What a Customer Success Manager at Groove Wishes They Knew Before Entering SaaS
Michael, an Enterprise Customer Success Manager, wishes they had understood the crucial need for "multi-threaded" communication before starting; success requires engaging "multiple people at once," building buy-in from various stakeholders—not just the primary contact—to ensure software renewal.
Communication, Problem-Solving, Teamwork, Networking, Leadership
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Michael Gigante
Enterprise Customer Success Manager
Groove
New York University, 2017
None
Film, Media Arts, Visual Arts
Technology
Sales and Client Management
Honors Student, First Generation College Student
Video Highlights
1. The importance of multi-threading in customer success management: Successfully managing customer accounts often requires interacting with multiple stakeholders (e.g., revenue operations, sales, marketing) to ensure software adoption and renewal.
2. Building relationships across different departments is crucial for achieving customer success and contract renewals. Success isn't solely dependent on a single point of contact.
3. Customer success is a multifaceted role requiring adaptability and communication skills to navigate diverse perspectives and build consensus among various stakeholders within a client organization.
Transcript
What have you learned about this role that you wish someone had told you before you started?
To be a good customer success manager, I think the most important thing I wish I knew before was how crucial it is to have key conversations with multiple people simultaneously. You might be my primary contact, but you may not be the one who ultimately signs the contract to renew our software.
In different roles and companies, you need to expand your view of an account and be what we call multi-threaded. This means I need to be talking to you, perhaps a revenue operations person, but also the head of sales and the head of marketing.
Ultimately, I think that's what makes this role the most challenging, but also the most fun. You get to talk with different people.
That's the part I wish I knew before: you can never get comfortable with just talking to one person. You need to be able to speak with many different stakeholders at a company because the customer success role isn't dependent on a single person's decision to renew your software. It's likely going to be five or six people, and you need to get buy-in from all of them.
So, I wish I knew before not to stay stagnant with one point of contact at a company. You need to talk to many different people to make the software successful.