One thing you can do this month that will level-up every CSM on your team

🎁 Feedback is a gift.

When someone takes time out of their day to provide immediate, actionable feedback with the intent in helping you grow. It’s an absolute gift. Think of how appreciative you are of customers who take time to respond to your NPS surveys.

Employees grow with feedback but being a Customer Success Manager (CSM) can be a lonely role. You’re often working with your customers, in your portfolio, with your key contacts. You have very little exposure to how other CSMs are working with their customers, or feedback about the QBR or customer meeting you just ran.

Because of the silo’d way CSMs work, very rarely do CSMs in the field receive immediate, actionable feedback from their peers.

Introducing a subtle change will have lasting beneficial impacts to the way your CSM team grows and improves.

The change?

Add peer-to-peer feedback as part of your MBOs this quarter. Meaning each CSM shadows other CSMs in the field and provides immediate, actionable feedback.

This change can be introduced in a many-to-many format in which each CSM has a positive impact on every other CSM on the team. Tools like Chorus and Gong have made this process even easier if you’re able to catch the recording of a meeting and not have to review a meeting in real time.

This approach takes the peer-feedback that comes at the end of a review cycle (usually at the end of the quarter or year) and instead inserts that feedback directly into the meeting a CSM just had with a customer. The added benefit here is the feedback is coming from a peer CSM (instead of someone from support, sales, or PS) who has to run the same type of customer meetings.

The lag time of feedback is reduced, the feedback frequency is increased, and feedback is now not a scary part of the year that comes once a year from a manager. It’s coming from a peer, that’s helping you learn, grow, and develop.

By implementing this change, you’re prioritizing continuous learning and development and demonstrating that feedback can be used positively to nurture your CSM team.

Here’s a simple feedback model you can leverage for your CSMs:

2x2 Feedback Model:

The 2x2 Feedback Model focuses in two areas.

Building confidence, and building competence.

Great coaches focus on one item the CSM did well, then one action the CSM might do differently to improve their meetings with customers.

1. Self reflection

This step is all about building confidence in the CSM that’s being reviewed by their peer.

• The first step is having the receiving CSM reflect on their meeting and state one thing they did well.

• Next, is having the reviewer state one thing they thought the CSM did well in the meeting.

The positive reinforcement through both self-reflection and the peer reviewer signals where the CSM is excelling in customer engagements.

2. Constructive feedback

This step is all about building competence.

• The first step is having the receiving CSM reflect on their meeting and state one thing they feel they could’ve improved in the meeting.

• Next, is having the reviewer state one thing they thought the CSM could do differently in the next customer meeting.
  

Introducing this feedback framework into your CSM’s day-to-day work ensures that every CSM on the team is getting actionable feedback from their peers. And, the process itself takes no more than 5 minutes during the debrief of a customer call.

This change puts actionable feedback in the hands of your CSMs and elevates continuous development for employee success.

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