How to Build Customer Success & Account Management Capability in Organization

This article first appeared on Acorn Labs in June 2023.

For a more in-depth look at customer success and account management capability, have a read of the full article.

Customer success and account management capabilities are a mix of the skills, knowledge, tools, processes, and behaviors that combine to deliver on organizational objectives. Organizations with strong customer success and account management capabilities are better equipped to manage customer relationships and drive customer satisfaction and revenue growth.

Defining customer success and account management capabilities

Like all capabilities, you need to understand their business context before you can begin defining, creating, and building customer success and account management capabilities. There are three basic steps to defining customer success and account management capabilities.

Step 1: Define the landscape

Start by asking:

1. What is your organization’s greater mission, purpose, and values?
2. What role do customer success and account management play in that mission?
3. What value does customer success and account management generate for the business?

Step 2: Define the purpose

Every capability must play a unique role, so consider the purpose of the capability in your organization.

1. How does the capability help the company achieve its strategic goals?
2. Is there market demand for the capability?
3. Does the organization have the resources to sustain the capability?
4. Does the capability complement or cannibalize existing capabilities?
5. What risks are involved with building and sustaining the capability?

Step 3: Define the outcome

Use the name of a capability to be as descriptive as possible of a specific, desired outcome. Think:

• Increased customer satisfaction
• Building and maintaining relationships with key customers
• Identifying and addressing customer needs and concerns.

The idea is that capabilities are used to inform job descriptions, performance management, and career planning, so they should be instantly recognizable by name.

Building customer success & account management capability

The process of developing and building capability is generally a structured 6-step process.

Engaging leadership

70% of change programs fail to meet their goals, mostly because of a lack of leadership support. To combat this, you need to secure the buy-in of your customer success leaders by framing capability development as a means of achieving the KPIs they care about. Communicate what the risks of not developing customer success and account management capability are on their KPIs, and your leaders will be on board.

Establishing co-ownership between HR and customer success & account management

Create shared accountability between HR and customer success and account management so that both parties can champion learning together. When control of L&D is siloed, training programs become skewed towards one group’s priorities over the other. When your HR and customer success teams work together, training is relevant and well-rounded to build customer success and account management capability as well as meet organizational goals.

Measure customer success & account management capability gaps

Evaluate the discrepancies between the full potential of individuals’ customer success and account management capability and the current reality of the capability landscape. The best way to do this is with a combination of two or more capability assessments:

1. Self-assessments, where employees assess their own competency level in the capability
2. Manager assessments, where managers evaluate individuals’ competence to create a more objective view of performance
3. Subject matter expert assessments, as conducted by subject matter experts for specialist capability sets.

Assess customer success & account management capability maturity

Maturity looks at the capability of the business overall, rather than of individuals. It’s measured across five levels:

1. Initial, where performance is unpredictable and reactive
2. Managed, where capability is managed project-to-project
3. Defined, where there are organization-wide guidelines
4. Quantitatively managed, where business processes and objectives are aligned
5. Optimized, in which capabilities are optimized to create long-term organizational transformation.

Build customer success & account management capability

Consider a knowledge management system or performance learning management system (PLMS) to keep tailored data, information, and training materials in one central, easily accessible location. If you use more traditional learning methods (such as formal courses) mobile learning can be used as supplemental training to enable knowledge retention.

Track progress

Continuous, consistent tracking and reassessments are essential for keeping on top of capability development. Be proactive with a training needs analysis to find which capabilities still need development after training, and what methods are best for building those capabilities. Don’t forget to link performance management with your training, either. Create a feedback loop between employees and customer success managers to ensure learner engagement and performance improvement.