TL;DR In short, CEO explores opportunities, CSO executes opportunities.
The Chief Success Officer is in charge of the successful execution of the deals and opportunities that Axelerant earns. That is done by listening to and talking with the leaders of Axelerant to keep them aligned, empowered, and motivated to help their people do the same while building software for creative and digital agencies around the world. The Chief Success Officer also works on various strategic initiatives like performance management though career management systems while overseeing operational things like utilization, cost control, capacity, and balancing effectiveness and efficiency.
Further, the Chief Success Officer pushes themself to be a better person and share those learnings with their peers. Additionally, with CEO identifies Axelerant's topmost purpose and objectives. Lastly, support the empowerment of domain directors to make the best decisions for their group as they align with Axelerant's strategy.
Identify, iterate, and generate buy-in for organizational objectives and key results
Identify, iterate, and generate buy-in for departmental and service area objectives and key results outside of finance, sales, and marketing
Implement and iterate of all organizational programs outside of finance, sales, and marketing
Responsible for leadership of People Management
Accountable for positive people care
Implement and iterate of Performance Management programs
Responsible for departmental and service area leadership development outside of finance, sales, and marketing
Was…
Champion client and team happiness through consistently trusted outcomes and experiences with agencies serving Fortune Global 2000 enterprises.
The Axelerant Chief Success Officer (CSO) is the person that drives the vision for a consistently happy and sustainable relationship per expectations amongst every account engagement stakeholder. To do this, the CSO ensures that Axelerant's business offerings, like project management or Drupal delivery, each have a journey that identifies meaningful, positively impactful interactions throughout the awareness, opportunity, execution, and growth lifecycle of the engagement and account.
Outside of daily account interactions and project management oversight, the Chief Success Officer champions alignment and integration throughout all of Axelerant's business operations with customer impact. Such areas include engagement related accounting, human resources planning for hiring and retention of people, delivery operation processes, and legal compliances. Further, the Chief Success Officer is a key contributor to business development sales and marketing efforts and high-level stakeholder interactions.
The Chief Success Officer is typically considered successful when
Clients & employees are happy
Expectations are consistently met as scheduled
Engagements are on time and profitable
Account portfolio value increases
The Chief Success Officer is ultimately responsible for the ongoing improvement of every customer journey; such as educating people, refining processes, adapting technologies and enabling decision-making reporting for day-to-day operations.
Define and optimize the customer journey
Drive true value for customers
Lead cross-functionally to ensure customer success
Drive alignment with business development and account growth
Be a top promoter of Axelerant in the world
Own key metrics for the customer success team
Support core metrics for Axelerant
Recruit, mentor, groom and inspire a world-class success management team
Achieve operational excellence
Define and optimize the customer journey
Define the vision of a must-have customer experience
Standardize the system for customer success of our offerings
Define and oversee lifecycle interactions
Create standard presentation materials for lifecycle plays
Personally manage escalations from your direct reports, and follow a methodical escalation process to peers
Identify opportunities for continuous improvement
Drive true value for customers
Be an expert on best practices in change management
Promote the Challenger approach amongst peers
Find ways for success managers to deeply understand customers’ objectives and become a trusted right-hand advisor
Determine how to define, drive, and demonstrate the value (ROI) delivered
Lead cross-functionally to drive customer success
Clarify ownership for each part of the journey
Gather feedback from other departments like Sales, Delivery, Marketing, Accounting, Human Resources to improve the customer experience
Advocate for changes in other departments’ ways of working, including onboarding, and collaborate with them to implement those
Drive company-wide definition of the target account profile
Create a company-wide customer feedback loop
Help foster a company-wide culture of Customer Success
Drive alignment with business development and account growth
Align with success management on renewal and upsell strategy and focus on selling with a retention focus
Give feedback to Sales and Marketing on prospecting approach
Ensure smart hand-off
Define success manager involvement during the sales cycle
Be a top promoter of Axelerant in the world
Promote the adoption of key processes in Axelerant, including customer success systems
Ensure Axelerant is our company’s single source of truth for customer happiness
Create dashboards to measure customer success
Promote Axelerant systems at external events
Own key metrics for the customer success team
Customer Sucess & Delivery Employee Engagement Score
Customer Net Promoter Score
Planned vs. Actual Schedule
Key Process Adherence
Profitable Engagement
Business Expansion
Customer churn
Support core metrics for Axelerant
Similar to the above
Recruit, mentor, groom and inspire a world-class success management team
Build a pipeline of great candidates
Establish a rigorous interview process
Set expectations on performance and give feedback
Manage out underperformers
Set up training and mentoring to grow the team
Identify and encourage relevant career path efforts
Create a culture of customer happiness
Communicate and incentivize to drive performance
Propose improvements to your team’s organizational structure
Define segmentation of your customer portfolio as appropriate
Define stakeholder engagement levels within the team
Be informed of market compensation
Achieve operational excellence
Continuously communicate metrics to the team
Report on metrics each week to the executive team
http://www.gainsight.com/2016/01/05/creating-a-job-description-director-of-customer-success/
https://www.totango.com/blog/2015/03/your-90-day-plan-as-a-new-vp-of-customer-success/
http://www.gainsight.com/2016/03/23/manager-training-how-to-be-a-great-manager-of-csms/