Customer success is a hot topic in the business world, especially as technology advances and companies invest in new systems. Companies realize that customer success is critical to the company’s growth — and supporting ongoing education and development of customer-facing teams is crucial in helping them achieve their goals in the fast-paced world of technology. In this article, we’ll talk about why investing in your customer success manager’s education is good for business and how it looks different at each stage of the Customer Success Manager (CSM) lifecycle, from onboarding through exit interviews. We’ll also provide some ideas for how you can support your CSMs so they’re always ready for anything. 

Why Invest in Education Opportunities for CSMs?

Customer success managers are the face of your company to customers. They are the customers’ primary point of contact and solve their problems. The CSM is responsible for building solid relationships with customers and for keeping them happy by helping them use your product or service.
Customer success managers are also responsible for driving revenue. According to research from Oracle, “companies with an effective customer-success function have seen revenue increases from 4% to as high as 30%, depending on how they measure it.”

Investing in your CSM’s Education Looks Different Across the Customer lifecycle.

CSMs need to be well-educated in order to effectively support their customers. This is true at every stage of the customer success lifecycle, but it’s especially relevant for CSMs during onboarding and throughout the relationship with your organization.

The key topics for onboarding education are:

1. Project and Time Management 
2. How to handle difficult customer conversations
3. How to plan successful meetings with clients and examples of best practices when communicating with your customer base
4. How to prepare your CSMs for customer retention (which can include churn prevention as well).

CSMs need continuous training just like salespeople to ensure they are keeping up with product changes, identifying churn indicators, and preparing action plans that resolve issues before they result in lost revenue or damage to your brand reputation.

Education opportunities can come in all shapes and sizes.

Education opportunities for customer success managers can take many forms. There are online courses, conferences, books, mentorship programs, and in-person training sessions. Each of these has its own benefits and drawbacks for those who want to learn about the best ways to create a customer success strategy. The most common form of education is an online course that offers a specific set of lessons in an organized way over a period of time. These are great if you have little spare time or like structure when learning new things. 

Conferences are another option; they may offer access to people with industry knowledge who will share their experiences with others attending the event or through panels after presentations given by members within your field (e.,g., Gainsight). Conferences give attendees plenty of opportunity to network both face-to-face and digitally afterward–which means more chances at making connections that could lead to future partnerships!

Supporting your CSMs’ education is good for business.

Investing in your customer success managers is good for business. CSMs with more education have a better understanding of your products and services. They can make more informed decisions about how to use the products, which helps you achieve more success with customer retention. With the CSM’s increased knowledge base, you’ll also be able to improve product marketing and customer acquisition campaigns.

In a world where technology moves so fast and change is the norm, investing in education gives your team the ability to keep up with industry trends and stay on top of their game.

If you’re a CSM, then it’s vital for you to stay up to date with industry trends. In a world where technology moves so fast, and change is the norm, investing in education allows your team to keep up with industry trends and stay on top of their game.

Being able to stay on top of new technology is essential for being a good CSM. It can also help prevent burnout by keeping your team from becoming too bogged down with learning how to use every new tool that comes along. Being educated helps ensure that your organization can continue developing its own products while also providing value back into the marketplace through continuous improvement initiatives or other product updates/enhancements

Why Start Training your Team this Quarter?

Education is an investment that will pay off immediately. ,It’s crucial to create a culture where the value of your CSMs’ education is recognized and rewarded. You don’t have to be a big company or an industry leader—even small businesses can make significant strides by investing in their team members. When you invest in your team education, you enable customer success teams to succeed at their jobs today and set them up for success tomorrow.

Ready to invest in actionable and proven education programs today? Contact us today to get started.