CS Insider Report #15

Here's what's happening across the Customer Success community! Crafted with 💜 by CS Insider for CSPs.

Report #15 Rundown

• What's Trending: Conversations, news, and resources that matter for CSPs
• Community Spotlight: Kenneth Sinensky, Enterprise Customer Success Associate at Glia and Editor at CS Insider
• Dear Insider: An anonymous advice column for your most pressing career questions and concerns.

Career Advice

• Read this, if you are new to Customer Success. - Saahil Karkera shares helpful dos and don’ts for new CS professionals.
• Moments of Truth: Personal Branding and How to Shine as a New CSM - Cairo Armani offers practical advice on growing your personal brand and how to shine at work.
• Are you still trying to figure out why your posts flop on LinkedIn? Check out part 1 and part 2 of Tim Denning's guide to 100,000 LinkedIn views.
• ChurnFM: How to break into Customer Success with Diana De Jesus - Listen in as Diana shares advice on how to land a role in CS, how she did it, and other useful advice.

Productivity Tips

• Jay Nathan asks, “What's your playbook for reengaging your quietest customers?”
• Are the best relationships sometimes built out of escalations? Erika Villarreal thinks so.
• Instead of sending long onboarding emails, follow Oscar Linares’s lead.
• Yes, there are stupid questions - Ozan Varol shares how to craft smarter questions for just about any situation.

Strategy Insights

• The State of Customer Success 2022 - Higher Logic in conjunction with Gain Grow Retain shares insight from the most influential CS leaders on what this year holds for the industry.
• Your CSMs are suffering burnout. Rachel Provan breaks down how to protect your team from task overload.

Tech Tools

• 123 Apps - Sometimes, you just need a quick audio/video trim or edit. Edit, convert and create with 123 Apps. One of the simplest sites for editing tasks.
• Krisp.ai - Cut out distracting background noise and echo during your online meetings and training with the power of AI.

What’s your name and background?

I started my career in the non-profit space, but broke into CS just last year with the help of SV Academy & Gainsight’s CSYou program. I’m an Enterprise Customer Success Associate (CSA) at Glia where I help financial institutions shape their Digital Customer Service strategy. I’m a shameless CS nerd and therefore edit CS Insider articles for fun.

What advice would you give to someone trying to break into CS?

Embrace the ambiguity. CS has so many different facets and every organization has a different look and feel depending on the product, size, customer base, etc. Embrace it, find what areas interest you, reach out to people and learn about their experiences and leverage your own past experience, because it probably DOES apply to CS!

What’s an underrated CS skill?

Promoter (literally). Customer Success Professionals have the ability to make their customers and points of contact shine within their organizations and enable them to stand out as a result of their partnership with you and your team!

Are you:

• dealing with angry customers?
• struggling with lack of guidance?
• managing a tough book of business?
• struggling to find an answer to your questions?

We get it. Being a CSM is difficult.

If you have a question you'd like answered, a story to tell, or just need to vent, submit your anonymous questions and expert Kristi Faltorusso will answer them in this advice column.

View our latest Dear Insider Q&A here.

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