In January of 2018, I got a job at a well-known tech company as an Account Executive. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this was more of a telemarketing job than a full-cycle sales role.
Within six months, I was out and had landed my first Customer Success role.
Customer Success was and is the perfect career path for me. I enjoyed it so much that I started writing about it in 2020. I started a blog and became more active on LinkedIn.
I would share my experiences as a CSM and share tips and hacks that I was learning along the way. This opened up a lot of opportunities for me and allowed me to grow my personal brand within the CS space.
Fast forward to the end of 2024, I’ve now moved into a scaled CS role at my company which involves working directly with the marketing team on a lot of content initiatives.
For me, this has been an amazing career transition since it combines my passion for CS and marketing. It also gives me the opportunity to manage clients in a different way than what I’ve been doing since 2018.
Let’s talk about that.
I want to share with you what my role looks like compared to a traditional CS role and how I was able to make the transition.
CSM vs scaled CSM
So what exactly is the difference between CS and Scaled CS?
First off, Scaled Customer Success is pretty new so I would assume most companies that are implementing it or have implemented it do it differently.
That being said, Scaled CS is simply a more automated way to manage the journey of customers who don’t have an assigned CSM. Instead of a 1-to-1 approach, it’s a 1-to-many approach.
And no, this doesn’t mean these customers don’t have any human interaction with your organization. It simply means that your org has created a more automated customer journey for these customers so that they can get maximum value from your product or service.
What I do as a scaled CSM
As a Scaled CSM, I’m currently creating a customer community. This community will be for all customers but will mainly benefit our 150-200 scaled customers since they won’t have an assigned CSM.
This community will be the one-stop-shop for all customer resources such as:
- FAQs
- Webinars
- How-To Guides
- Product Trainings
- Videos, Whitepapers, and other resources
I also work closely with the marketing team by writing articles for the company website, helping craft LinkedIn posts, and ensuring marketing material is aligned with the current needs and pain points of our customers.
One initiative that we just launched is a weekly newsletter that goes out to our customers. Each month, we have a different theme and the emails that go out that month go along with that theme.
Each email is fairly short and usually features an article from our website, a podcast episode from the company podcast, and some announcements (like to be on the look out for our customer community.)
Even though these emails go out to all of our customers, our scaled customers will most likely get the most value from them. Each email is also signed off with my name and image so they are familiar with me.
How I made the transition
As mentioned earlier, I started writing online in 2020. June of 2023, I was laid off from my role. Once I realized the current tech job market wasn’t for the faint of heart, I decided to think of ways to earn money while looking for a new role.
A friend of mine recommended I do copywriting since I had a writing background and could easily learn the skill.
Long story short, I started a copywriting business and started writing for a few software companies that I was familiar with. This helped me realize that I truly enjoyed marketing and wanted to pursue a career path in it.
April of 2024, I landed a CSM role at vCom Solutions. It didn’t take me long to build a relationship with the marketing team and start helping them with a few projects. This lead to my boss asking if I wanted to take on a new Scaled CS role that would involve working with the marketing team.
I gladly accepted.
Advice to those wanting to move into scaled CS
Scaled CS involves a lot of moving pieces and a new mindset that traditional CS. The main mindset shift is a 1-to-many approach as opposed to a 1-to-1 approach.
I highly recommend reading Digital Customer Success: Why the Next Frontier of CS is Digital and How You Can Leverage it to Drive Durable Growth by Nick Mehta and Kellie Capote. This book is the gold standard for Scaled CS and will give you a good idea on how to implement it in your organization.
From there, talk to your boss and other customer-facing professionals at your organization about ideas you have about how the customer journey can be automated with scaled/digital programs.
If you have experience in marketing and community, or a passion for either of these, lean into that. Learn about the marketing initiatives your organization is prioritizing.
Talk to people on the marketing team and ask how you can help. For community, if your organization doesn’t have one, explore the idea of implementing one with your boss and other CSMs.
We’re building our community through MeltingSpot. If you do have a community in place, get active in it. Become friends with the community manager. Look for opportunities to improve it for your customers.
And of course, be transparent about your desire to move into a new role. Show your desire by creating opportunities for yourself to showcase your skills that will directly help with Scaled CS initiatives.
Want to hear more from Jared Orr? You can chat directly with Jared and other customer marketing and advocacy peers in our Customer Marketing Alliance Slack community channel.
