Customer Success (CS) is a business's collective effort to help its customers succeed with its products, and their own business objectives. Generally, Customer Success teams (CSTs) adopt a proactive, data-guided approach to assist consumers effectively use a company's product.
Depending on the nature of the company's business, this team handles anything from trialing user engagement to customer loyalty and retention to boosting renewal sales and revenue to improving annual returning revenue (ARR) and lifetime customer value, and reducing churn. The important metrics to CSTs include Average MRR, Customer health, Churn rate, and Expansion rate.
The job outlook for Customer Success professionals is bright. According to LinkedIn's 2020 Emerging Jobs Report, customer success ranked as "the top emerging job" in the U.S., with New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Bolton, and D.C. emerging as top hiring cities.
Customer Success roles are common in the IT & Software industry (72%), but the Finance, Marketing, and Internet sectors also constitute top hiring industries. A skill fusion of savvy strategic know-how and social service-oriented skills affords CS professionals unique experiences that unlock many doors of opportunity.
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Customer Success (CS) analysts are the go-to people for an organization's data needs. They handle frontline customer inquiries and leverage unique problem-solving techniques to identify, diagnose, escalate, and resolve customer issues. To enhance positive business-client outcomes, the CS analyst supports, trains, and ensures end-users effectively leverage a company's products and services.
The applicant highlights their achievements with strong action verbs to demonstrate conversance with Customer Success. The resume focuses majorly on knowledge and skills – two critical requirements of any job applicant who's been in an industry for a considerable duration. As a mid-level professional, the applicant uses quantitative data to demonstrate efficacy.
As a data-oriented job, Customer Success is all about numbers, so ensure that your achievements are quantifiable. Buff up your resume with numbers to support your claims of success. The more specific you are about what you have done and achieved, the more believable you sound.
Each of the bullet points in the resume starts with a different technical action verb and highlights a core Customer Success skill set. Such powerful action verbs combined with data points hold the attention of hiring managers and recruiters longer and highlight your conversance with industry practices.
Since CS is still an emerging specialty, little distinguishes a Customer Success Manager (CSM) from a Customer Success Operations Manager (CS Ops) Manager. Nonetheless, a CSM's primary role is to guide customers through the sales process focusing on value proposition. Customers contact the CSM when they have issues with a product. Consequently, the CSM must have a thorough understanding of the consumer's needs and share this with the product, sales, and marketing teams.
This is generally a senior role, so hiring managers focus on experience and achievements. Demonstrate your expertise in working with customers and any notable achievements.
Top CSMs teach customers how to use a company's products to achieve both short- and long-term goals. Not all products are used similarly, and customer usage depends on their unique needs. Identify your customers’ bigger goals and share with them ideas on how your products can help them achieve those goals.
CSMs work with many clients simultaneously. Knowing how to handle several projects at once is a desired qualification. Customers don't know each other, so missing a deadline because you were on another project won't really hold with them. Staying on top of your deadlines is non-negotiable.
A Customer Success Operations (CS Ops) Manager provides tactical support to the CS team by helping it improve its efficiency and KPIs. To better understand what CS Ops is, think of "success operations" as a product that optimizes processes for Customer Success Managers (CSMs). CS Ops managers establish baseline productivity using various metrics (e.g., net MMR churn) and assess the hindrances to learning about new product features. They evaluate the pain points CSMs face in their daily work and conceptualize how processes work. CSMs identify consistent issues affecting the CS team, break them down into manageable components, and tailor solutions with quantifiable results.
In startups and small companies, the CSM mostly doubles as the CS Ops manager. But the need to separate this function into a dedicated role is increasingly apparent. Mostly, the CS Ops manager is a promoted CSM, which means the role calls for extensive experience to immediately build visibility into the CS team's business outcomes, identify areas for improvement, and earmark projects that should be prioritized for Customer Success.
Most organizations hire a CS Ops manager when they have 4-5 CSMs. Naturally, they are looking to bring in someone with extensive experience in project management-like positions to streamline CS processes, create a consistent customer experience, and align everyone under the organization's vision.
When you've had a long career (10+ years), focus on the most recent years of work experience. So, in addition to an Area of Expertise and Professional Summary, create a Career Highlights section of 3-5 bullet points headlining your 10+ years career on the first page. These should be highly brag-worthy and relevant to the position you are pursuing.
The Onboarding Manager sets up customers for immediate success by facilitating interaction between them and the product post-sale. If a client doesn't like the onboarding, they are likely to churn. So, good onboarding is usually the difference between customer buy-in and churn. Basically, the Onboarding Manager educates new customers, helps resolve technical problems, and smoothens the adoption of the company's products and services.
An Onboarding Manager's resume showcases their experience in identifying common onboarding difficulties and possible solutions. This resume demonstrates the applicant's ability to work well with other people to achieve organizational goals. It also highlights the job seeker's leadership skills and technical expertise in mitigating client risk, boosting employee performance, and facilitating Customer Success.
You should also demonstrate that you catch up quickly on new technologies and can communicate those concepts to team members and clients with varying knowledge constraints.
Your ability to excel as an Onboarding Manager depends on how well you work as part of a team. The 'team' can be the clients you're onboarding, incoming CS analysts, or even fellow CS managers. Therefore, and most importantly, demonstrate how you make the team better.
We spoke with hiring managers at top companies like HubSpot, Gainsight, and Intercom to gather their best advice for customer success resumes. They shared insider tips on what skills and experience to highlight, and what mistakes to avoid. Whether you're an experienced CS professional or just starting your career, these tips will help your resume stand out.
Hiring managers want to see that you have experience working directly with customers. Highlight any customer-facing roles or responsibilities you've had, such as:
Quantify your experience where possible, e.g. "Onboarded 50+ new customers per month" or "Maintained a CSAT score of 95%+".
A resume summary is an optional section that highlights your most relevant skills and experiences for the role you're applying for. While not required, it can be a great way to provide additional context about your background, especially if you're changing careers or have a diverse set of experiences that may not be immediately apparent from the rest of your resume.
However, avoid using an objective statement, which is an outdated resume feature that focuses on what you want from an employer, rather than what value you can bring to the role. Instead, focus on crafting a concise, targeted summary that showcases your strengths and qualifications.
Your work experience section is the heart of your resume. It's where you prove to potential employers that you have the skills and experience to excel in a customer success role. In this section, we'll break down the key steps to writing a compelling work experience section that will catch the eye of hiring managers.
The education section of your customer success resume should be concise yet informative. It should highlight your relevant educational background and any certifications or coursework that demonstrate your qualifications for the role. Here are some key tips to keep in mind when writing your education section:
To increase your resume's success rate, use success-related verbs to propel your sentences forward and communicate your experience and skills. Replace tired and overused action verbs with fresh and energetic verbs to grab the attention of hiring managers and recruiters well beyond the 6-7 seconds they take skimming through resumes.
Similarly, use industry-specific verbs to demonstrate you have relevant experience and are capable. Don't reuse verbs – try to use different ones to highlight your technical skills and experiences.
Begin each bullet point and achievement in your Customer Success resume with these action verbs.
For more related action verbs, visit Customer Service Action Verbs.
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
When applying for a Customer Success role, research the job's description to know the core skills relevant to the specific position you are applying for. This helps you to target your resume to the role and ensures your resume goes past the screening stage. Focus on hard skills, like "Zendesk" or "Helpscout" - these are real tools and techniques that show you have real experience with customer service. To start you off, here are some hard skills from Customer Success job postings you can list. Remember to select keywords that are relevant to the role you are applying for.
You can include the above skills in a dedicated Skills section on your resume, or weave them in your experience. Here's how you might create your dedicated skills section:
This word cloud highlights the important keywords that appear on Customer Success job descriptions and resumes. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appears on job postings, and the more 'important' it is.
Thank you for the checklist! I realized I was making so many mistakes on my resume that I've now fixed. I'm much more confident in my resume now.
