It’s Time for Customer Success

You’ve brought on your paying first customers. Woohoo! You’re a dream team of one: sales rep, implementation specialist, and technical support combined. Things are going great. So great, in fact, it’s time to make “Customer Success” an official thing.  

Where do you begin??

Here are 4 great resources to help you start your Customer Success department with confidence.

4 Essential Customer Success Resources

1. Your First Customer Success Hire (article)

This article from Atlanta Ventures (written by yours truly 😉) covers:

• Who to hire
• What they’ll be doing
• Where to post the role
• How to interview them
• Why Customer Success is so important!

2. The Customer Support Handbook (book)

Why this book is great:

• Simple, short, practical
• Recommended by the best support leader I know – Vincent Migliore. He is phenomenal at building technical support teams and making customers happy.
• Required reading for many years on the award-winning Customer Success team at Pardot!

3. Customer Service 101 Training Deck (slides)

Hundreds of Customer Success hires at Pardot, Salesforce, Rigor, and beyond have been trained from variations of this deck. It’s fun, practical, and specific.

Feel free to copy and make it your own!

It covers:

• Understanding customers
• Key components of a great customer interaction
• What if they’re upset?!?!
• Customer service writing
• BONUS: intro section to clarify your company values and customer goals

4. Customer Success Conversations with Francis Cordon (podcast)

This podcast is a perfect overview for someone who likes to understand the big picture before diving into details.

Francis Cordon is a Customer Success visionary whose philosophy and tactics apply to all companies, big and small. (He’s been wildly successful at both.)

Learn why Francis advocates for:

• Pre-sales as post-sales; post-sales as pre-sales
• Showing objective ROI to your customer’s boss’s boss
• Customer Win Slides
• Customer Success as a competitive advantage - now and as you scale!

Any other recommendations for founders who are ramping up their Customer Success function? What else should be included in this Customer Success Starter Pack??