This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the different companies that have looked for or are currently looking for Customer Success Managers. Learn more about your potential employers, see if their values align with yours and whether you can see yourself working there. We’re staying on theme with big tech players this week. We’ve talked about Experian last week and today, we’re looking at VMWare.

VMWare – an all-in-one cloud service provider

VMWare are a provider of cloud services for corporations. We’ll go into the details in just a second, but here’s a quick run down of the sorts of services they provide:

• App Platform: a stable environment to help you build applications,
• Cloud Infrastructure: creating a consistent environment for cloud applications,
• Networking: accelerating modern app operations with state-of-the-art network protocols,
• Anywhere Workspace: enable secure and seamless remote working,
• Security: make sure that no matter the platform you’re on, it’s seamless and secure,
• Telco Cloud: enable a telecommunications network in the cloud.

The Services Themselves

Here are three of the main services that VMWare provides. Let’s dive a bit deeper into what they actually cover.

Tanzu is an modular application platform that enables the development of cloud applications.

Cloud infrastructure has to be built right the first time, otherwise it can be difficult to streamline it as a company get more mature over time.

The way that each solution speaks with each other is also critical. Connectivity has to be reliable, stable and pervasive.

Job Description Example

This is what they would hope you can achieve in the first 6-12 months. Let’s go through each of the dot points:

• they’ll want you to onboard in a five-week onboarding plan (sounds easy enough),
• hone in on a specific area of technical knowledge.
• after 90 days (3 months), you’ll understand how to fit pieces of the VMWare puzzle into the framework of your customers’ business problems,
• build a long-term relationship with your customers (critical for customer success),
• help them get time to value faster by adopting VMWare’s solutions quicker,
• be the SME and educate the customers on what’s coming up,
• show your progress with VMWare’s internal tools,
• be proactive and lead, coordinate and guide customer’s major VMWare initiatives,
• be an advocate for customers with strong Voice of the Customer straetgy,
• become VCP (VMware Certified Professional) certified.

What They Care About

Pretty decent perks here too. I think the key is that even though they’re a larger tech company, they allow employees to really buy into the growth of the company with their Employee Stock Purchase Plan. At the same time, they provide a safe environment for families to grow through the Medical Coverage and other similar types of benefits. As a larger company, they also invest in your development with different events, trainings, course works and similar, not to mention physical and mental wellness initiatives.

Does VMware appeal to you? In my opinion, while it might not seem as fast paced as a smaller tech company, it makes up for it with stability and a strong brand. What do you think?

This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the different companies that have looked for or are currently looking for Customer Success Managers. Learn more about your potential employers, see if their values align with yours and whether you can see yourself working there. Today, we’re looking into one of the bigger tech players in the world right now. They’re by no means a start up, but still try to keep the spirit of entrepreneurship in their organization. Say hello to Experian.

Experian – Information Services is their forte

From the outset, it’s a bit difficult to see what Experian actually does. They tout themselves as a leader of Information Services management, but what does that actually entail? We’ll dive into it momentarily.

Their main products are analytics and credit reporting. Many companies – as well as individuals – will use the latter when it comes time to buying a house, taking out a credit card, or any sort of official matter that relates to their credit history.

The Services Themselves

Unlike all of the other companies that we’ve looked at so far, Experian is the only one that doesn’t have a fully fledged SaaS solution. They are big on the services that they sell. Let’s have a look at them now.

They offer credit checks at a corporate level, as well as analytics and digital data for research purposes for different industries. They’re well known for having robust processes and a clear methodology for their conclusions and findings. Companies will go to Experian for risk management and peace of mind.

They offer similar services to the individual level as well. The main way they do this is through allowing consumers to order their credit report, which tracks their credit history to date. They also allow amendments to said credit reports. If the individual has been a victim of finance fraud, they can place bans on their credit history so that it is not tainted with the transactions that are a result of fraud.

Job Description Example

Let’s go through each of the dot points:

• You keep an eye on when it’s time for renewal and also track your customers’ timelines as well to help them achieve their goals on time,
• You can find opportunities to grow your account both cross and up your portfolio. This means selling things to your customers that they don’t already have but will also benefit from,
• you can write at a professional level,
• help improve the Net Promoter Score (NPS) for your accounts, as high as possible but the goal range is there,
• help with negotiating bigger contracts,
• help the marketing team with creating case studies that can be used for collateral purposes, and
• learning and upskilling within the services that Experian offers so that you can know the value they can deliver and how you can best communicate this.

What They Care About

It looks like the focus here is on flexibility and making sure the benefits suit you and your lifestyle. Worth digging into! If you’re curious, they have a guide here that is a sneak peek into their culture and what Experian workers care about. If you like big, stable companies with lots of opportunities for career progression up as well as sideways, Experian might be your cup of tea.

This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the different companies that have looked for or are currently looking for Customer Success Managers. Learn more about your potential employers, see if their values align with yours and whether you can see yourself working there. This week, we’re looking at at industry that’s only becoming more and more important as tech becomes more prevalent in the world: digital, online security and authentification.

Okta – Securing the world’s online identities

Back in the day, before this crazy thing called the Internet (I know, did that time ever exist?), you used something called a key to open a door. It was made of metal and could be cut in certain configurations so it was unique to your door (or unique enough).

Nowadays, the same concept still exists, but everything is lifted online. Instead of metal keys, we have online keys that are tied to our identity so that we can access only what’s ours and no one else’s. Okta has turned this into a science and extends its capabilities to both protecting workplaces, as well as their customers.

The Software Itself

You can see from this screenshot of their product page that they have a multitude of products to suit different needs. That’s one of the advantages of their software: it’s not really industry specific and can be packaged up to serve different jobs.

They do have Workforce Identify and Customer Identity, which we’ll dive into a little bit deeper.

At any point in a day, more mature, larger organizations won’t only have hundreds – if not thousands – of employees logging into their company’s applications. There might also be contractors, visitors and other entities that might have specific use cases for having temporary access.

Workforce Identity allows companies to bolt on a user-friendly SaaS to their applications that facilitates getting access to digital and online services, saving their own IT department the headache and hassle of managing this themselves.

Customer Identity tackles the challenge of allowing external parties – whose level of IT savviness may not be clear – to log into their own portals that you supply them. This in itself is a gargantuan piece to tackle. Software developers work in teams to build the back and front end so that this works as it should. Okta takes care of everything in this case, include the installation, configuration, testing and customer support.

Job Description Example

This is a job listing for a Customer Success Manager in Sydney, Australia:

Let’s go through each of the dot points:

• you’re the go-to person for your customer. You help them get onboarded and manage escalations should they occur.
• become the trusted advisor for customers, being the one they turn to for any questions regarding the application, making sure they get the most bang for their buck,
• make sure you link up with the business stakeholders so that the application is inline with what they want to use it for,
• be the one who spreads your knowledge about new features,
• if you see risky behavior, pick it up early. Seeing good behavior? Point it out and make it a habit in them.
• Check the customer health through product usage.
• be the focal point that helps with the renewal process,
• be the voice of the customer and champion their needs cross-functionally.
• be super chummy with sales to sell and position the Success Services component of the business.

What They Care About

Like most tech-forward organizations, they work hard to keep their employees happy. Benefits are numerous – as per above – and they also have advisors who work in Okta who’s sole purpose is to help you make the most of said benefits! That’s something I haven’t seen before and shows that they really care about their people.

Online security might not be a field that you’ve considered working in, but if it’s in a company like Okta, it sounds like you’ll be well looked after. ☺️

This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the different companies that have looked for or are currently looking for Customer Success Managers. Learn more about your potential employers, see if their values align with yours and whether you can see yourself working there. This week, we’re diving into a company that does it all in the e-commerce space: SMS/text marketing, loyalty programs, referrals, subscriptions and visual marketing. Headquartered out of New York City and helping turn user-generated content into a powerful sales tool, let’s look at Yotpo.

Yotpo – Turning Online Shoppers into your own personal brand army

I first heard about Yotpo seven or eight years ago, into one of my first full-time jobs out of university. Back then, it was a platform to help manage reviews online. Now, it’s evolved to be a lot more.

Tying into the social commerce trend, it turns online influencers into an army that helps companies sell. Using tools that help to structure online selling in a way that’s less haphazard, but still retains the trustworthiness of social selling, it’s a Swiss Army Knife that e-commerce big hitters use to get a leg up in the game.

The Software Itself

There are five main modules, but in the interests of keeping this content succinct, I’m shortening it to three. If you want to check out more of what Yotpo has to offer (and what you might end up supporting as a CSM for them), feel free to visit their website and explore.

Their Reviews module slips in unobtrusive, gentle asks for reviews when they’re statistically most like to generate them. It might be right after the sale, in a thank-you text message a few days later, or in an email. Yotpo works with you to find out what works best, then does the heavy lifting to garner the reviews so you can use them as powerful marketing collateral.

Every ecommerce brand has a loyalty program now. Some do it better than others. It’s not as simple as offering a points system and hoping it works. There’s the issue of collection, redemption, then slicing and dicing the data to find which customers are more likely to be your most loyal. Leave it to the experts at Yotpo to help you do this.

Where everything now is so visual, using images, photos and video to powerfully drive home messaging is a must have to stand out in such a crowded market place. Yotpo has modules within its Visual Marketing section to help you do this.

Job Description Example

Yotpo is a multinational company, with offices in USA, UK, Israel, Bulgaria and Australia. They are a big hirer of Customer Success leads and will continue to do so, as that’s a strong value add for their organization. The following JD comes from one of their Sydney roles:

Let’s go through each of the dot points:

• you become the consultant within their organization that helps them grow their business while using what Yotpo has to offer.
• you can build rapport with them,
• keep renewing annual customers and show customers that you’re able to help them keep making money in their business,
• help customers find more opportunities to use Yotpo solutions more effectively to generate higher revenue,
• look at usage data and find points where risk might be creeping into accounts,
• be the voice of the customer within Yotpo and share the information within all departments,
• be the point of liaison with all other departments so that you can resolve issues.

Why You Should Join Them

This is just for the Australia business, but it’s pretty good overall. Generous in many areas and importantly, there’s opportunity to develop your career, which is what you want to see in a tech company.

So what do you think? Could you see yourself working at Yotpo? Keen to hear your thoughts!

This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the different companies that have looked for or are currently looking for Customer Success Managers. Learn more about your potential employers, see if their values align with yours and whether you can see yourself working there. This week, we’re looking at one of the most recognisable CRM SaaS out there. This company has really made a name for itself over the last decade, starting as a small fish but is now well and truly a big player in the sales and marketing CRM arena: Hubspot.

Hubspot – the user-friendly sales and marketing CRM

Starting in 2006, Hubspot is a success story in the crowded CRM space. The way that they went about it is simple, but not easy: starting with SMEs, they built a delightful platform that helped them to track, manage and create value at every step along the marketing and sales customer life cycle.

In this day and age, it’s hard to find a tech company that’s not at least interacted with Hubspot. I’ve seen it being used in larger enterprises the likes of Oracle and even smaller start ups. It’s the de facto standard for improving the sales and marketing standards in tech companies the world over.

The Software Itself

While its original products were sales and marketing, it’s since branched out to include departments like Service, Content and Operations. I’ll focus on the OG offerings and content, but feel free to dive a bit deeper into each one if you’re curious.

Marketing Hub contains all the pieces to help conquer your marketing pipeline. Assign value to each step of the funnel, find out where you’re losing customers, identify opportunities to add more MQLs and automate processes.

Track the leads that come in, then the conversations that eventuate from each customer. If you need to follow up with customers, Hubspot Sales Hub will do the heavy lifting and send you reminders, as well as send your prospects information that they require to make the final decision.

Hubspot’s Content Management System (CMS) Hub is the beating heart of your tech website. Customers need to see case studies, testimonials, collateral and widgets so that they slowly can get more comfortable with the idea of buying from you. They need to trust that you are who you say you are. The CMS Hub can automate this so that you can go back to focusing on the real life conversations with customers.

Job Description Example

Hubspot is kicking huge goals; they’re hiring all the time. I was able to find this job listing for Sydney, Australia, that was only up last week. It had over 200 applications according to LinkedIn!

Let’s go through each of the dot points:

• you hold the keys to the customer relationship and know how to make customers happy, as well as keeping them happy,
• you can get deep into the organisations you look after through key stakeholders, across multiple teams.
• you yourself become a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in Inbound Marketing and the trusted advisor to your customers,
• help customers define their success and help them navigate your roadmap so they can get successful,
• make sure that you can maintain revenue in your accounts, growing the accounts and renewing them,
• get more people to use more features, growing revenue in this way as well,
• monitor customer health and nip risk issues in the bud before they get worse,
• work with the CS team to find new ways to scale and grow your customers’ use of Hubspot.

Why You Should Consider Hubspot

Hubspot looks after their employees. Every other day, I see the stories their employees share on LinkedIn. Outside looking in, it seems like a great place to be. Checking out this list 👆🏽, I would tend to agree.

Hubspot is a great company for a Customer Success Manager of any level to work in. They hire all around the world and have world-class training. If you do apply for a role there, say hi for me!

This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the different companies that have looked for or are currently looking for Customer Success Managers. Learn more about your potential employers, see if their values align with yours and whether you can see yourself working there. This week, we’re looking into Qualtrics, a company owned by SAP, whose core product revolves around surveys and the analysis of data that comes from them.

Qualtrics – Smart, Sophisticated, Survey SaaS

In my Oracle days, a presales consultant I knew moved into into Qualtrics. It was convenient for him, because they just happened to be down the road. During Friday drinks, he snuck back into the office and we caught up.

He had been at Oracle for 10 years, but had no regrets about leaving. While it was owned by a competitor of Oracle’s it operated more like a start up. He had more autonomy to move fast, break things and make an impact.

Let’s dive a bit deeper into what Qualtrics does and how you might support this business as a CSM.

The Software Itself

The great thing about surveys is that they’re a tool as old as time. As such, their use cases vary quite a bit. However, Qualtrics isn’t unfocused. They have seven or eight key segments they’ve broken out into. I’ll choose a few here to look into.

CustomerXM is focused on understanding customers better. Customer Experience (CX) is a field gaining prominence, particularly in the world of tech. Qualtrics shares that the popular use cases of the Customer XM product are:

• social listing,
• digital customer service,
• sales and retention intelligence,
• quality management,
• Voice of the Customer,
• Account Management.

ProductXM is on the flip side of the coin. Where there are customers (demand), there has to be a product (supply). In the world of digital, really digging into what levers will give the best possible output in a highly competitive landscape will the difference between your company/product being #1, or fighting in obscurity.

The main use cases are:

• pricing research,
• concept testing,
• product naming,
• product satisfaction, and
• feature prioritization.

Then last but not list here, who do you have enabling the supply and demand side to come together? Employees! Making sure they’re feeling fulfilled yet challenged, switched on and well remunerated is key to keeping a business operating not only smoothly, but profitably as well.

The key use cases here are:

• action planning,
• employee pulse,
• onboarding feedback,
• exit diagnostic.

Job Description Example

The role we’re going to look into today is for a Portfolio Customer Success Manager, in Sydney, Australia.

Let’s go through each of the dot points:

• be the one who builds connections in your account organizations and turn them into evangelists/champions,
• increase adoption. Pretty part and parcel for CSMs. The main action you want to be enabling at Qualtrics is more research.
• understand and empathise with customers to know exactly why they bought into Qualtrics and how they wish to use it to solve their problem,
• build success plans to provide customers with a blueprint for success,
• create content (PDF, videos, emails, etc) that educates customers on how to get the most value out of Qualtrics,
• be the Voice of the Customer and make sure cross-functional leaders hear them,
• unite the different departments so you holistically build the best possible product for your customers,
• be an SME (subject matter expert) of Qualtrics,
• be a sales enabler, helping with your domain knowledge wherever possible, and
• work hand-in-hand with product to build the product to be better than ever by informing them real customer feedback that you get from your accounts.

Why You Should Go

Their benefits can be summed up as having the stability of a strong parent (SAP), but possessing the spirit of a start up. If you need health coverage but want to do big things and make an impact, Qualtrics is for you.

This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the different companies that have looked for or are currently looking for Customer Success Managers. Learn more about your potential employers, see if their values align with yours and whether you can see yourself working there. Today, we’ll be heading into the technical database realm and looking into a company called MongoDB.

MongoDB – Scalable, modern databases for technologically mature companies

MongoDB is classified as a NoSQL database program, it uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. If you don’t know what any of that means, don’t worry, I don’t either. I took that blurb off Wikipedia.

I’d actually had a recruiter from MongoDB reach out to me before here for a CSM role in Melbourne, Australia. It comes across as a very collected, well-run organization that knows exactly the space it’s playing in and how it makes a difference in the lives of its customers.

Safe to say that its CSMs are quite technical, verging on the side of being Solution Consultants. Still, the fact that there are CSM roles show that there is a place for that human touch to connect with customers at the emotional level.

The Software Itself

I’m going to go on a bit of a different approach here. Usually I would talk about the software, but given that MongoDB has a section on use cases, I thought I’d share those, as they make sense to me.

Who likes admin work where you have to move slabs of data from one system to the next? If you’ve spent any time working in IT, you’d know that this is a laborious chore. With MongoDB, it becomes a thing of the past, if not at least a lot easier to manage.

We know that societies are trending towards mobile. Everything you used to do on desktops now works on mobile. If your website isn’t mobile responsive, the UX is terrible. It’s seen as a prerequisite now. MongoDB takes care of the “invisible” data infrastructure, which is also crucial to mobile performance, so that these issues don’t detract from the user experience in the background.

For e-commerce or any businesses that take money of any sort, payments are a crucial piece. You can’t have archaic payment standards that aren’t up to scratch. MongoDB ensures that sensitive customer information is housed securely and that once payments are made, customers don’t have to worry about that money being lost, or the legitimacy of their online purchase.

Job Description Example

This screenshot is taken from the MongoDB website and is for a Senior Customer Success Manager role in New York City.

Let’s go through each of the dot points:

• you have done the time as a CSM already. Pretty fair, given that it’s a senior role. For a lower role, they might be more open to existing customer-facing experience,
• you can act as the Voice of the Customer. Pretty standard CSM stuff here.
• you are a bit more on the technical side. Maybe this is you, or maybe it isn’t. If you’re a bit geeky and can break down complex concepts into simple things, could be great for you.
• as a senior role, you won’t have your hand held. You have to have the tough conversations, de-escalate situations and talk your way out of sticky situations.
• have you ever started a business, or run a side gig? This role could be great for you!
• team players for the win. CSMs work best in teams, supporting one another.
• again, if you have experience in the industry/databases, then it’ll be looked upon as a big plus.

What are MongoDB’s benefits?

Have a look at these! Generally, if you’re looking to lead a balanced life for a company that looks after you, look no further than MongoDB.

So what do you think? Does it appeal to you, or not really your cup of tea? Drop me a message through the blog, keen to hear what you think!

This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the different companies that have looked for or are currently looking for Customer Success Managers. Learn more about your potential employers, see if their values align with yours and whether you can see yourself working there. For this week, we’re changing industry and looking into the world of marketing automation. Say hello to Klaviyo.

Klaviyo – the SMS and email marketing automation platform

So do you know how some of your favorite shops sometimes send you text/SMS, talking about a promotion, new item that’s come in or special offer? That’s part of what Klaviyo does. It helps companies run campaigns that scale and help the company sell more with less effort.

There are also parts of it that allow it to personalize collateral to suit specific personas. For example, if tracking pick ups that someone is more likely to buy items at full price, it may highlight features over a discount, whereas if another customer has only ever bought at discount, they would go down a “discount route” and be shown campaigns where the money they save is in bold.

The Software Itself

There are two main modules that Klaviyo sells: email marketing and SMS/text marketing. Here are screenshots of both from their website:

The email marketing module allows customers to:

• send personalized emails that convert: the WYSIWYG drag-and-drop module lets you select how the campaigns should look like and can go through specific paths based on their browsing behavior,
• drive repeat sales through automation: using browsing behavior, automatically push campaigns to cross- and up-sell to customers,
• launch and test quickly with prebuilt campaigns: spend less time messing around with design and more time building winning campaigns with prebuilt templates.

The SMS Marketing module allows you to:

• Personalized text campaigns: don’t blast out the same message to everyone. Klaviyo helps you send specific content to specific personas.
• Text their number: you can specifically send a message to their device and get their attention where it’s directed to most: their phone.
• Bring people who are sitting on the fence back: last thing you want is for people who aren’t committed to not buy. Get the sale with campaigns that convert.

Job Description Example

The above is a screenshot from a CSM job out in Los Angeles, California. Let’s break it down in each of the bullet points:

• gives you some sense of how many customers you’ll be managing. 50-60 mid- to high-touch customers sounds about right.
• give advice to customers on how to increase revenue from the product,
• standard onboarding procedure, getting customers in and using the product, eventually falling in love with it.
• be proactive about finding risk and addressing it before it gets out of hand,
• let customers know about new features,
• work cross-collaboratively with product and engineering for new features,
• resolve issues that customers are experiencing
• speak plain language when communicating with customers,
• document issues,
• and of course, be someone fun to work with!

Why you should consider them

These are the values they stand for:

Do these resonate with you? If they do, keep and eye on them. Their next CSM opening might be near you!

This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the different companies that have looked for or are currently looking for Customer Success Managers. Learn more about your potential employers, see if their values align with yours and whether you can see yourself working there. Staying on the theme of cloud SaaS, we’re going to explore a company called Datadog.

Datadog provides cloud-scale monitoring and security for metrics, traces and logs in one unified platform.

Datadog is all about observability and seeing just how your server-based services perform and operate. The two founders, Olivier Pomel and Alexis Lê-Quôc, founded the company in 2010 to address the friction they experienced working in system admin and developer teams.

Since it raised a Seed round, it’s gone on to raise a Series A, B, C and D before finally going public on the NASDAQ in 2019. As of writing this blog post, it’s currently trading at around $75 USD a share.

The Software Itself

Here are a few of their key product screenshots, taken straight from the Datadog website:

Like a lot of great SaaS companies, they solved a tough problem, focusing on strong UX and UI that was intuitive to use for anyone. People didn’t want to get caught up in learning how to use something and just wanted to start using it from Day 1.

Job Description Example

Even if you focus entirely on a pleasant UX, the more complex the problem that’s attempted to be solved, the greater the need for CSMs. Doing a quick search on LinkedIn showed a listing for a Customer Success Manager job in Sydney, Australia.

Let’s go through each of the dot points:

• Like most good well-oiled CS systems, the focus in on the handover between sales and CS. You own the post-sale process and make sure to give your customer white glove treatment.
• For existing customers, you will try to upsell Datadog’s offerings (this is a point I don’t agree with as much, CSMs should focus on delivering value in the product, not selling)
• Building loyalty to Datadog is critical, as they want to keep their customers in their books for as long as possible. Ideally forever.
• Identifying growth opportunities and handing then back to the sales team is part and parcel of being a CSM. This comes from building trust with your customer and getting them to open up to you and share what else they’re working on, etc.
• You act as the SME to help customers for any questions they might have about getting value out of the product,
• Tapping into analytics and usage, you can spot unhealthy customer behavior from a mile away and nip it into the bud before it flourishes into potential churn (not becoming a customer anymore),
• Collaboration with other departments in Datadog to help them solve problems too, i.e. creating feature requests for product to explain what features customers actually care about.

What they offer

Unlike other companies, they’re not shy about what they give you as an employee:

Not bad at all, especially that they give you unlimited time off!

Like a few of the other companies I’ve reviewed, Datadog would be a good fit for people who, like the founders, come from developer or system ops fields and want a change of scenery. Or, if you’re keen for a challenge, throw your hat in the ring if you have any customer-facing experience. Tech companies are often open to new perspectives and you could be their next great hire. Go for it!

This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the different companies that have looked for or are currently looking for CS talent. Learn more about your potential employers, see if their values align with yours and whether you can see yourself working there. We’re now looking into one of the largest providers of sales, support and employee management CRM SaaS, grown out of Chennai, India – Freshworks.

Freshworks – ridiculously easy-to-use marketing, sales, support and IT solutions

While the company was only founded in 2010, it’s grown to one of the bigger players in the CRM space. It counts its competitors as Monday.com and Hubspot.

It’s history is as follows:

• 2010 – its founders start right from first principles: building a cloud-based software that helps companies manage customer service tickets, with an emphasis on positive UX.
• 2015 – launches social services that help service desk people deliver support on the go.
• 2016 – launches its sales CRM, Freshsales,
• 2017 – officially rebrands to Freshworks (from Freshdesk)
• 2019 – is included in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Customer Engagement Software,
• 2021 – has an IPO and gets listed on the NASDAQ (during COVID!)

It’s a real success story as far as they come. Will you be a success story at this company too?

The Software Itself

Let’s look at their core offerings here:

Freshdesk

It’s one of their core products and what put them on the map in the first place. Includes ticket resolution, live chat and CX modules.

Freshservice

This tool is all about getting an ROI from service delivery. Stop wasting time on repetitive tasks, get more software working and talking to each other in the same language and deploy fast.

Freshsales

Taking learnings from their earlier offerings and applying it to the sales environment, Freshsales was born. It enables sales people to close deals faster, improve seller effectiveness and reduce bottlenecks that are caused by miscommunications in systems used by IT teams and sales people.

Job Description Example

The following screenshot was taken from a Freshworks role based out of California. There should be considerable overlap with roles all over the world.

Job Description Analysis

Let’s go through each of the dot points:

• While a lot of roles are remote, it’s important for this one that the CSM is actually based in California.
• owning the customer means being the custodian of the customer relationship. When people from other departments want to speak with your customer, they have to go through you.
• Take an approach of educating and teaching customers about the Freshworks platform.
• Always be influencing and demonstrating your expertise to build trust in customers.
• Really believe in what the product does and how it helps solve the customers’ problems.
• Teach, teach, teach!
• Manage risk and mitigate it before it becomes a big problem.
• When you nurture customers into champions, turn that into an opportunity for the customer to become a public reference.
• Talk to the product team and get them to listen to what you have to suggest about improvements to the product,
• Be best buds with sales and account management. Find opportunities to grow your accounts,
• Own the renewal process so the business can keep getting money,
• Be the customer’s voice and speak on their behalf so that when other departments each voice their needs, you ensure that the customers’ needs are always heard.

What They Provide

Larger, public companies like Freshworks have decent benefits, such as:

• health/medical
• dental
• life insurance
• flexible working arrangements

If you’ve worked in a service environment (i.e. hospitality, IT), a company like Freshworks could be a great choice to launch your career in Customer Success. If you’re curious, visit their website, Google them or even reach out to some current employees for a chat. Best of luck!