The Customer Success Management Competency Model

 

This exhaustively researched, 175-page Customer Success Competency Model Ebook provides you with the most comprehensive, well-defined set of standards and benchmarks available for understanding what a high-performing Customer Success professional’s capabilities should be at all the stages of their career.

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The Customer Success Competency Model (CSCM) is designed to help individual Customer Success Managers and Team Leaders to:

  • Gain clarity regarding the key skills and behaviors that are required to excel in post-sales, customer-facing support, and Customer Success roles.

  • Have a well-defined standard that can be used to evaluate your, or your team’s, competency levels so that you can easily determine where to invest to improve your Customer Success skills and abilities.

  • Reduce the inherent complexity when defining job descriptions, assessing performance, and creating career development plans by providing clear, well-defined proficiency examples for each skill.

 
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What is a Competency Model?

We all use competencies; they are simply the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to perform our daily work activities. A competency model organizes these competencies into a format that is focused on defining the behaviors that are required for the effective performance in a specific job or professional role.

In Customer Success, competency models can be used by team leaders as a resource for developing curriculum and selecting training materials, writing job descriptions, recruiting and hiring workers, and evaluating employee performance. 

Competency models can also help individuals determine which areas of Customer Success they want to focus their career path on, based on their strengths, or which areas they need to invest in improving, based on their weaknesses. 

The Value of a Competency Model

A competency model helps to define what separates “good” from “great.” Not everything a person does in a given role should be part of the competency model. For example, any Customer Success Manager should be able to perform basic customer service functions, but a great Customer Success Manager can elevate their customer relationships in a way that enables them to transcend the typical vendor-customer relationship, transforming their role into one where they are looked to as a trusted adviser who can help shape the strategic direction of the relationship.

In essence, the value of a competency model is that it identifies what skills each person in the organization must be able to do in order to be “great” in their role. If everyone in an organization performs at the “great” level, then the organization’s human capital has achieved its potential, and the company is likely to experience a competitive advantage based on the performance of its resources and operations.

How Are Competency Models Used?

The Customer Success Competency Model we have created consists of five major disciplines, which are further broken down into 18 specific skills. Using this CSCM will give you a better understanding of what it takes to succeed in post-sales, customer-facing support, and Customer Success roles.

  • Create an Accurate Job Profile: Starting from the beginning of the hiring process, use the CSCM to accurately outline the job profile of the position you are hiring for. Use the disciplines and skills to create an accurate description of the role and responsibilities.

  • Hire Stronger Candidates: Human resource personnel and hiring managers can use the CSCM in the screening and interviewing process to find the best candidates. The CSCM shows them exactly what skills to look for.

  • Hold Your Existing Team to a Well-Defined Standard: Assessing the team you have in place is easier when the CSCM shows you what to look for. A clear standard helps you create consistency across your entire team, regardless of their experience or tenure.

  • Create a Targeted Learning & Development Plan: The CSCM can act as a roadmap for your team and their success. Using the three different proficiency standards—Contributor, Senior Individual Contributor, and Leader—you can assess strengths and weaknesses to create a specific training plan for everyone.

Benefits of a Competency Model

Introducing the CSCM can benefit your company, team, and employees in several ways. With regular use of the model, you’ll see both short-term and long-term gains.

  • Improved Hiring Process: You can refer to the CSCM for every step of your hiring process, from creating job postings to selecting final candidates. Thanks to a competency-based job profile, targeting and evaluating candidates is much more effective which will save you time and money.

  • Addressing Skill Gaps: Skill gaps and knowledge-based issues among your existing team are easier to spot when you know the 18 key skills of the CSCM. Spotting these gaps means you can develop your human capital and create a positive impact on the business.

  • Defining Roles and Responsibilities: The well-defined job profiles as a result of using the CSCM means managers can set expectations for everyone. Take it one step further and it’s easier to evaluate performance against clear expectations.

Increased Performance and Positive Impact

All of the skills required by a competent Customer Success professional in today’s quickly-evolving marketplace can be learned. By training employees, Customer Success departments can increase performance without relying on external hiring or depending on expensive technology fixes that flounder without the right skills in place.

By using a competency-based approach to professional development, you can identify skill gaps and then formulate a plan to establish the top-notch Customer Success skills needed to be successful, leading to improved customer relations, and ultimately, increases in revenue. 

Want to Go Deeper?

To supplement the Customer Success Competency Model we have also written multiple ongoing blog article series that do a deep dive into the skills necessary to be a top-notch Customer Success professional and build a world-class Customer Success team. 

The Honing In: How To Develop the Skills Every Customer Success Team Needs series looks a step beyond the 5 Key Disciplines of Customer Success as described in the Customer Success Competency Model. This series walks through the importance of each skill and offers suggestions on how you can nurture these skills both as an individual contributor or within your team.

To dig down one level deeper, the Successful Foundations: Skills Every Customer Success Professional Should Possess series takes a look at the foundational skill set that a good Customer Success professional requires. This series allows both individuals and team leaders to evaluate the skills that are present, and identify gaps so they can proceed with training for any missing skills.