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Do customer success teams have an operational leadership gap?
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Most CSMs are struggling to hit their goals this year, according to new research. In a poll of CSMs conducted by ChurnZero and SuccessCOACHING, only 41% of CSMs said they could achieve their goals without working extra hours on evenings or weekends, and just 40% said their goals are realistic.
Given the last two years of RIFs and pre-emptive job moves, and higher workloads for the CSMs who’ve stayed in place, that’s not entirely surprising. Yet, the data suggests, there’s something else at play: a lack of operational leadership experience within our survey respondents’ teams.
We asked CSMs to select which aspects of leading a team their manager is good at. When it comes to supportive, interpersonal leadership traits, the data creates a positive picture. Our top three results:
- Making time for me when I need them. (73%)
- Supporting CSMs in difficult customer situations. (71%)
- Being a good advocate for our team. (67%)
Elsewhere in the survey, 68% of CSMs say they like and appreciate their managers. The issue, however, is that interpersonal leadership skills alone won’t help CSMs hit their goals in 2024.
The growing importance of operational leadership in customer success.
“Being a good customer leader used to be primarily about human relationships: the emotional intelligence-driven aspects of customer work and people management on fast-growing teams,” says Abby Hammer, ChurnZero’s chief customer officer and chief product officer.
“Today, though, the best CS leaders come with something else, too: operational excellence,” says Hammer. “You might be the greatest at building relationships, but that won’t scale your operations or help your CSMs hit their goals.”
In fact, according to CSMs, less than half of managers are good at the following aspects of leading a results-driven CS team.
- Keeping everyone accountable for their work (47%)
- Setting clear goals and expectations (47%)
- Helping our team prioritize our work. (45%)
- Coaching and mentoring our team. (43%)
- Supporting our team’s professional development. (42%)
What’s behind the potential shortfall in operational leadership skills?
At the heart of the matter is the fact that customer success is relatively new, which plays out in two ways.
First, CS is still evolving. No longer a satisfaction-focused role, it now comes with ownership of renewals, expansion, and net revenue retention, plus a set of best practices that are still fluid compared to those of marketing or sales. Even an experienced CSM (our typical survey respondent has 3-5 years of experience) or team leader might struggle to keep up.
Second, as a new business discipline, CS has fewer external candidates for management roles. This means that more team leaders are first-time managers promoted from CSM roles. Frequently, these new managers have player-coach responsibilities with direct ownership of accounts; others find it hard to shake the habit of stepping into difficult customer situations rather than coaching CSMs to prioritize and manage them.
It makes sense that these first-time managers would arrive with the same gaps in operational skills experienced by many CSMs, which our report also highlights. (Asked to pick a skillset in which extra training would make them a more effective CSM, most respondents tended towards analytical, strategic, and commercial skills, rather than softer interpersonal skills.)
All of which makes foundational management training for first-time managers, covering skills such as prioritization, goal setting, and feedback, a top priority for every CS director, VP and CCO.
And yet… don’t deprioritize your managers’ interpersonal skills.
“If all you can handle as a manager is the operations, you’ll struggle with the leadership requirements of growing a good people department,” says Abby Hammer.
“To become an impactful CS leader, you’ve got to be good at managing both operations and relationships. This role is a hybrid one, where you get to exercise the right and left sides of your brain pretty evenly.”