Strategies for Enhancing Customer Service Skills

We spend months interviewing to find the “perfect” CSM… and then set them up to fail. Here’s the reality I see too often: ❗ New hires are thrown customers after 1–2 weeks. ❗ Product training is rushed or nonexistent. ❗ SOPs are thin, outdated, or missing. ❗ Leaders don’t invest the time to set expectations or coach. ❗ And then KPIs are handed down that even seasoned CSMs struggle to hit. The issue isn’t the talent, it’s the lack of enablement. But here’s the good news: you don’t need a dedicated L&D team or endless resources to onboard well. You need intention. A simple enablement plan for new CSMs (even with limited resources): 1️⃣ Onboarding Buddy - Pair new hires with an experienced CSM for shadowing, Q&A, and feedback. 2️⃣ 30-60-90 Plan - Outline clear goals and expectations for their first 3 months. (Focus on learning before doing.) 3️⃣ Product Deep Dives - Host weekly “lunch and learns” where Product, CS, or Support walks through one feature in detail. Have them shadow customer onboarding or watch recordings. 4️⃣ Playbook Starter Pack - Even if you don’t have full SOPs, document 3–5 repeatable workflows (renewals, QBR prep, escalation handling). 5️⃣ Mock Meetings – Run practice customer calls internally before they ever face a real customer. 6️⃣ Leader Time - Block weekly 1:1s focused not just on performance but on coaching, context, and confidence-building. These aren’t heavy lifts, they’re discipline and focus. If you want your CSMs to succeed (and your customers to stay), stop spending all your energy on hiring the “perfect” candidate and start spending more on enabling them once they walk through the door.

Customer Empathy in CSMs, Part 1 This week, I was asked how to increase the empathy skills of CSMs. From my experience, instilling and growing empathy with the CS teams is all about leadership style. 1.  It's about giving your team the time and space to work with their customers effectively. 2.  Removing challenges that stand in the team's way that takes away from being proactive. 3.  Advocating for the team across the company. 4.  Championing and sharing the wins and outlining learnings/challenges/failures. 5.  Meeting 1:1 with all global team members at least quarterly to see how they are doing as people, not job performance. 6.  As a leader, periodically join customer calls for just a few minutes to support your team and thank the customer for their partnership. 7.  Building cross-functional feedback loops, especially with product, marketing, sales, and support. 8. Encourage team members to actively listen to customers' concerns, feedback, and stories. 9. Promote an environment where listening to each other within the team is equally valued. 10. Having support and customer success teams shadow each other to witness customer interactions directly. 11. Empathy training and workshops; empathy is a core value. 12. Role-playing exercises to simulate customer interactions, helping team members understand different customer perspectives and scenarios. 13.  Develop, review, and iterate detailed customer personas and map customer journeys to help the team understand the various touchpoints and challenges customers face.   14.  Share customer testimonials at all-hands meetings, or better yet, have a customer share live. 15. And, yes, then the passion for empathy and the driving actions become adopted by other teams as they witness its value from cross-functional initiatives. Graphic credit: USEReady #customersuccess #leadership #empathy #csm

Don't waste time on annual customer service training. Do it weekly with the 5-5-5 approach. Annual training programs face a lot of problems: ❌ Low retention. Reps never remember all that's covered. ❌ Too long. Full or half-day workshops disrupt your operation. ❌ Bad timing. Employees don't get any training at all if they're out sick, on vacation, or hired after the annual program. Weekly training is far more effective. Imagine building one skill per week for an entire year. That's 52 opportunities to get better! Here's how the 5-5-5 approach works: 5 minutes: Plan one small, quick hit training. Focus on the smallest unit of skill possible, such as greeting customers. 5 minutes: Deliver the training. Make it short and sweet. Include it as part of a regular team meeting and you won't disrupt your operation. 5 minutes: Follow-up with the team. Check-in on your employees to see how they're doing. Offer coaching and encouragement. That's it! You can still do larger annual or semi-annual workshops to bookend these efforts. But the really learning happens in those weekly quick hits. Bottom line: Don't wait a year to dump 52 weeks of training on your team. Use the 5-5-5 approach to do it weekly, one topic at a time.