Senior Customer Success Manager Skills Interview
Author:
Ross CarvalhoIn Ross Carvalho’s template, questions and answer tips are optimized for a Senior Customer Success Manager who works with a select number of large customer accounts to ensure their offerings help their customers achieve their macro business objectives. As applying strategic thinking and business acumen is especially important for managing accounts of this nature, the first set of questions cover the candidate’s ability to apply these skills in their account management practices. The second set of questions assesses growth mindset and initiative, other key factors for success in the Senior CSM role that will help you discern between good and great candidates.
Focus area:
Question
1
Tell me about a customer you've worked with where you really delivered them value because you understood their business objectives. What were their objectives? How did you align your company’s offering to deliver value?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to understand customer needs/pain points and align offerings accordingly
Explore tips
- Identifies the customer’s business objectives (macro, executive-level)
- Explains how they identified objectives (asks questions, researches company)
- Explains success plan where their offering mapped onto the business objectives
- Identifies success metrics as evidence of delivering customer value
Question
2
Imagine you are assigned a new customer account to manage. Based on your knowledge of [insert your company name/product], what pain points can we solve for this new customer? How does our solution differ from our competitors?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate expresses interest in your offering, understands your industry, and has made an effort to research your company
Explore tips
- Clearly articulates key business problems that your product/service solves
- Is knowledgeable about offerings and elaborates on how they help customers
- Explains how they would learn about customer needs (asking questions/research)
- Demonstrates they’ve gone above and beyond to research your company
Question
3
What is your approach for defining/tracking customer success metrics with your accounts? Can you share a specific example of metrics you’ve used in the past that did a really good job of signaling the value they received?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to connect data and insights to business outcomes/value
Explore tips
- Explains approach for defining/tracking metrics by tailoring to customer needs
- Creates meaningful metrics by understanding their macro business goals/risks
- Maps their offering to customers macro business needs (e.g. investor goals)
- Shares metrics they've defined for a customer that were tailored/meaningful
- Shares evidence of metrics to demonstrate their impact on account
Question
4
Based on your past experience, who has been your most successful customer? Why were they the most successful?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to clearly explain their definition of customer success
Explore tips
- Clearly identifies their most successful customer
- Communicates a few key points as evidence of the customer’s success
- Explains how their offering helped the customer achieved its business goals
- Shares evidence of the customer’s satisfaction to demonstrate success
- Explains what they learned and how they applied it to others in the future
Question
5
Tell me about a time you failed at something or made a mistake. What was it, and how did you respond?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to take ownership of mistakes and apply learnings to continuously improve themselves
Explore tips
- Clearly identifies a specific failure/mistake
- Takes ownership over mistake (versus blaming others/external circumstances)
- Attempted to understand why they made the mistake and how they could improve
- Explains what they learned and how they applied their learnings in the future
Question
6
Describe a time your initiative was particularly effective in solving a problem. What were you responsible for, specifically, and why was the solution effective?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to use initiative to drive impact
Explore tips
- Independently identified resources to support the project's success
- Sought professional/operational improvements where appropriate
- Took a forward-thinking approach to spot opportunities and take action
- Took action to make things happen before others did
- Went above and beyond what was expected of them
Question
7
When have you guided a customer to change a process/strategy/approach in order to help them succeed and achieve their business objectives? Why was the change successful?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to take initiative and drive change to help customers gain value from offerings and achieve success
Explore tips
- Explains how they identified a need for a change for their customer
- Justified the need for change by aligning customer’s business needs to offering
- Communicated their suggestions effectively to gain buy-in from the customer
- Solicited feedback and input from the customer on the proposed changes
- Explains how they implemented the change and how it impacted customer success
