Customer Experience Executive | Founder, Bair Consulting | Fractional, Consultant, Advisor | fmr SVP, Customer Experience @FIGS
What to look for in your first leader of Customer Experience or Customer Success? 💙 First, an incredible people leader. This person has to be highly empathetic, loves coaching, and receives the majority of their validation by seeing their team hit goals and grow their impact. Some leadership roles (eg: Legal, Engineering) need technical skills over people skills, but that’s not CX or CS. The sign of a great people leader? Their direct reports don’t leave (for the most part). For 4.5 years at FIGS, I never had a manager or director leave. I was as proud of that as I was of anything else. 🧠 Second, subject matter expertise. This is why hiring from within is the cheat code. If you’ve had a person start out as a 1:Many Customer Success Manager or Support agent, grow into a manager, and then be ready for their first leadership role, they likely know the product cold, the workflows in and out, and care (assuming they’ve been there a few years). When I started my career at Wells Fargo, I eventually took over the contact center after 6 years. I knew the people (who succeeded and who did not), knew the systems, knew the products, and co-wrote most of the playbooks. Yes, I didn’t have great leadership skills yet, but I knew everything else. ⚡ Third, they’re action-oriented. If they don’t have a bias to action, you will struggle to trust them and constantly worry. It’s much easier to teach doers than to motivate thinkers. ☺️ Last, they’re comfortable in conversations with senior leaders. This takes some time early in their career, but they should not be constantly “afraid” to talk to other execs or the CEO. When I was a sales rep at Wells Fargo, I was consistently #1 or #2 in my center. They would often sit the president of my division or other execs with me to listen to me sell calls. At 23, that was terrorizing, but it helped. Fast forward 6 years later, as a director of my first team, I was presenting to senior leadership, I was nervous but no longer afraid. So, looking for your first Director/Senior Director/VP of CX or Success? Here are the four bullets you should leave the interview feeling sure of. ✅ They are an incredible people leader. ✅ They are a subject matter expert. ✅ They are action-oriented. ✅ They are comfortable communicating with senior leaders.
This is a great perspective Michael Bair! We often talk about keys to a successful CX or CS Leader, but rarely how we identify who that leader should be. I especially love the first bullet about being an incredible people leader. I have recognized in most companies the contact center agent is the entry point. In addition to retention, how successful are you at developing these agents into other roles within the company. In my most recent role at Flossy 1/3 of my team were promoted into other roles.
Love this although I would challenge prioritizing subject matter expertise over where the business is. More specifically, if you're in startup or scale up stage. While hiring your first CX / CS leader in the scale up stage is what I would consider "too late", I've seen that more and more as of late
Nailed it!
Another thing I would add - they want the job! Sometimes someone who is an amazing individual contributor actually hates managing people - or isn't good at it. The WORST thing that can happen is you promote a high performer, and then they end up leaving because the job isn't a good fit. To counteract this, we've added an "acting capacity" phase to our promotions. It's sort of like a probationary period, but it's for both the employee and employer. After six months in an "acting capacity" leadership role, you can step back into your old role - no problem. It increases interest in leadership roles because it helps reassure people who might be cautious about stepping up.