The Customer Success Professional's Handbook

13Managing a Customer Success Team

Up until this point, we have covered the core skills and processes that a Customer Success Manager needs to practice and internalize. It's time to shift focus toward the leaders of Customer Success teams. They have an equally important responsibility to make sure they hire, develop, lead, and retain the best talent in the organization. To do this, you need to be introduced to three main concepts. The first concept is how to manage the CSM workload and coverage ratios depending on your segmentation strategy. Then, how to design incentive structures to drive the right behaviors. The final concept is how to use reports and dashboards to drive operational rigor.

Segmentation and Aligning a Customer Success Manager to the Right Customer

Earlier in the book, we briefly covered segmentation, but we feel it is a subject that requires a bit more knowledge and depth to use it effectively. Your goal is to provide a balanced CSM-to-customer ratio (or CSM ratio) based on your business segmentation strategy. Your company likely has a wide range of customers with varying sizes, revenue, expansion opportunities, and needs. To be able to manage such a diverse group of customers, it is essential to segment them into subgroups based on shared characteristics. In Chapter 7 (Figure 7.4), we reported that the most common data point for segmenting customers is an Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) number. If your business doesn't have a recurring revenue business model, ...