The Customer Success Professional’s Handbook: How to Thrive in One of the World’s Fastest Growing Careers

"The Customer Success Professional's Handbook: How to Thrive in One of the World's Fastest Growing Careers" by Ashvin Vaidyanathan and Ruben Rabago is a practical guide for anyone looking to start or advance their career in customer success management. The book covers a range of topics, from customer success strategy to customer success operations, providing actionable insights and advice for customer success professionals at all levels. 

The book begins by introducing the reader to the role of the customer success professional, outlining the key skills and traits required to be successful in this field. Vaidyanathan and Rabago explain that customer success is a dynamic, fast-paced career that requires a unique combination of technical expertise, communication skills, and business acumen. 

The book then moves on to explore customer success strategy, providing a comprehensive overview of the key components of a successful customer success program. Vaidyanathan and Rabago emphasize the importance of understanding your customers and their needs and provide practical advice on how to gather customer feedback, segment your customer base, and create customer success goals and objectives. 

The authors also provide insights into how to build a customer success team, including hiring and onboarding new team members, and creating a culture of customer success within your organisation. They explain that building a customer success team requires a diverse set of skills and expertise, including technical support, project management, and business analysis. 

One of the key themes of the book is the importance of customer onboarding and adoption. Vaidyanathan and Rabago explain that onboarding is the foundation of customer success, and that a successful onboarding process can set the stage for a long-term, successful relationship with your customers. They provide practical advice on how to create an effective onboarding process, including setting clear expectations, providing training and support, and tracking key metrics. 

The book also covers customer success operations, providing insights into how to measure the success of your customer success program and how to create a scalable, repeatable process for delivering exceptional customer service. Vaidyanathan and Rabago provide practical advice on how to use customer success metrics to drive business growth and how to create a customer-centric culture within your organisation. 

Throughout the book, the authors provide real-world examples and case studies to illustrate the key concepts and provide practical insights for customer success professionals. They also include a number of resources, such as checklists and templates, to help readers implement customer success best practices in their own organisations. 

Overall, "The Customer Success Professional's Handbook: How to Thrive in One of the World's Fastest Growing Careers" is an essential resource for anyone looking to start or advance their career in customer success management. The book provides a comprehensive overview of customer success strategy, customer onboarding and adoption, and customer success operations, and offers practical advice and insights for customer success professionals at all levels. 

The key takeaways from this book 

1. Customer success is a proactive, strategic approach to ensuring customer satisfaction and retention. It involves working closely with customers to understand their goals, providing guidance and support to help them achieve those goals, and using data and analytics to identify areas for improvement. 

2. Effective communication is essential for success in customer success. This means not only listening to customers and understanding their needs, but also communicating clearly and effectively with them, setting expectations, and managing their expectations throughout the customer journey. 

3. A customer success strategy should be based on a deep understanding of your customers and their business goals. This means gathering data and analytics, conducting surveys and customer interviews, and building strong relationships with key stakeholders in your customer's organisation. 

4. To build a successful customer success team, you need to focus on hiring the right people, providing them with the training and support they need to be effective, and creating a culture of continuous learning and improvement. 

5. Success in customer success requires a long-term, strategic mindset. This means focusing not just on short-term wins, but on building long-term relationships with your customers and helping them achieve sustained success over time. It also means continuously evolving your customer success strategy and processes to stay ahead of changing customer needs and market trends.