3 Key Qualities in a Successful Customer Success Manager

The customer is the backbone of service organizations and providing exemplary support is of the utmost importance. When your customer is satisfied, your business thrives.

Creating that experience is an art and requires skills and finesse, from building a relationship from scratch, maintaining communication throughout service, and managing any issues that arise.

Here are three key qualities in a successful Customer Success Manager.

Communication & Relationship Building

Communication is how you develop and maintain a relationship with your customer, so having strong interpersonal communication skills is very important.

“I often use humor as a tool to really break the ice and make people comfortable,” said Jabari Bowen, a customer success professional based in Boston, Massachusetts. “I’ve also learned to use context clues and find some common ground.”

Being able to converse with any individual is a necessary skill in a service-based position. Allowing your personality to shine while maintaining professionalism is a great strategy in building a genuine relationship with your customer.

Understand the Customer and Prioritize Their Needs

Understanding your customer and their needs is a critical point in maintaining a strong relationship with them. Without understanding their long-term goals, needs, and pain points of your customer, you can’t adequately provide service.

“When it’s my account, I’m in charge of everything and am steering the ship,” said Bowen. “I understand what they want, get things done, and prioritize the long-term needs and long-term tenure of relationships.”

While the core customer service skills are universal for each case, no two customers are the same and strategies to solve their specific problems will vary. Opening dialogue to discuss your customer’s pain points and long-term objectives allows you to provide the highest quality service.

De-escalation Strategies

Working closely with customers means the inevitable moments where your customer is unhappy with the product or service you are providing. These are critical moments to maintaining the relationship you’ve worked to build and ensuring you resolidify the partnership is the difference between losing a customer or strengthening the relationship.

“It depends on the situation, but I always introduce myself, calm their nerves, and walk them through the issue,” said Bowen. “There are two sides of a coin and I want to hear both sides.”

Alongside general communication, it’s important to document your conversation and provide a specific timeline and cadence of communication to resolution to ensure that your customer feels heard and understands the resolution process.

From a leadership standpoint, it’s important for team members to hone these skills themselves and have the opportunity to resolve issues and stabilize that client relationship.

“It’s good for people to resolve issues on their own. It helps build their muscle and it’s their relationship,” said Bowen. “It gives them more ownership of it.”

Customer relationships are critical to service-based organizations. Building, maintaining, and repairing those relationships require great care and strategy and are critical in driving growth and success for yourself and your team.