I talk A LOT about Customer Success, specifically around Customer Success Management but there are other options that I want to share with you.
No, I don't want you to give up on your hopes and dreams of getting into Customer Success, I want you to have as much information as possible when making decisions.
Just like in Sales, you may have an SDR, Sales Ops, AE's, etc., you'll find a handful of roles in Customer Success. In this post, I want to highlight some of those roles in a way that gives you a quick foundation. If anything piques your interest, go out there and start doing more research.
What other jobs can you do in Customer Success?
⚠️ Roles may be defined differently across different organizations ⚠️
In some instances, the CSM is doing all of these roles to some degree. That's why it's important to ask good questions during your interview so you know what you're getting into.
Let's dive into each role:
Implementation Manager/Onboarding
Implementation Managers or Onboarding Managers are responsible for helping a customer get set up with the tool/service the company offers. More than just setting up, they have to focus on things like change management and adoption.
They are just as customer-facing as a Customer Success Manager is but they work in a project format. There is an end goal in sight (get the customer to successfully implement the tool) whereas, in Customer Success, the partnership has no end date.
Important skills:
Empathy
Change Management
Project planning
Communication (internally and externally)
Professional Services
This is one role that I've heard come up over and over again over the past year. Professional Services is the team that helps customers build!
Let's say you use a BI (Business Intelligence) tool like Mode and you want to get some dashboards up but you don't have the knowledge of building queries. There may be a Professional Services team that can build it for you! This is a great role if you're technical and like building.
Important skills:
Problem-solving
Project Planning
Communication (internally and externally)
Renewal Manager
The title pretty much sums it up for us. The Renewal Manager is someone who owns the renewal process. They are responsible for communicating with customers about the renewal, they are trained to expand the account and negotiate contracts.
This role is great if you're coming from a Sales background and want to focus on delivering value. From what I've seen, there's a component of that within the RMs role, it's not just about money talk.
Important skills:
Negotiation skills
Building relationship quickly
Be a "closer" - these conversations can drag on sometimes
Customer Success Ops
Customer Success Ops is responsible for many things within a CS org, let's call them "the glue". As a company starts adding new tools and starts asking for specific data points, the need for Customer Success Ops will surface.
CS Ops is responsible for setting up tools and maintaining them. For example, if you add a new Customer Success Platform like Catalyst, CS Ops will be the program manager of the setup and they'll be there for ongoing building and maintenance. They also have to know about data so learning things like SQL doesn't hurt.
Important skills:
Tracking data/ reporting on metrics
Building workflows and systems that are adopted by the team
Project management
Where can you find these roles?
Everywhere really 🙃
I made a YouTube video on this topic recently, check it out. If you need a shortcut, I highly recommend going directly to LinkedIn to check out some job descriptions.