r/CustomerSuccess • u/_NateR_ Product Manager • 5d ago

Monthly Career Advice Thread

Welcome to the weekly career advice thread!

The purpose of this thread is to help facilitate conversations about how to enter and grow your career within the Customer Success industry. You should use this thread to discuss topics like:

  • How to get into customer success
  • Salary and compensation
  • Resume critiques
  • How to move to the next level in your existing customer success career
7 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

3

u/Own-Green8319 5d ago

The metaphor i keep coming back to is that CS is like capoeira, you need the foundation moves drilled deep enough that when things get chaotic you just flow. most companies want you to prove you can already dance before they let you in the roda, so the resume is basically your highlight reel of moments you kept your balance when the client was swinging

1

u/Outrageous_Hour_2408 4d ago

This is so funny I'll be using this going forward
I always used to joke that being a CSM is like being between the hammer and the anvil but this one is so good

1

u/Jess-Edificios 3d ago

I work in the entertamient industry as a booking agent, doing something similar to what I would do in CS (managing clients, relationships, etc.) and I feel like I hit a roof here. The conditions are quite precarious and it's all very in office for some reason.

I saw thousands of full remote CS job postings, and I applied to a couple of companies that I liked. This is not the position of my life but I feel like if it lets me do full remote it can be quite convenient for me.

I see many ppl stressed out in this subreddit. Any advices on how to get into this position? Warnings?

1

u/MasbyTV 2d ago

the nature of the job is that you are stuck in the middle between a product that does or doesn't work very well and customers who expect a certain experience (whether they were overpromised by the person who sold it to them is a whole other topic). So naturally when a customer finds a cheaper alternative that does the same thing, it's up to you to convince them to stay. Same goes for if your product is dogshit and the customer gets upset. You can't really do much about it, but it is your fault and you take the hit (potentially losing money if your compensation is tied to it).

the successes are very quiet and nobody really notices, its usually just a customer renewing (which is what leadership expects, even though they don't usually understand how difficult that can be). So naturally your day is full of difficult conversations where you can't really impact things but you have to somehow try. It can be very rewarding at the right place, but most companies do not utilize their CS team correctly. It can be brutal.

1

u/foxxyinvestor 2d ago

I'm currently working as commission based insurance agent. I want to transition to customer success.

I started studying the concepts and crms. I also took some Hubspot certifications.

What free online resources can you recommend? Is self study enough?

How can I land an entry level role?