Keeping CSMs engaged at work and career development

4 min read

Remote working has become part of the new “normal” and being distant from your team can make it hard to gage what your CSMs are doing, how much they enjoy the job and any issues they may be facing. So, how do you ensure that your CSM team is engaged and what avenues are in place for their career development?

In this episode our host Anika Zubair chats with Fran Beckley, Head of Client Services at SourceBreaker, an AI-driven search and match technology made for recruiters, about how to keep CSMs engaged at work and career development.

Fran joined SourceBreaker four and a half years ago, having previously worked in recruitment. At the beginning they had less than 50 clients and only 5 employees. Fran set up the customer success function from the ground up, implementing processes and tools to ensure they delivered the best possible service to their clients. Today, they have over 500 clients worldwide and over 60 employees. SourceBreaker is recognised by the Financial Times as one of the top 100 fastest growing companies in Europe and has been named as the best small company to work for in London by The Sunday Times.

The CS team at SourceBreaker initially began by training recruiters how to use the platform by hosting onsite training and then continued follow ups to make sure they're getting the most out of it. The CS team had to deal with a range of clients and naturally evolved into specialised areas - an enterprise team, mid-market team, SMB team and account management.

Fran believes that the director’s ambition was to be the best in the recruitment industry, so they had an aggressive growth plan and any profit was farmed back into the product. But the directors also believed in customer success and were happy to invest in it, believing that if the customers understand how to use the product they will get value from it.

As the CS industry is ever evolving, it has meant leaders within the space are continually learning from one another. Frans advice is to continue to research and learn, listen to industry experts and to get a mentor. One way she has engaged her team is by implementing a CS book club to find new ideas and discuss new ways to implement solutions and processes.

The CS team at SourceBreaker is very social and since the start of the pandemic there has been a need to adapt to the new ways of working. Fran and her team initially thought this was for a short period of time so she would have remote tours of peoples houses to keep them engaged. The team embraced the challenge and pulled together to ensure they did what they needed to do. As the months dragged on it became harder but now people have got into the swing of things. They start each morning with a meeting to discuss what happened the day before, what was successful and what people wanted to shout about - positive news from clients, renewals or upsells - and she found it a great way to get the team up and running and excited for the day.

The disadvantage of not being in the office meant that you couldn't just pop to see a colleague or track a CSMs performance, and with different processes and teams they had to implement scheduled meetings to ensure cross communication.

The career development within SourceBreaker recently changed due to feedback from the team. Now they hire people who have worked within a specific industry so they have better credibility, and if they have recruitment experience they are able to move into a CS manager role (level 1). At this level they are set targets and once achieved can move to Level 2 and become an accomplished CS manager. This means they have shown that they can manage clients independently, have experience on the onboarding processes and have completed the product knowledge tests. After this, is the move to Senior CSM - here they would have been in the industry for a few years and can offer more to the customer. As a Senior CSM they can move to become more specialised like a principal or team lead but they like to listen to the needs of their employees. They have also implemented a clear target structure with different targets and challenges depending on the role.

Fran offers a wealth of knowledge in a growing CS team so listen to the full Podcast to hear the full discussion today.

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