A startup’s guide to building a customer success team

Customer successis key to business success, especially for startups that depend on retention for meeting revenue goals. For startups with a well-oiled customer success team, theopportunities for growthare immense. In fact, theZendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2022found that when companies focus on the needs of their customers, they can attract new business, boost retention, and increase sales.

If you’re a startup, you’re probably wondering when—and how—to formalize your customer success team. Read on for tips and strategies on how to start and scale customer success from Zendesk’s Director of Startup Success, Sam Chandler.

What is a customer success team?

A customer success team is a dedicated part of the organization that focuses on building and nurturing long-term customer relationships. Customer success interacts with customers directly to quickly solve their problems and ensure customer satisfaction. The role of a customer success team is to help customers get the most value out of your product or service by proactively connecting with them throughout their lifecycle, anticipating their needs, and providing support.

When to start your customer success team

It’s never too early to start building your customer success team. If you’re a startup that doesn’t have a dedicated customer success team yet, retention can suffer, or worse, it can lead to customer churn.

“The earlier you build a customer success team, the less time you’ll spend playing catch-up.”年代am Chandler, Zendesk’s Director of Startup Success

“Retention and churn are lagging indicators of actions you should take well beyond a customer’s buying decision,” says Chandler. “The earlier you build a customer success team, the less time you’ll spend playing catch-up when retention becomes a critical component to hitting your revenue targets. Companies need a team whose sole focus is keeping customers. Otherwise, it’s everyone’s job, which means it’s no one’s job.”

Customer success team responsibilities

The responsibilities of your customer success team will depend on the unique needs of your customers and business. But here are a few common responsibilities of customer success professionals.

• Drive customer onboarding, adoption, retention, and growth
• Collaborate with peers in sales, product, and other parts of the organization to ensure customers get a return on investment from your product or service
• Engage with customers in a way that thoughtfully changes their perception of what is possible, from both a business and strategic perspective
• Perform issue identification, communication, and resolution
• Maintain product expertise
• Manage one-to-one customer engagements at different stages of the customer lifecycle
• Conduct virtual and onsite meetings with customers

Key roles in a customer success team structure

Although your success team may be small today, it’s a good idea to consider where it will be several years down the road and to define roles and an organizational structure that will help you scale.

Create an organizational and management structure that makes sense for your own company. Getting the functional teams in place is vital; determining who they report to is part of the ongoing management of the growth of your organization.

作为复合基xity increases, everyone on the team can’t have in-depth knowledge about all the parts.

Here are a few key roles in a customer success team to help you start developing your own.

作为复合基xity increases, everyone on the team can’t have in-depth knowledge about all the parts. Some people become experts in some areas, but you can’t scale effectively with only one go-to person in those areas. For example, if you’re a global business, you’ll likely need a Regional Director of Customer Success.

Customer success associates might also focus on different product types–if you’re a multi-product business. Associates develop product expertise in those areas as members of specialized teams because they’re focused on them and aren’t pulled in too many other directions. Their expertise helps the organization handle complexity and resolve issues more quickly.

Defining functions, roles, and teams also provide the people on your team with well-defined career paths. Having these paths makes for happier and more satisfied employees because they clearly understand what they need to do to grow their careers.

Top skills to look for in a customer success team

We’ve identified some essential skills tointerviewand train for when building a customer success team.

For more tips on building a customer success or service team,read our guide.