Navigating your career in Customer Success

Only a few years ago there was only one role in the customer success world, Customer Success Manager. But as things have evolved and success has become more specialized, a bunch of new roles have popped up in this space. To talk about how to navigate your career in the customer success world, we invited Rachel Provan, Customer Success Director at Doodle to join us. Rachel shares her views on specialization CS roles, the most common challenges her mentees face in companies and what is the future of CSMs. Is it true that they could be the next CEO’s? Listen now to get a glimpse of the new expanding market of customer success and catch some tips on how to join it!

Jump straight into:

(00:55) - Who is Rachel Provan? Her role at Doodle and her favorite movie for rainy days - “What I really love about it is that the focus is not just on scheduling meetings, but really on owning your time and that's something that it's easy for us to lose during the pandemic.”

(03:59) - An exciting time for new specialist roles in customer success - “People are finally starting to understand the value that it's not just about making your customers happy, it actually drives value and drives revenue.”

(06:10) - Some advice for people starting out in this sector - “There are so many different paths to take and I think something that's really important to point out is that you're not limited just because you're not a generalist.”

(08:39) - Some of the most common challenges for CS mentees in new companies - “It's rare to find companies that really understand customers' success and what it can do.”

(13:40) - The path up the CS ladder - “It's important to show upper management the need for those roles, because a lot of the time you'll need them to be created for you, for them to even exist.”

(16:37) - What kind of background should a CS have? - “Do the research and learn on your feet. If you're able to demonstrate that you know how to do the skill that they don't, which is customer success, I don't think it’s much of a blocker.”

(18:50) - Are CSMs the CEOs of the future? - “The most important thing is to make sure that you like what you're doing, that you're not just doing it because you can move up and have that be the end goal.“

Resources

Connect with Rachel vía LinkedIn

Hosted by Adam Joseph, The Gamechanger Podcast is a show brought to you by Gainsight. For more information about all of our episodes, please visit https://www.gainsight.com/podcasts.

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