Customer Success or Support? I genuinely don’t understand the strategy
I work in Customer Success, and by definition, my priority is proactive work and the strategic management of a portfolio of business clients, currently consisting of around 300 companies.
As part of the reactive side of my role, I handle several dozen emails every day.
On the proactive side, I analyse account health, prepare reports, statistics and training presentations, assess growth potential, and then reach out to clients based on those insights. I schedule meetings with them where I analyse our cooperation so far, their achievements, growth opportunities and recommendations, upsell additional services, and follow up afterwards. Essentially, I’m responsible for the overall development of the client relationship and retention.
However, my job title also includes elements of account management and collections. In theory, this means I’m supposed to handle questions related to contracts, prepare contract amendments, respond to pricing-related queries, and remind clients to pay overdue invoices. In practice, though, clients see me as the person responsible for everything, basically, a classic support contact.
The problem is that the company is currently pushing us towards sales and proactive work, while at the same time setting up an IVR system so that clients can call us at any time. And, as you would expect from a “dedicated account manager”, they will call us about absolutely everything. I can already see the amount of time that will be wasted on conversations about issues that should never have reached me in the first place.
I genuinely don’t understand the company’s organisational or business strategy here. I don’t see how they expect us to meet our KPIs while simultaneously increasing our availability for support. Global seems to want us to operate as strategic Customer Success Managers, hence the 30 tickets per month, QBRs, etc. while the company is making completely different moves. And ultimately, my job is still CS, with KPIs focused on sales and customer retention.
The problem is that many people on the team are currently working overtime, which isn’t even paid. We’re supposed to work Monday to Friday, yet there are apparently people logging in over the weekends just to catch up on emails and tickets. Our team is overloaded, and our manager seems completely blind to it.
At this point, I’m starting to have this thought in my head „I want to get out of this company” I think my level of overload has reached its absolute limit.
I don’t even know why I’m writing this rant. I guess I need some advice or a reality check, because maybe the problem is actually me and I’m failing to see something obvious. Maybe this is just what corporate life looks like nowadays?