot on, because it allows people to explore other options in the market that do better than it in key departments, be it load speed, automation, etc.

For example, Kayako is a great alternative to Intercom, because it is very fast, it is easy to customize, it has excellent automation features and it can adapt to the needs of any business, so it is an excellent option. I like Kayako because it has been engineered to make things run as smoothly as possible, so your customer support team can assist your customers as soon as possible. Furthermore, its tracking is amongst the best in the industry.

Customer Success can make a huge difference in your company, because the absence of it, of such a helpful ideology, will prevent your business from growing, because we are living in different times.

I think that one of the main components in accomplishing the goals of Customer Success is incorporating software that allows you to serve your customers and meet all the requirements of your business. That is why every modern company should invest in Customer Success Software, because it makes things easy, smooth and practical.

I like that this ideology focus on real fact: customers are different than before, they have far more options than years ago and businesses are at higher risk than before, and therefore, customer success must be a priority.

I took the time to read your article, and I'd like to say that I agree on several points.

I like how you included a section dedicated to how to deal with clients when they turn angry and sour. It is easy to commit many mistakes when this happens, but those tips are a strong foundation to know how to react. I think that every company, either big or small, should give that a read and share it with its workers in the customer support department.

It is also good that you remarked how important it is to evolve from 9 to 5 to 24*7, because customer support needs to be active all the time. That is why you need some degree of automation, so you can incorporate canned responses, automatic messages, etc. Kayako is a good solution, in my opinion, and also their self-service help desk, so your customers can get help even if one is online or if they don't want to talk.

Finally, I also like how you put emphasis on how important it is to avoid social media blunders and how to avoid them. All in all, a solid article, thanks for sharing!

Here is a pretty good overview.

There isn't going to be a "silver bullet." It's a highly contextual thing to your business and a continuous process.

Each quarter I pick one part of onboarding to improve as a project and focus on the thing I think would deliver the most value if we improved it.

Sure!

I'm a big fan of something called The Theory of Constraints, it dovetails with being a Servant Leader. The basic premise is to identify your team's constraints and work to increase capacity at the constraints through automation, streamlining efficacy, or hiring more people.

In Ops, you should focus on automation and streamlining efficiency.

Ask your team managers and the front-line employees "What's the thing you're spending the most time on?", then focus on making that thing take less time. Once you're done, ask what's the new thing they are spending the most time on, rinse, repeat!

Sometimes you will find things that you can't reduce time spent on but, if that happens, then consider asking for a new hire to be made to increase capacity.

That's the basic concept, read a book called The Goal to help explain. It's not a really well-written book but the framework can help give you a process for continuous improvement.

On a more tactical level, there are three things Ops should always work to be top notch on:

• Risk (Identification, Documentation, and Resolution)
• Account Management
• The Customer Journey

Welcome to the CS world ! :-) there is a lot of documentation on that topic and it can be very much time consuming to connect all the dots indeed. So I've just published a reference handbook with examples and actionable items to help novice people like you break into Customer Success, specifically.

Take a look and let me know if I can be of any further help !

There is no right or wrong path to break into Customer Success, and you don't need to have a prior CS experience to become a Customer Success Manager. However, you must have some fundamental soft skills and a customer-centric mindset to succeed.

Rather than applying to anything/everything, I'd suggest you to focus on your strengths and skills, then target industries/roles where you could apply these skills in practical very quickly.

This would allow you to stand out from the crowd with the specific job you're interviewing for.

I've covered these topics in detail with examples in my recent book "How to Become a Customer Success Manager", if you wanted to take a look !

That's a poorly managed candidate experience ! And it's definitely not common !

As in Customer Success, the hiring process must also be a "customer-centric", focused on the candidates' experience, from the 1st interaction to the Onboarding and beyond!

Don't take it personally and move on to the next opportunity - just further assess the company culture and mindset first (glassdoor, linkedin, social media, etc.)

I've just published my book about how to break into Customer Success to make the switch and become a CSM that would be of further help. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09G35B727

Check out this book that helps handles things like negotiation/conflict. This can help you pinpoint an approach you’ve likely already used but position in a way that references this highly loved book in CS https://www.amazon.com/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-Depended/dp/0062407805

Start by learning a bit about Customer Success, a good place to start would be by reading this book

Next, you would want to look for companies hiring in your region, look for specific skills that they are looking for eg: tech, data analysis, sales, etc. I would highly recommend brushing up your Excel skills (there are some really good courses for this on Coursera).

Reach out to the CSM's already working in those companies via LinkedIn to know more about their day to day work, this should give you a lot of insights. Here you can also learn about the tools that they use and how they use it eg: Asana for Project Management, HubSpot, or Pipedrive for CRM.

Get familiar with how CRM's, analytics tools like Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, Tableau, etc. works (you can do this by watching videos on YouTube) as CSM roles are highly data-driven.

There are tons of free content online on CS, check out gainsight.com they have high-quality content, follow blog posts by Lincoln Murphy.

Next, you'd want to create your resume tailored for CSM roles and start applying to those companies.

The initial transition might be a bit difficult but keep working on upgrading your skills and you'll get through eventually.

If you need any help feel free to DM, I'd be happy to help.

Before I started in Customer Success, I read Nick Mehta's book (CEO of Gainsight, which is CS software) https://www.amazon.com/Customer-Success-Innovative-Companies-Recurring/dp/1119167965

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I found it to read more aspirational than tactical, but the nuts and bolts are really valuable.