Hall of Fame basketball coach Jay Wright uses a system of values to teach players the way to play Villanova basketball.
The program’s overarching value is attitude as well as play hard, play smart, play together and play with pride.
The team defines each value and evaluates its performance against the values win or lose.
We could have similar values as a Customer Success Manager. For example, how should we act as a CSM? What ways can we evaluate ourselves?
Some values that come to mind are:
- Be a toolkit for our customers: have solutions to customer’s challenges ready, brainstorm new ideas, share the use cases of our product, provide educational content. CSMs can represent a set of tools to enable our customers.
- Be a problem-solving expert: customers will look to us as a primary resource for solving their problems. We need to solve problems with speed, reliability and accuracy. We can be problem-solving machines.
- Be in the know with our customers: We can know our customers on a personal level in a way that feels appropriate for the relationship. We should also know our customer’s business. Showing you know your customer is a great foundation for establishing trust.
- Be a partner to internal teams: CSMs can be the “oil” to help our internal teams run smoother. If we are working with Sales or Product – how can we leverage our role to support our colleagues with their responsibilities?
- Be ready to bring the energy: Working with customers requires our best energy each day. We also need to show traits like commitment, resilience, consistency – bringing an energy to our job helps us succeed in our tasks.
What other values could we consider? The list could evolve or continue.
Having a set of Customer Success Management values can be a great way to guide what we are doing each day and stay on track.