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Customer retention Customer success metrics Customer success strategies Churn
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25 January 2024 13 min read


THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO CUSTOMER SUCCESS OPERATIONS

Customer success operations

GRACE GUPTA

Read More

 1.  What is customer success operations?
 2.  What is a Customer Success Operations Manager?
 3.  Data analysis and customer success operations
     1. Data analysis and outcomes
 4.  When should you invest in customer success operations?
 5.  How will Customer Success Operations impact the customer success function?
 6.  How will customer success operations impact businesses as a whole?
 7.  The "lean-in" model of customer success operations
 8.  Building a customer success team with CS Ops
 9.  To wrap up
 10. Interested in CS Ops?
     1. By taking this course, you'll discover how to:

Customer success operations, colloquially known as CS Ops, is a new type of role
we’re beginning to see crop up within customer success.

Now, you might curse the floor at the prospect of another opaque-sounding job
title. But actually, the function of customer success operations pretty much
does what it says on the tin.

Like any ordinary operations role, CS Ops functions within customer success to
help it run smoothly. An operations team is critical for any business
up-scaling, helping provide it with stability and direction.

But why should you hire a customer success operations role? It drives
productivity.

In this article, we'll be interrogating the following:

 * What customer success operations is
 * What a Customer Operations Manager is
   
 * Data analysis and customer success operations
 * When to invest in customer success operations
 * How CS Ops impacts the customer success function
 * How CS Ops impacts whole businesses
 * The "lean-in" model of customer success operations
 * Building a customer success team with CS Ops


WHAT IS CUSTOMER SUCCESS OPERATIONS?

Customer success operations is a role that organizes and streamlines a customer
success team.

Operations management is a function in and of itself, and it’s emerging across
all fields – from marketing to sales. Investopedia describes operations
management as "the administration of business practices to create the highest
level of efficiency possible within an organization."

A Customer Success Operations Manager will be responsible for coordinating,
actioning and analyzing the structures in place within a customer success team.

As a business function, customer success is innately forward-thinking and aims
to remove barriers between the customer and their product use. A clear, smooth
customer onboarding process is at the heart of CS, and this transparency is
mirrored in the well-oiled efficiency of Operations Managers.

But since customer success is still a fairly new area in business, there can be
a little ambiguity surrounding its definition. Because of this, the role of CS
Ops might mean different things to different people.

With this in mind, how do we combat this lack of certainty?

We asked a few of our experts how they define customer success operations.

Phil Kowalski is the Director of Customer Success & Revenue Operations at Biobot
Analytics, and had some pretty interesting takes on what CS Ops is:

> ‘CS Ops roles have the mission of driving productivity, consistency,
> efficiency, and scale across CS orgs. Those goals manifest into managing the
> processes, tools, reporting, and some new initiatives for CS teams. As gross
> and net revenue retention become a big focus area for all sorts of
> organizations, building in an operational infrastructure behind a powerful CS
> team lets the company drive positive outcomes.’

We also spoke to Adam Schifferli, VP of Customer Success & Operations at
Circuit, the fitness and lifestyle services company, about what the role of CS
Ops means to him.

Here’s what Adam had to say:

> ‘The CS Ops role is one of enablement; sales and marketing organizations have
> been doing this for a long time, but it’s a newer branch of the CS tree.
> Essentially it’s the question and answer for scalability, as well as a tighter
> integration along the entire revenue channel – from first marketing touch,
> through implementation and adoption, and heading into renewals and growth.’

Both Phil and Adam touch on some interesting points here.

Firstly, a customer success operations role activates the initiatives of the
wider customer success team, allowing these goals to merge with an
organization’s mission statement.

Secondly, the CS Ops role enables more streamlined touchpoints between each
stage of the customer journey, from the initial marketing touchpoint all the way
to the eventual product renewal. ♻️

Maybe you’re in the operations business already and are looking to branch out
into customer success. Perhaps you’re looking to make your first CS Ops hire.
Whatever the interest, if you’re new to this job function it’s worth us ironing
out what exactly a Customer Success Operations Manager does; let’s get stuck in.


WHAT IS A CUSTOMER SUCCESS OPERATIONS MANAGER?

Promoting cohesion is the paramount obligation of a CS Ops Manager, ensuring
each CSM acts in unison towards the organization’s overarching goals. For
example, a Customer Success Operations Manager would either have to develop
processes from scratch or maintain an existing system that will track and
maximize the quality, efficiency and performance of customer success.

If an organization is expanding its customer success team, there’s a greater
demand to ensure data collected is accurate and that decisions are made based on
this data. Growing a team at pace is necessary to provide operational support
and develop processes that drive product adoption.

Above all else, ownership is the key to success in this job; without it, the
ability to effectively carry out customer success strategies will eventually run
to a halt. Having a Customer Success Operations Manager within your ranks means
that someone is responsible for the changes and overarching organization
necessary to keep your organization's CS function ticking over.




DATA ANALYSIS AND CUSTOMER SUCCESS OPERATIONS

Data is essential for customer success leaders to interpret customer engagement
and guide business decisions.

Customer success leaders should track both internal metrics, like churn rate and
health scores, and external customer data from products and surveys.

Internal data allows leaders to identify at-risk customers and trends to present
to management. External data provides a window into the voice of the customer –
are they satisfied? Which features do they use? By combining internal and
external data sources, leaders gain a multidimensional view of customer health
and opportunities.

There are four primary data sources:

 1. Product usage metrics
 2. CRM interactions
 3. Financial performance
 4. Third-party information

While this data provides valuable insights, leaders must beware of
inconsistencies and information overload.

The key is transforming raw data points into meaningful insights. By combining
data sets and examining patterns, leaders can identify leading indicators of
renewal and expansion. For example, heavy product usage and executive engagement
in the months before renewal may correlate with growth. Leaders can then set
goals and metrics to focus the customer success team on these high-impact
activities.


DATA ANALYSIS AND OUTCOMES

The key is transforming this data into measurable outcomes that demonstrate
value. For example, equating platform activity metrics with internal process
improvements and cost savings. This value quantification strengthens renewal
conversations. Overall, data should inform conversations with customers and
management. Thoughtful tracking and analysis of various data sources allow
customer success leaders to spotlight progress, identify risks, and maximize
mutual success.

Ultimately, customer data should inform an executive dashboard to showcase
customer health, while individual metrics guide frontline teams' priorities.
With the deluge of data in today's landscape, customer success leaders must stay
vigilant to focus their teams and demonstrate value through data-driven
insights. The customer journey has gone digital – data is the compass to
navigate it.

CS Operations: Leveraging data for smarter decision-making
The phrase “data is the new oil” becomes truer every day. Data is the lubricant
that greases the wheels of the fourth industrial revolution we’re living
through. In short, your company will be creating a hell of a lot of data points
- if they’re not already.
Customer Success CollectiveDavid Collard



WHEN SHOULD YOU INVEST IN CUSTOMER SUCCESS OPERATIONS?

When it comes down to broadening your team, you should always make sure the
utility of the role is the real reason for recruitment.

There isn’t much point in investing in a salary that isn’t needed just yet,
otherwise you’ll be throwing money down the drain. And if your customer success
team is still in its infancy, with only 1-2 CSMs, you won’t have much to
organize and streamline yet.

You should invest in a CS Ops role when you have a blossoming customer success
team of approximately 5+ CSMs. Once you start employing more than 10 CSMs, you
might want to consider hiring a junior position, a Customer Success Operations
Assistant. 👥

We asked our CS Ops experts what they think is the right point for businesses to
invest in customer success operations. Here is what Adam from Circuit had to
say:

> ‘The CS ops role begins to make more and more sense as teams try to adjust to
> a lower touch cadence strategy, as the “Ideal Customer Profile” begins to
> emerge from data, or a RevOps strategy is adopted. Different drivers for the
> same cause, answering the question of how to enable current state teams to
> deliver higher & repeatable results with scalable elegance.’

We asked Phil Kowalski from Biobot Analytics what he considers to be the sweet
spot for businesses to invest in CS Ops:

> ‘CS Operations should be someone's responsibility from the day a company has
> their second customer. It obviously shouldn't be someone's full time job at
> that point, but it should be something someone at the org is thinking about
> and building towards i.e. how to build repeatable processes to deliver great
> engagement and retention.

> ‘I'd advocate bringing it in as a full time role ASAP, as it pays dividends
> down the line – this is especially if the CS team is growing and scaling.
> Having solid tools and processes greases the wheels on bringing in new
> employees to the organization, so new CSMs can focus on what they do best.
> Oftentimes some of the operations work can fall on the leader of the CS team,
> so offloading that to an operations role can let CS leadership focus on more
> strategic initiatives to push the team forward vs. managing more tactical
> updates.’

Adam and Phil touch on some really interesting points here; Adam claims that CS
Ops allows a ‘scalable elegance’ once a CS team is advanced enough to collect
accurate customer data; Phil, on the other hand, believes that having a
dedicated customer success operations role enables the Head of Customer Success
to carry out strategic initiatives, rather take up their time with
administrative tasks. 📁


HOW WILL CUSTOMER SUCCESS OPERATIONS IMPACT THE CUSTOMER SUCCESS FUNCTION?

The essence of the CS Ops role is to relieve the customer success team of the
burden of general administrative tasks in a way that streamlines operations
within CS, and prevents a breakdown in communication as the team grows. After
all, customer success leadership should be tasked with just that: to lead their
team. 🎖

By alleviating the rest of the CS team from the more mundane tasks of processes
and managing data systems, they have the time to properly address their own
tasks at hand. In other words, customer success operations seamlessly support
the rest of the team as it scales up.

We’re curious to know the exact repercussions on a CS team. Here’s what our
experts had to say:

> ‘The rise in CS Ops correlates with the increased importance in viewing
> customer success as a revenue-generating function. With more value placed on
> the customer success mission, organizations create a strong backbone through
> CS operations, enabling each CSM and CS leader to be better at their job.’

Phil Kowalski, Director of Customer Success & Revenue Operations at Biobot
Analytics

> ‘Investing in Customer Success Operations – it's CSMs’ dearest friend! By
> making useful insights immediately available, automating lower value tasks,
> and leveraging more data at scale, the operations function allows the CSM to
> focus more on the things that only a human can do who is well aware of their
> customer’s goals and initiatives.’

Adam Schifferli, VP of Customer Success & Operations at Circuit

So, we’ve covered how CS Ops can impact the customer success team, but does it
impact the wider organization? If so, how?


HOW WILL CUSTOMER SUCCESS OPERATIONS IMPACT BUSINESSES AS A WHOLE?

We’ve all heard of the "Butterfly Effect" – the theoretical concept that the
smallest movement can bring about monumental change; the same can be said of
implementing new positions within an organization – no matter how small, they
will have a knock-on effect on a larger scale.

Having a well-supported, highly-functioning customer success team at the behest
of a Customer Success Operations Manager, means that the customers will have the
full attention of the CS team, enabling them to fulfill their goals. A
successful CS team will reduce churn rates, promote customer retention and
generate a greater sense of customer satisfaction.

We wanted to know whether this role does impact the whole organization, so put
this question to our CS Ops experts, Adam and Phil:

> ‘In terms of how CS Ops impacts businesses as a whole: one thing to consider
> is how CS Ops interacts with other operations groups on other functions.
> There's the debate on where CS Ops employees should report into – a CS leader
> or centralized operations leader and I can see either working depending on the
> organization.

> ‘I think the biggest thing to consider though is that a CS Operations should
> be strongly connected to other operations employees within other functional
> groups. This is important to make sure initiatives are aligned - oftentimes in
> overlapping systems - throughout marketing, sales, and CS. When ops groups
> aren't aligned, this can lead to duplicative and/or contradictory efforts,
> wasting valuable resources. With more and more emphasis placed on delivering
> strong customer experiences, having a strong connection to and from CS
> Operations to the rest of the org will help fuel overall growth.’

Phil Kowalski, Director of Customer Success & Revenue Operations at Biobot
Analytics

> ‘The development of CS Ops is like the advent of the train in an era of the
> horse and buggy. A new world of possibilities opens with reliability,
> predictability, stronger cross-functional insights to further conversations
> and development with marketing, sales, and product. It is in that central
> place that customer success is traditionally at it’s best, and with the
> support of strong operations their work becomes far more powerful for the
> direct customer as well as the entire organization.’

Adam Schifferli, VP of Customer Success & Operations at Circuit

Both Phil and Adam highlight that hiring a CS Operations role acts as the
support system required for customer success, and depending on the type of
organization, liaises and aligns with other departments.

Connecting the dots: How CS Ops drives company-wide alignment
Aligning business-wide initiatives and driving frictionless renewals are key
goals for any customer success leader in a business that follows a recurring
revenue model. In this article, we’ll explore how to leverage customer success
operations (CS Ops) to achieve organization-wide alignment.
Customer Success CollectiveRoger Mendez



THE "LEAN-IN" MODEL OF CUSTOMER SUCCESS OPERATIONS

CSMs must embrace uncertainty to create value like mapping company values to
stakeholders' needs and phasing rollouts.

When CTOs or executives dump overwhelming requests and data on CSMs, they can
follow a process so they don’t freeze up: level set realistic scope and
resources, map needs to company values, analyze data methodically, set smart
goals, and build phased rollout plans. Even complex data becomes manageable by
segmenting so you identify the first opportunity and 90-day plan.

But tactical “field” skills around customer program execution can only take CSMs
so far. To lead world-class CS orgs, you also need “off-field” skills – building
trusted relationships and collaborating with your peers across business units.
Dynamic companies have CS leaders with equal field execution and
relationship-building skills to accelerate renewals and customer value.

Those core leadership skills let you foster shared beliefs around customer
centricity across your company. When CSMs lean in and nimbly build networks and
allies across orgs – in product, services and marketing – that “off the field”
foundation results in powerful “on the field” outcomes for customers, showing
the tangible value their CS leaders provide.

Tactical skills can be taught – the innate drive to constantly learn, build
trust, challenge yourself, and empower organizations around the customer cannot.
Master both and you’ll lift your career and company to new heights.

The blueprint for building an elite customer success team
Your customer success team is the beating heart of the customer experience, so
building a high-performing customer success operation must be a top priority for
any customer-centric organization.
Customer Success CollectiveAmy Oilman



BUILDING A CUSTOMER SUCCESS TEAM WITH CS OPS

Your customer success team is the heart of the customer experience. Building a
skilled and collaborative group that drives loyalty and growth starts with
hiring the right people – those with domain expertise, emotional intelligence,
and a passion for customers.

Create an inclusive process that identifies team players oozing with empathy.
Immerse them in the vision to make customer-centricity the norm. Ensure
diversity of perspectives and backgrounds so your team can relate to all
customer types. Routinely check success metrics and be ready to pivot approaches
based on the data.

Getting leadership buy-in for major customer success transformations is also
key. Evolve the team in lockstep with company growth. When proposing
organizational shakeups, forecast results and get key stakeholders on board.

With the proper structures and culture in place, your customer success team can
forge enduring customer bonds, provide product insights, and lift the business.
But it requires intention and investment because this customer-obsessed unit is
the face of your company.


TO WRAP UP

All in all, the role of customer success operations is one that is a definite
must for a fast-growing customer success team.

Without this level of support for administrative tasks and to streamline
processes, fractures might begin to appear and lead to an eventual breakdown of
communication and overwhelm the CS team.

In essence, a CS Operations role allows CSMs, the VP of Customer Success and/or
the Head of Customer Success to focus on their tasks at hand, aiding
productivity. 💪

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


INTERESTED IN CS OPS?

Have you ever thought about setting up a customer success team of your own?

We have the perfect course to help you position CS to a leadership team and
establish a successful customer success operation.

Introducing... Building a Customer Success Team Certified |Masters.


BY TAKING THIS COURSE, YOU'LL DISCOVER HOW TO:

🔧 Leverage technology and automation to streamline customer success operations
and improve efficiency.

🧑‍🎨 Sculpt out a strong CS function and learn for your business, including
where CS slots into the client experience and why it’s an investment for the
future.

🎨 Create effective customer onboarding processes and ensure a seamless
transition from sales to customer success that sets the stage for long-term
relationships.

🧱 Build a culture of continuous improvement by cultivating a mindset of
learning and growth within your customer success team

Educate to operate




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Written by:

GRACE GUPTA

Grace is our Copywriter here at CSC and loves getting her teeth stuck into
anything content-related. The en dash is the queen of punctuation and this is a
hill she's willing to die on.

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