Parul Bhandari on Building Scalable Customer Success

The The key lessons which shaped my approach to Customer Success have been:

• Training and enablement matter. For my first 3 years of work, I trained non-technical employees in ergonomics risk management. I learned so much about how people learn, and how, with a focus on enablement and learning, almost anyone can learn a topic well.
• Working to help people uncover their whole selves can help enable them to be better at work. So I focus on whole-self coaching for individuals.
• The best business decisions come with a data-minded approach. This is especially true when advocating for change and/or driving results. In customer success, it is especially important to be on top of your data. (AI is only as good as it is).

For company leaders, consider your full cross-functional collaboration: for Customer Success, the sales handoff is imperative, product reliability is critical, finance data drives action, and marketing initiatives can make or break a relationship. My high retention rate came from a collaborative experience with a company that understood the importance of all of the above for retention.

CS is perfectly poised for growing revenue, whether we like it or not. This is actually the base of a course I just created, called “Sell like a CSM”. It is all about driving revenue from an organic, customer-led lens. Why is CS so great at this - due to the trust and relationships that we build.

The conversations we have are warm leads and lead to better sales experiences. CSMs need to be enabled, though—going back to my first key point—to drive success in this space. Without it, it is unfair to expect them to learn this art and science.

High-performing teams have a few key elements in place.

• Communication - they do not leave thoughts on the table and open the space for ideas and growth.
• Time - they know what they need to do when, and have time for creativity and focus on work.
• Incentives - they are incentivized by what matters and given the credit and pay they are due.
• Top-down buy-in - the team has responsibility and respect from other teams.
• A leader who listens - they have managers who are in touch, hear them, and advocate for them.

• Scale without sacrificing cost- Sometimes you just cannot afford a full-time head, which is a great reason to supplement your team.
• You need short-term help- Some projects and initiatives that require focused work, like workshops, are best enabled with outsourced resources. Building from within may take time and effort.
• You need special skills- have you ever thought, ‘I wish I knew this’? Well, chances are—someone does, and it can be outsourced to achieve a goal.
• Time to learn and grow- Many times, managers cannot manage, lead, review, coach, or train teams… There are many hats to wear, so even managers can learn and grow from outsourced consultants.

As an outsourced leader, I have been the leader on the team, an external player or a team player (supporting a leader), and both models have been a way to enable success and growth.

Scale and growth come when you consider your margins and costs. Margins are based on productivity, efficiency, and utilization, among other metrics. If you expend your manager's energy, you may lose time or efficiency elsewhere, and that can cost you. Bringing in outsourced resources to Customer Success is a way to level up without adding heavy, full-time resources.

Especially as teams are asked to do more with AI and fewer resources, outsourcing can be a great way to quickly drive scale and efficiency, and sustain that over a period of growth.