The Customer Success Playbook – A Primer

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What is a customer success playbook? A guide for the customer success managers on how to handle various situation. Despite its name, it can be stored as a set of documents, each focused on a particular process (and searchable, in a wiki or knowledge base).

How do I get started? The customer success playbook is a living document, to be modified and enlarged over time. It’s fine to start with just a few key pieces and add on over time. Since the playbook is particularly useful to train new CSMs, you can ask new hires to keep track of what they need to know and learn during their first weeks and use that list to build (and improve) the playbook.

What does the playbook consist of? The playbook is organized by situations, which include:

  • onboarding
  • regular reviews with customers
  • how to respond to various customer situations/objections

For each situation, provide a script and templates for how to proceed. Sample emails and sample dialogs are useful, although you should encourage the CSMs to adapt to their own specific voice and client needs.

Do you have a playbook for CSMs? What does it contain?