Preface

Welcome to Mastering Customer Success, a resource that aims to deepen your understanding of the mission, principles, and strategies of Customer Success and how the Customer Success Manager role is the vehicle for translating it all into measurable value for customers.

Within these pages, you will learn the intricacies of mastering essential skills crucial for success in the dynamic role of Customer Success Manager. Like in any career, understanding what skills and strategies you need to master Customer Success can be challenging. This book will equip you with the knowledge you can apply immediately to advance your career in Customer Success and stand out as an expert among your peers. Explained in three distinct but related parts, the book articulates the reasons why the Customer Success function is indispensable today. Part 1 offers descriptions of, and insights into, the optimization of key growth metrics, building a strong foundation for the Customer Success practice, and managing a book of business as a CSM. Part 2 then delves into onboarding new customers and the planting of seeds for enduring engagement, harnessing customer feedback to drive product and service improvements, and leveraging customer data to better understand their behavior, their product adoption progress, and discerning lessons from the data that can help refine the company’s go-to-market strategies. Part 3 leans into explaining how well-nurtured and successful customers can evolve into authentic advocates, detailing how retention and expansion work and why they are the internal lifeblood of a Customer Success practice that is considered critical by the executive leadership team, and, finally, how to excel in performing the undesirable and unavoidable task of crisis management, a task that ironically can cement the powerful value of Customer Success in the eyes of the ones that truly matter, the customers.