For context, what does the structure of your CSM team look like today in terms of engagement model, size, customer focus, etc?

Our current team was developed around a high touch model, with the majority of our team each having about 25 accounts per person. Accounts are assigned in books of business using industry and geographic territory. Given that our product is technical, being able to see similar use cases within a book of business helps our team members ramp up faster and be able to share use cases and successes from one customer to another. This team fully owns accounts, running renewals and upsells as well as cadence meetings, business reviews, and account strategy development. 

Last year, we launched a Key Account Management (KAM) tier on the team. This group specifically works with some of our largest and most complex accounts (think: geographically disparate, multi-business unit organizations). These team members partner with sales (and oftentimes a Technical Account Manager) as a cohesive unit to strategically support the account. 

In the next quarter, we plan to launch a Tech Touch / Digital CSM engagement for accounts that fall under our high touch threshold. These team members will be the human face to our lower spend market segment, providing engagement opportunities, annual business reviews, and automated outreach depending on the customer journey stage. Given that this group is focused on scale and leveraging automation, we will have a higher CSM:customer ratio.  

As I mentioned above, we have other customer success focused teams including Technical Account Managers (TAMs) and Customer Advocacy. Our TAMs provide designated technical coverage, getting to know our customers’ tech  stack and developer team goals to provide architecture advice. Our Customer Advocacy role focuses on helping highlight our customers’ stories through a partnership with marketing, including responsibility for case studies, review sites, logo rights, and coordinating customer outreach.

When commercials get involved with CSM teams, some might argue that contractual discussion could muddy the water of a CSM being a trusted advisor. How has your team approached this scenario?

A CSM does all of the work that leads to a successful renewal or upsell opportunity - they know the account best. By doing the day-to-day work of a CSM, you are building trust with key decision makers and understand the customer’s objectives.  It seems to create an opportunity for friction by bringing in a seller who has no context on the account or current relationship to close this action out. In an ideal scenario, the CSM has been highlighting the value of your offering over the course of the year to make the renewal a ‘non-issue’. 

In order to make this successful on our team, we have made it clear (from our CEO down) that the team should be focused on opportunities that provide value to our customers - we are not a sales machine that should push products at all costs. This allows conversations to happen more naturally as we learn about the customer's business and upcoming initiatives.

What does commercial responsibility look like for CSMs, CSM Managers, and Leaders like yourself? How are you measuring your team’s performance?

Owning commercial responsibility has been an evolution for our team. To start, we partnered with sellers to understand the process of renewals and upsells. By shadowing sellers, we enabled our CS team to understand internal tools, processes, and pricing thresholds. As with any shadowing activity, you find positives you want to adopt and opportunities to learn from! Some key learnings from our shadowing activities included how critical it was to develop a relationship and alignment with Deal Strategy and Finance as well as approaching renewal and growth opportunities as building blocks in a long term relationship (rather than enacting huge write downs just to get through the process). 

Now that we’ve taken over these functions for the majority of our accounts, we’ve created processes to ensure a streamlined team approach. Our goal is to seamlessly integrate them into our regular activities with our customers to enhance the customer lifecycle.

We measure revenue growth and upsell for each team member. We’ve built visibility around these numbers, having each person put together a plan for the year and include a review of individual status during some 1:1s and team status in our monthly team meeting. While the individual contributor is responsible for driving the growth, the overall management team works in a supporting role, attending customer meetings, removing internal roadblocks and ensuring the team is set up for success through training and cross-functional team support.

Could you speak to how your CSMs partner with the sales team?

For anyone who has started CS within an established company, you know how hard this is! Sellers who have been tasked with owning the entire customer lifecycle may feel like a CS team is taking away relationships they’ve spent so much time investing in. There’s a lot of change management that needs to happen and alignment from sales and CS leadership is crucial. At Fastly, we partner with the sellers on an account through the first renewal. This allows the CS team to ramp up on an account and the relationships, provides sales time to land and expand, and allows for a smoother customer experience, rather than a hard cut immediately after they sign a contract. After the renewal, the CS team will fully own the account moving forward (with the exception of our KAM team, where all parties will continue to partner). 

A lot of success in this relationship is driven by communication. Our CS team sets up cadence meetings with their sellers to ensure everyone is on the same page and we can appropriately divide and conquer.

You’ve grown a fantastic CS organization at Fastly. How have you put employee development front and center within your CS team?

As a leader, seeing individuals on the team develop is one of the most rewarding parts of the role. I received feedback early on that it wasn’t clear how success was defined or what career path options were available. Given that, I’ve put a lot of focus on being clear on metrics and KPIs (having a quota helps drive this focus, though you don’t want to forget about the leading indicators or softer skills that drive this success).

Additionally, I’ve outlined key competencies for the team. So if a CS team member wants to look at their career development, they can see how we expect competencies to evolve as you move into a more senior level or key skills to demonstrate to move into a management track. We look to have career discussions every three to six months - not always with a promotion in mind, but a focus on skill development.

I also have monthly skip level meetings to ensure I’m hearing feedback from across the team including wins, challenges, and skills they want to develop. This lets me focus on improving broken internal processes and aligning people to upcoming projects where they can learn or showcase expertise.

What does career development look like for CSMs? Could you go into your role structure and career roadmap for a CSM at Fastly?

In general, there are three career paths available: individual contributor path, manager path, or off the team (either internal or external). While we’d love to keep our teammates forever, I lead with the philosophy that you need to choose what is best for your career, which means sometimes you need to empower people to leave the team. As we continue to grow our team to cover various customer segments, it also creates more opportunities for career growth within the organization. 

On an individual career path, you can move up to a Senior level. You can also look at changing segments - moving from Digital CSM to Enterprise or Enterprise to Key Accounts. If you have a technical leaning, you can also look into moving laterally to the Technical Account Management team or leverage your marketing interest to move into Customer Advocacy. 

The management track is interesting, as it often comes as more of a function of team growth. Many young individual contributors think that management is the only future career path, so it is critical for our front line managers to provide career growth options and use discussions to truly understand someone’s goals. We like to focus on developing skills which will help in both current and future roles, rather than strictly seeking a new title. (Hint: wanting to be a leader on the team doesn’t mean you need a manager title!) 

The third option is leaving the CS team. If someone is set on becoming a manager and we don’t have near term opportunities on our team, we talk about their interest in moving to adjacent teams where a manager role may be available, such as Support or Program Management. If there is an  interest in moving to another team in an individual contributor role, we discuss any training or certifications they may need to transition into the role. In both of these scenarios, the direct manager and CS leadership help lead internal conversations to get feedback from the hiring team to set this team member up for success. Ultimately, some people may be ready for a new role before your organization can support it and have to look externally. In these cases, I  wish them well and try to stay in touch to see their future career success.

Feedback is central to employee development, how do you encourage feedback for continuous learning in your CS team?

Critical feedback helps people grow, but it also can be hard to deliver -  you know the person is trying, so you don’t want to hurt their feelings. The book Radical Candor has helped shape some of my thoughts around this, framing how it is actually more unkind not to share feedback. 

On our team, we try to introduce the concept of feedback early in someone’s time with us. As they go through onboarding, a new team member has to do product pitches in front of the rest of their team. Each team member is then expected to provide feedback on what worked well and how they could improve.  As someone moves into shadowing calls, we ask the shadower to review the call - what went well and what could have gone better. 

We also encourage sharing as a form of feedback. When someone finds something that  works well (such as: I sent this note and the quiet customer finally responded!), they are encouraged to share it within our team slack channel so others can utilize it. It has been fun to see this get adopted across the team, where it now happens without managers prompting it.

What’s unique about career development for Customer Success professionals & CSMs that you think most people get wrong?

I think a lot of people focus on the growth ladder within CS and forget to look at peer teams. Working within Customer Success provides the opportunity to develop and hone so many skills that could make you successful in other roles. By reflecting on which parts of the job you love (and don’t want to lose in a next role), you can identify positions that may not have been on your radar initially. Sometimes by taking a role in an adjacent team, you are exposed to a different lens of thought, which could improve your overall approach to working with customers.