4 Steps for a Perfect Week as a Customer Success Manager (CSM)

Working as a Customer Success Manager can be overwhelming if you’re not strategically using your time. When I worked as a CSM, the one thing I refused to be was overwhelmed. And when I worked as a Manager, I refused to let my team get overwhelmed.

We started aiming for “perfect weeks,” where we got everything done that needed to be done, we were prepared for anything, but most importantly, we weren’t overworking to get there.

I developed and refined a system that helped make things a lot easier to handle. In this article, I go over four things I think are essential to having a perfect week as a CSM.

Schedule an Accounts Review at the end of every week

Set aside time just for you to review your book of business every Friday.

No matter how many customers you have, this isn’t a five minute task — make sure to give yourself plenty of time to properly make note of every customer you are responsible for.

You can do this by hand, in a spreadsheet, in your CRM — whatever makes the most sense to you, because this is only for you. It shouldn’t be something you share with your customers or even your manager, but a draft document used to inform conversations.

Here’s how to do it:

• Pull up a list of all your accounts.

• Sort by relevant attributes, like upcoming renewal, priority level, engagement level, health, etc.

• Make a note on each account — 1-2 sentences max, about their status. Things like, “haven’t heard from them in awhile,” or “my contact left the company” or “new feature they were waiting for is releasing next week” or “great conversation this week — no followup needed” etc.

• Use this to inform your plan for next week so you know exactly what you’re doing on Monday.

This is something I’ve been doing since day one as a CSM, because it was the best way I could think to never be surprised by an account. But where I really saw the magic was when I coached my team to do it. Stress levels came down, 1:1s became more productive, and customer outreach became more proactive.

Block off at least one day from calls every week

CSMs could end up on 40 hours a week of calls if you don’t set boundaries.

Pick a day each week and block it off from customer calls. The best day to choose is between you and your manager; I personally like Mondays or Fridays, so I was either starting my week or ending it with time for deep work.

A CSM I managed liked Wednesdays, right in the middle of the week to balance calls and work on either end. (Depending on your industry, if you pick a day other than Friday, Friday may even become a backdoor call-free day, because most customers don’t like doing calls on Fridays either!)

Ideally, you can also block this day from internal calls and meetings, but I know that’s not always possible.

The important thing is to use this time wisely: do account reviews, prepare for renewals or QBRs, knock out your to-do list, and every few weeks, take it slow and use it as a rest day.

Schedule enough prep time for Renewals and QBRs

The worst feeling is not feeling prepared for a renewal conversation or a QBR, so I would always make sure I had plenty of time to prepare and my team had plenty of time to prepare.

Renewals

You should go into every Renewal conversation with a goal, and that goal should be based on what your bonus is based on.

If you are paid on strictly retention percentage, then your goal is just to renew — don’t muck it up with upsells or changes.

If you are paid on retention value, then you almost always want to renew your customer at a higher rate — especially if they were already discounted.

If you aren’t bonused at all on renewals, CSMs around the world greatly envy you!

Different kinds of customers will throw a wrench in this: a particularly difficult customer is not worth fighting with over an upsell or a higher rate. Just getting them to stay is a win.

Once you know your goal with renewing your customer, then you can use your prep time accordingly:

• Game out different scenarios so you won’t be blindsided and have a plan for every possible outcome;

• Prepare a summary of wins you can point to, especially wins that translate to ROI in real dollars;

• Plan and prioritize customers with upcoming renewals, and try to stay ahead of them as much as possible.

QBRs

You should have a formula for every QBR, so you aren’t thinking about format or structure every time but plugging in the relevant data and information to present to the customer.

The best use of your QBR prep time is preparing your decks but also preparing your actual presentation — try to anticipate what questions might come up, and how to steer your customer into the conversations you want to be having.

At the end of the day, QBRs are a tool to assist you in your main goal, which is retaining customers. Don’t overthink it, don’t worry about fluff, focus on having conversations that lead the customer to the conclusion that “yes, this product is doing great things for us!”

Focus on inbox triage, rather than inbox zero

Inbox zero is a trendy term that is effectively meaningless for a CSM. There’s always a customer email around the corner, even when you’ve cleared everything that came before.

Chasing inbox zero will just make you feel like you’re constantly failing. So instead, I preach inbox triage.

The key to inbox triage is that you are not replying to every email as it comes in, and you are certainly not actioning every email as it comes in. You are assessing it, determining whether it is urgent, important, both, or neither, and then you are prioritizing it alongside your other daily tasks.

First, set an appropriate expected response time with your manager. My expectation for my team is a response within 1 business day — if someone emails on Monday morning, the latest they should get a response is by Tuesday morning. This provides an internal clock for you, to help you prioritize responding to this customer against completing other tasks.

Next, decide how you want to approach checking email. Checking your email is not the same thing as actioning your email. Checking is knowing who’s emailed you and what they’ve emailed you about.

You can leave the email tab open, so you can click over as the number changes, or you can check it at set times throughout the day. The key is that you are regularly skimming new emails, understanding what’s required of you, and prioritizing that action accordingly.

Then, you’re going to set aside time every day for actioning email. How much time is again, between you and your manager, but something like several one hour blocks a day feels like a good place to start.

Now that you have this structure in place, every time you’re checking your email, you’re skimming through your emails and evaluating: what’s urgent? What’s important?

Emails that are urgent should get an immediate response: “I’ve seen this and I’m looking into it.” This response is important because it resets the customer’s clock for when they can expect to hear from you.

If the email is important, whatever is required to resolve this email goes on your task list for the day, prioritized appropriately.

If the email is not important, look for opportunities to delegate, or help level set your customer’s expectations.

And now, you

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