At Clayton we’re always looking for ways to build stronger relationships with our customers and our Customer Success Manager plays a major role in making this happen. From initial onboarding to ongoing guidance and support, our Head of Customer Success is dedicated to helping our customers achieve their individual goals and make optimum use of Clayton’s software.
To offer you an insight into what you can expect as a Clayton customer we asked our Head of Customer Success five questions to find out what their job entails and how they see their role.
What makes a good customer success manager and what are the biggest challenges in this role?
“Above all, a good customer success manager should have the ability to listen and understand their customers' needs and challenges. Building trust, establishing rapport, and seeing things from our customer's perspective is a priority because the customer is central to everything we do at Clayton.When I took on the role I understood, right from the start, that there’s no “one-size-fits-all formula” for success. Our customers are all on a personal journey towards what they define as their "success". As a customer success manager, my role is to recognise this and ensure we’re completely aligned so we can provide the support they need.”
A customer success manager works mostly independently. How do you motivate yourself and manage your time?
“ Clayton was a fully remote company even before the COVID-19 pandemic, so we’ve always focused on what really matters and understood the impact of managing time efficiently.
To support that, we’ve recently started adopting the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework which helps us prioritise work, plan day-to-day activities, and measure outcomes. My typical activities fall into two main categories:
- Customer-facing meetings: these can be customer on-boardings, monthly sync calls or dedicated support tasks to help with software setup and drive adoption
- Internal tasks: this includes customer feedback analysis and working alongside the engineering product team to plan the next releases - using SCRUM.
What drives the adoption of a security development tool like Clayton among Salesforce teams?
“Nowadays, Salesforce is used not only to store sensitive information and personal data but also to manage business-critical processes. With so much crucial data potentially exposed to malicious attacks and the high probability of security flaws our customers know they need to stop accumulating - and remediate as soon as possible.
Clayton is a unique developer-first solution that blends naturally with the tools our customers already use. Our software automatically protects new developments from day-1 of adoption. But it’s essential that the tool is configured based on clear goals and internal priorities to ease barriers to adoption, maximise value quickly and reduce friction.
At Clayton, we support this in various ways: From online documentation and dedicated resources - to onboarding webinars tailored to specific customer needs.”
Do you prepare quarterly business reviews for your clients?
“Everything we do at Clayton is driven by data and observations on how our users derive value from our products and services. We collect customers' KPIs to measure the success and the impact our software is having on their businesses.
We prepare customer QBRs in advance, based on the valuable metrics we’ve gathered, in order to facilitate discussion and generate value for our customers.
QBRs help us strengthen relationships with our customers and get executive alignment. They are also great learning opportunities for us, and having feedback from different viewpoints helps us to ensure we're evolving our product in the right direction.”
How do you support customers day-to-day? When a challenging situation arises, what steps do you take to work through it?
“Unfortunately, it goes without saying that the recent COVID-19 pandemic has had a great impact on many CS activities. I’ve missed meeting with customers in person and seeing first-hand how Salesforce developers use Clayton every day. These aspects, as well as gathering valuable feedback from customers, is what I love the most about my role.
I adopt a mix of high level and interpersonal approaches, from QBRs and monthly sync calls to email support. There’s also an online community to tap into, as well as ad-hoc screen sharing sessions to address specific requests or solve immediate problems.”
Hopefully, our Q and A has given you some insights into how we work with our customers at Clayton. Our Customer Success Manager - in line with the entire Clayton team - works hard to make sure every customer enjoys five-star customer support at all times.
