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Customer Success (CS) has quickly become a critical function in SaaS and other subscription-based businesses, leading to a surge in interest from professionals seeking to break into the field.
Whether you’re coming from sales, support, or another industry altogether, making the transition into CS can feel unclear. With varied role requirements and no single roadmap to follow, the challenge often lies in knowing where to start.
While the demand for CS professionals is growing, successfully landing a role often requires intentional skill-building, networking, and understanding the industry. In this blog, we’ll explore actionable steps to help you enter Customer Success with confidence.
Understand Customer Success roles and responsibilities
When exploring CS roles, it's important to understand that the field isn’t limited to just one job title. While the role of Customer Success Manager (CSM) is the most commonly known, there are several others, like Customer Success Operations Manager, Implementation Specialist, and CS Team Lead. Each of these roles comes with its own unique set of responsibilities:
Customer Success Manager (CSM)
A Customer Success Manager serves as the primary point of contact between a business and its customers, ensuring that clients achieve their desired outcomes with the product or service. Their responsibilities revolve around relationship management, onboarding, monitoring customer health, and advocating for the customer within the company. CSMs proactively address challenges to prevent churn, drive product adoption, and identify opportunities for upselling or cross-selling.
Customer Success Operations Manager
The Customer Success Operations Manager focuses on the infrastructure, tools, and processes that enable the success of the customer success team. Their responsibilities include optimizing workflows, analyzing data to measure team performance, and implementing systems like CRMs or CS platforms to streamline operations. They act as the backbone of the team, ensuring that CSMs have the resources they need to work efficiently and effectively. This role often involves creating dashboards, reporting on customer health metrics, and driving strategic initiatives to scale customer success efforts.
Implementation Specialist
An Implementation Specialist is responsible for guiding new customers through the onboarding and setup process to ensure they start using the product or service effectively. Their primary focus is on technical configuration, training, and providing a seamless transition from the sales process to active product use. They work closely with customers to customize the product to their specific needs and troubleshoot any initial challenges.
CS Team Lead
The Customer Success Team Lead oversees and supports the customer success team, ensuring that team members perform effectively while aligning with company goals. Their responsibilities include managing daily operations, mentoring and coaching CSMs, and collaborating with other departments to address customer needs. They act as a bridge between the CSM team and senior management, advocating for both customer and team priorities.
Understanding the differences in these roles can help you identify which aligns best with your career goals, whether it’s hands-on customer interaction or optimizing operations.
Knowing where your strengths lie – whether in building relationships, data analytics, or operational processes – can help you focus your job search on the CS role that fits you best.
For more insight into the various roles within Customer Success, check out our blog on Customer Success titles and responsibilities.
Once you’ve identified the role that suits you, it’s time to assess how to leverage your existing skills to make the transition smoother. Let’s explore that next.
Leverage transferable skills from other roles
If you’re transitioning into Customer Success from sales, account management, or customer support, you likely already have many of the skills that will help you succeed.
Relationship-building:
Building and maintaining strong client relationships is essential in sales, account management, and customer support. This translates directly to Customer Success, where fostering long-term partnerships is key to retention and growth.
Problem-solving:
Many roles involve identifying challenges and developing solutions, whether it’s addressing client pain points in sales or resolving technical issues in customer support. In CS, problem-solving helps ensure customers achieve their desired outcomes with your product or service.
Managing customer expectations:
Setting realistic expectations and delivering on promises is critical in sales and account management. In Customer Success, managing expectations ensures customers remain satisfied and engaged, minimizing dissatisfaction or churn.
Communication skills:
Clear and empathetic communication is vital in any customer-facing role. Whether it’s explaining complex product features, addressing customer concerns, or handling escalations, strong communication skills are invaluable to CSMs.
Troubleshooting:
From customer support to product management, troubleshooting teaches you to think critically and address issues efficiently. This skill is especially useful in CS when onboarding new clients or resolving technical barriers to adoption.
Customer advocacy:
Advocating for the needs and goals of customers is a key skill in both marketing and account management. In CS, this involves being the customer’s voice within the company, ensuring their feedback drives product improvements and strategy.
Data analysis:
Experience with analyzing customer data, whether in marketing or product management, can be a significant asset. CSMs often rely on customer health metrics and engagement data to identify risks and opportunities.
If you’re transferring from a non-customer-facing role like marketing or product management, focus on highlighting skills such as cross-functional collaboration, data analysis, and customer advocacy.
In marketing, you’ve likely developed a strong ability to analyze customer behavior and craft strategies based on data insights, which translates well into tracking customer health and identifying engagement opportunities in CS.
Similarly, product management equips you with skills in managing competing priorities and ensuring that customer needs align with product development, making you an effective advocate for customer goals.
Additionally, both roles emphasize working across teams to drive results, a critical competency in Customer Success, where collaboration with sales, support, and product teams ensures a seamless customer experience.
Thus, when updating your resume for Customer Success roles, focus on showcasing these transferable skills. Highlight specific examples where you helped customers achieve goals or solved critical issues. This demonstrates your readiness to handle a CS role, even if you haven’t formally held the title.
For detailed guidance on what skills give you an advantage in the field, take a look at our blog on top CSM skills.
Once you’ve aligned your resume with the role, the next step is to focus on increasing your familiarity and knowledge within the CS space. Let’s discuss how that can help your job search.
Build your CS knowledge
To successfully break into Customer Success, it’s important to gain industry-specific knowledge. Having a solid understanding of CS before you even begin can help you accumulate experience much faster and more effectively.
Certifications
To successfully break into Customer Success, it’s important to gain industry-specific knowledge. One of the best ways to do this is through Customer Success certifications.
These certifications not only help you build the foundational skills you’ll need as a CSM, but they also signal to employers that you’re committed to your growth in this field. Whether you’re new to CS or looking to enhance your knowledge, certifications can make your resume stand out.
Investing in certifications shows potential employers that you're serious about upskilling. To explore the best options for your CS career, check out this blog on CS Certifications.
Learning resources
There are many valuable resources you can use to learn about the CS field in-depth. You can easily access online content like informational blogs that can provide practical tips and updates on current trends and strategies.
You can also listen to podcasts, like the ones linked in our favourite CS podcasts blog. They enable convenient, on-the-go learning while delivering diverse perspectives and expert interviews.
Additionally, webinars can offer interactive learning with focused content, live Q&A sessions, and visual demonstrations. You might find some of the webinars in this list especially useful as a CSM.
Besides online content, you can also turn to some of the best books on Customer Success. These offer in-depth exploration, well-researched frameworks, and actionable exercises for mastering CS philosophy and operations
Together, these resources form a well-rounded learning approach, enabling CS professionals to stay informed, enhance their skills, and drive better outcomes for their organizations.
With this foundation, let's now shift to how networking can further accelerate your journey into Customer Success.
Network within the Customer Success community
Networking is one of the most effective ways to break into Customer Success. In addition to LinkedIn, attending CS events, participating in industry webinars, and joining platforms like Meetup and CSM Practice can help you connect with current CSMs and discover job opportunities.
These spaces allow you to engage with professionals, learn best practices, and get exposure to the field.
Further, reaching out to experienced professionals for mentorship can provide guidance and open doors. Communities like Customer Success Collective are great spaces to exchange ideas, seek advice, and stay updated on the latest in CS.
As you build your network, the next step is considering entry-level roles or internships that will give you the hands-on experience needed to grow. Let’s look at how starting in these roles can set the foundation for your CS career.
Take advantage of entry-level roles or internships
If you’re looking to break into Customer Success but don’t have direct CS experience, consider starting in roles like customer support or business development.
These positions allow you to gain firsthand knowledge of customer interaction, problem-solving, and internal processes – valuable skills in a CS role.
Customer support roles, for example, teach you how to handle customer issues and ensure satisfaction, while business development gives you experience in driving value for customers.
It’s important to acknowledge that your first step into Customer Success might be a lateral move or even a step back in terms of seniority or salary. This shift can provide the hands-on experience needed to move up the ladder within Customer Success.
Many professionals who transitioned into CS started in these entry-level roles, which provided them with the exposure and skills needed to eventually move into Customer Success Manager or other higher-level roles. You can learn more about this career path from entry level to executive roles here.
Once you’ve built your experience, the next step is to prepare for interviews by showcasing your newly acquired skills and industry knowledge. Let’s explore how to position yourself for CS interviews and how to effectively demonstrate your readiness for a CS role.
Prepare for interviews and showcase your passion
Preparing for a Customer Success interview requires showcasing your ability to build strong customer relationships, solve problems, and leverage data to drive results.
Interviewers want to see that you can understand a customer's needs and help them achieve their goals while maintaining a proactive, solution-oriented approach.
Highlight examples where you’ve improved customer satisfaction or contributed to reducing churn (the amount of customers that stop using your product or service) in your past roles, even if not in a formal CS position.
Be sure to focus on your data-driven insights – whether that’s using customer feedback or metrics to make informed decisions. Employers in Customer Success value candidates who can think strategically and leverage data to improve customer outcomes.
Before your interview, practice common CSM interview questions to help you feel prepared and confident. For specific interview tips, check out our blog on acing your CSM interview.
Entering a competitive field like Customer Success is challenging if you go in blind. Following the steps outlined in this blog will give you a solid foundation to make your entry effectively.
Conclusion
Breaking into a Customer Success role can take time, but perseverance is key. As you work on building the right skills, networking within the industry, and earning certifications, remember that every effort adds to your profile.
The journey may involve rejections or slow progress, but by staying focused and passionate about Customer Success, you increase your chances of success.
Every interaction, certification, and connection helps you grow. Stay open to learning and continue building relationships within the CS community – your persistence will pay off in the long run.
You can learn more about the essentials of Customer Success using our Resource Center at Velaris.
In the end, Customer Success is about driving value, and your commitment to learning the role is part of that process. Good luck!
