Executive Summary
The first 90 days in any leadership role are critical for establishing a foundation for long-term success. For a Customer Success (CS) leader, this period provides a unique opportunity to define priorities, build relationships, and set a strategic direction that aligns with both customer outcomes and business objectives. This white paper outlines the key focus areas a CS leader should prioritize in their first 90 days.
Day 1-30: Assess & Learn
1. Understand the Business and Customers
- Engage with leadership: Develop a clear understanding of the company’s strategic goals, vision, and metrics for success.
- Customer segmentation: Analyze customer data to identify high-value segments, retention risks, and growth opportunities.
- Product immersion: Deeply familiarize yourself with the product/service and its roadmap to understand its value propositions and how it aligns with customer needs.
2. Evaluate Existing Processes and Metrics
- Process audit: Assess the existing customer journey, onboarding, and renewal processes. Identify gaps or inefficiencies.
- Metrics and KPIs: Review existing KPIs (Net Promoter Score, churn rate, customer satisfaction, etc.). Understand the data quality, reporting frequency, and whether the metrics align with desired outcomes.
3. Meet the Team
- One-on-ones: Conduct individual meetings with each team member to understand their challenges, goals, and strengths. Identify potential leaders and talent gaps.
- Department synergy: Meet with leaders from Sales, Marketing, Product, and Support to understand cross-functional touchpoints with Customer Success.
- Customer listening tour: Engage key accounts from each segment your company has (e.g. Enterprise, Mid-Market, SMB) and across verticals & geos if applicable. Meet with executive buyer stakeholders, champions, and end users to better understand their perceptions of value.
Day 31-60: Strategize & Align
1. Develop a 90-Day and Beyond Strategy
- Vision and mission: Begin to craft a vision for Customer Success that aligns with overall business objectives. Prioritize customer health, renewals, and expansion strategies.
- Short-term wins: Identify a few quick wins (e.g., improving the onboarding process or updating customer communications) to demonstrate impact early.
- Customer feedback loop: Implement or refine a system for gathering and actioning customer feedback, which will be crucial for continuous improvement.
2. Strengthen Cross-Functional Relationships
- Sales collaboration: Align with Sales leadership to ensure a seamless customer handoff and define expectations around shared goals like expansion and upsell opportunities.
- Product partnerships: Establish regular communication with the Product team to ensure the voice of the customer is reflected in product development and prioritization.
3. Refine Customer Metrics and Reporting
- Improve reporting: Establish regular, consistent, and actionable reporting for both the CS team and executive leadership, focusing on key metrics like Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), retention, and churn.
- Data-driven insights: Use data to identify trends or patterns that can inform future strategies, such as predicting churn risk or identifying upsell opportunities.
Day 61-90: Implement & Execute
1. Team Structure and Development
- Optimize team structure: If necessary, make adjustments to team roles, responsibilities, or reporting structures to better serve strategic goals.
- Training and development: Implement or refine ongoing professional development and training programs to empower team members with the skills needed to drive customer outcomes.
2. Roll Out Customer-Centric Initiatives
- Enhanced customer journey: Start implementing improvements to key areas of the customer lifecycle, such as more robust onboarding, personalized customer touchpoints, or improved customer health scoring models.
- Proactive customer success: Focus on building proactive customer success strategies, such as customer health checks or quarterly business reviews (QBRs), to drive engagement and reduce churn.
3. Communicate Early Successes
- Highlight wins: Communicate early successes to executive leadership and the broader organization. This could include improved customer satisfaction, early churn reduction, or team efficiency gains.
- Build momentum: Use these successes to build momentum for long-term initiatives and foster a culture of customer-centricity throughout the organization.
Conclusion
The first 90 days as a Customer Success leader are pivotal for setting the tone and direction for future success. By focusing on understanding the business, aligning strategy with cross-functional teams, and driving early wins, a CS leader can lay a strong foundation that enables the team to deliver ongoing value to both the company and its customers.
Next Steps:
- Review and refine strategy as needed.
- Continue building cross-functional alignment.
- Focus on long-term customer retention and growth.
