Hi there, I’m Emily! 👋 Welcome to Hired Humanities, a biweekly newsletter devoted to helping humanities students build careers on their own terms.
Hey, readers! How are you holding up? Before we dive into this issue, I want to acknowledge the racist attacks on the AAPI community and recent mass shootings. Please consider donating to or getting involved with local organizations that are fighting for change. If you’re like me and live in the Bay Area, I found this roundup of organizations and ways to help from Thrillist particularly helpful.
This issue brings the final installment of the tour through the jobs I’ve held after leaving academia. So far we’ve covered public relations and instructional design, and now we’re going deep into the tech world with a profile on customer success.
Customer success management is just one of many career options for non-engineers in tech. I plan to do a full rundown of non-engineering tech jobs in a future issue, so consider this a little sneak peek of what’s to come and let me know if you have any questions about getting started in tech with a humanities degree.
Photo by Surface on Unsplash
What is it?
To unpack what customer success is, we need to zoom out a bit and talk about software as a service (SaaS), which is a subscription-based business model. Instead of selling a software package that customers buy outright and own indefinitely, SaaS companies offer subscriptions to their software that must be renewed regularly. Have you ever uploaded a paper to TurnItIn? That’s a SaaS company, and your institution is paying for licenses that give you access to its services.
The SaaS model has changed the way businesses approach their relationships with customers. While traditional companies make their money through new sales, SaaS companies grow in large part by renewing and expanding existing subscriptions. Renewals, however, are far from guaranteed, especially if customers aren’t getting the most from the software.
That’s where customer success comes in. Customer success as a function exists to help customers realize the value of software with the ultimate goal of renewing subscriptions. Most companies with customer success programs have customer success managers (CSMs) who provide dedicated guidance and support to a group of strategic or high-value customers.
How I got there
Many customer success managers find the field after working in other roles, and I was no exception. Before I landed a job as an instructional designer at a tech company, I had never heard of customer success. I ended up working very closely with our customer success team, so I got a first-hand look at what the day-to-day was like. I was intrigued by the relationship management aspect of customer success, and I loved the idea of being a strategic partner to customers. I started taking on more responsibilities related to customer success, and eventually, I moved into a customer success management role full-time.
What was the day-to-day like?
Like the other jobs we’ve covered on Hired Humanities, customer success management can vary widely depending on the company and the structure of their customer experience (CX) department.
At younger organizations, customer success managers tend to be generalists who own all aspects of the post-sale customer lifecycle, from onboarding to renewal. More mature organizations usually have specialized roles, including dedicated implementation managers and account managers who focus on contract negotiations, that allow customer success managers to focus solely on nurturing relationships and driving sustained product adoption.
Regardless of org size or maturity level, customer success managers spent the majority of their time directly interfacing with customers. On any given day, I’d spend up to 6 hours talking to customers, teaching them how to use the software, analyzing usage during executive business reviews (EBRs), or negotiating contracts.
How to get started
Consider what’s right for you
While I enjoy talking with customers and find working on multiple projects invigorating, I can see how this could be challenging for anyone who is used to focusing on a single project for a sustained period. It definitely helps to be extroverted when you’re a CSM, and you’ll also want to think about how comfortable you are with context-switching since CSMs have to work across multiple accounts at once.
Despite these challenges, I think customer success can be a great fit for humanities students who love teaching and enjoy helping others solve problems. Educating customers about how to use the software effectively is a huge part of any CSM’s job, and those of us who have experience teaching complex topics can excel in this particular area. Personally, the problem-solving aspect of customer success is my favorite— I love seeing customers get to an “aha!” moment and overcome some of their toughest challenges. (For my fellow Classicists: it feels similar to when you help a student through a particularly gnarly Cicero sentence.)
Level-setting
Customer success is a competitive field, and many companies only look at candidates if they have previous experience. As I mentioned above, most people start in adjacent positions (think customer support or sales) before moving up into a customer success management role.
I’ll be 100% honest here: securing entry-level jobs in these areas would be difficult and perhaps tough to swallow for many academics with advanced degrees. If you’re in this category and are interested in pursuing a career in customer success, I would recommend starting with the big picture goal of breaking into tech rather than narrowing your search to only customer support roles. Getting your foot in the door of a growing company has the potential to open up lots of career paths, including customer success. We’ll take a closer look at the topic of breaking into tech in a future issue of Hired Humanities, but in the meantime, you can start thinking more about what strengths you would want to leverage in your new career.
A Parting Note
Thanks for tuning in this week! Please don't hesitate to drop me a line if you have questions or feedback. And, if you think someone else in your life would love to receive this newsletter in their inbox, feel free to spread the word.
All my best,
Emily
Reading List
A few of my favorite links
📔 A friend sent me this overview of the Zettelkasten note-taking method and I’m trying it out on my research for work.
🖊️ I was thrilled to see a shout-out from Stephan Caspar in his lovely newsletter on culture, language, and learning called The Spaces in Between. His thoughts on measuring success in the humanities have gotten my wheels turning as well.
📈 This fascinating piece from the New Yorker reveals the limits of what we can see and accomplish with data.