In this e-book, you'll find tips for hiring the right people into your customer success organization, including the traits your customer success managers should have, interview questions to help you test for those traits, and a sample job posting.

1. CUSTOMER
SUCCESS
HIRING GUIDE

2. One

3. Seven Traits
to Hire for in
Customer Success

4. 01/ Ability to simplify: helping customers
understand a product often means breaking
down complex concepts to simple terms.
02/ Attention to detail: maintaining
relationships means thoughtful goal setting,
execution, and follow up with customers.
03/ Ability to motivate: motivating means
getting other parts of the company to take
action on behalf of the customer, even if
they're busy with other things.

5. 04/ Ability to get to the root of the problem:
fixing a problem isn’t helpful if you don’t fix
the right one. Customers’ solutions to their
own frustrations don’t always get at the real
issue, and your CSM needs to investigate and
identify the true problem rather than take
every customer suggestion at face value.
05/ Empathy: identifying a customer’s
problem is easier if you’re able to identify
with the customer.

6. 06/ Technical aptitude: explaining technical
aspects of a product is hard if you aren’t able
to navigate it yourself. A customer success
rep should be able to use your product inside
and out, and if it’s a technical one, that may
mean hiring someone with technical and
interpersonal chops.
07/ Desire to help people: helping people
and wanting them to be happy should be
something that naturally drives your
customer success rep inside and outside
of work.

7. Two

8. Five Great
Customer Success
Interview Questions

9. What if anything
would you change
about yourself?
1No

10. Goal: This will help you get a sense of how
introspective the candidate is. Those who
can look inwardly in the process of
relationship building and show empathy as
a result -- who can put themselves in the
customer’s shoes -- will form stronger
connections.

11. How would you
describe the Internet
to your great
grandmother?
2No

12. Goal: If your interviewee can’t explain
something they use in their daily lives, how
will they help customers better understand
the use cases of your product? This question
will help you judge your candidate’s ability
to explain something technical to a non-
technical audience. You may want a more
rigorous version of this question if your
product is extremely complicated, but for
most people, this query works well because
it’s background agnostic (you’re unlikely to
run into a candidate who doesn’t know about
the Internet).

13. How would you
describe the Internet
to an engineer?
3No

14. Goal: This question will help you see if the
candidate is capable of shifting the level of
technical detail based on who they're talking
to. This isn’t about being an expert on the
Internet but rather whether you’re an expert
at catering to your audience. Customer
success often has to interact with different
levels of clients -- from engineers to VPs --
and they need to be able to intuitively
understand how to communicate with each.

15. Have you ever been
confused by a customer’s
problem or request?
What steps did you take
to fix it?
4No

16. Goal: You want your customer success rep
to be detail and process oriented; a
haphazard person isn’t going to make a
customer feel secure. You can replace
“customer” with friend or family member,
but the important thing here is the fact
that the candidate shows that she can come
up with an organized process to address
an issue.

17. When have you gone
out of your way to stand
up for a customer
or a friend?
5No

18. Goal: This will help you get a sense of
whether the candidate 1) has a natural
desire to help people and 2) advocates for
others. The latter will be important when the
rep has to motivate others in the company to
pay attention to customers’ needs.

19. Three

20. Listen to
the Experts

21. Q: I have a technical product. How do I
find someone who is skilled at both
relationship building and engineering?
A: “I have found that those with consulting
backgrounds, preferably technical in some
manner, are often a good fit. My priority
has almost always been to find people who
are great relationship builders and know
how to manage a process with clients and
then train them on the technical parts of
the role. If they are great communicators
first, they can adapt.”
-Nils Vinje, Customer Success Consultant
at Glide Consulting LLC

22. Four

23. Example Job Posting
About the Job
Want to work alongside a smart, fun, hard- working team? Preact is a
predictive analytics startup in the SaaS space. Our platform uses behavioral
science and expert intuition to help companies see every move a customer
makes within their product, understand what those actions mean, and
predict what will happen next. You’ll be joining a close-knit group of people
who are defining what Customer Success means as the industry emerges.
We are looking for a relationship-savvy technical expert to help ensure the
success of Preact customers. The Customer Success Engineer must become
the trusted technical advisor to their portfolio of accounts, ensuring they
understand the parts of the product that are most useful to them and thus
get the most out of their investment in Preact. You will provide technical
best practices on how to configure, maintain and manage their Preact
implementation during pre-sale and through post-sale. You will also provide
technical support for your assigned customers and oversee the resolution
of unexpected issues, providing the appropriate business and technical
context to ensure resolution. This is a huge opportunity to become part of
an expanding team in one of the fastest growing segments of Software as
a Service (SaaS) companies. This position is strategic but, like any startup,
also requires “being in the trenches” as we build out the team to support
our rapid growth.
Say something about how great your team is.
Explain in clear terms what their day-to-day job will entail
and how their success will be measured.

24. Responsibilities
- Manage and develop a portfolio of high-profile customer accounts and
ensure their use of our product is closely aligned with their business
strategies; drive incremental return on investment for each account
- Assist customer developers with troubleshooting their Preact API
integration and take responsibility for issue resolution
- Identify trends in adoption and utilization of our product and provide
guidance to customers
- Become an expert on customers’ implementations of Preact, understanding
top business goals and requirements
- Advocate customers’ product feature priorities internally within Preact
- Contribute internally to the Preact team, share knowledge and best
practices with team members, contribute to internal projects and initiatives,
and serve as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for specific technical or process
areas
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent experience
- Knowledge of the software development process and of software design
methodologies
- Solid understanding of Object-Oriented design and core programming
concepts
- Highly motivated; comfortable in a fast-paced team environment and
readily adaptable to changing market requirements

25. Preferred Qualifications
- 5+ years relevant work experience in one or more of the following: technical
support, account management, project management or consulting -- ideally
with CRM or related applications in a SaaS environment -- and/or 3+ years
development experience
- Thorough familiarity with the database, application and network technologies
used in Cloud Computing (e.g. knowledge of network topologies and devices,
database concepts and SQL, multi-tenancy)
- Strong experience in both the front-end web tier (JavaScript, AJAX, HTML, CSS,
and cross-browser development) and back end (Java, .Net, SQL) software
development
- Experience dealing with large scale, technologically complex accounts, which
are constantly challenging product capabilities
- Experience navigating, escalating, and leading efforts on complex customer
requests or projects involving multiple parties and enterprise systems