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Hi there! My name’s Anna, and I’m a Customer Success Manager at Tidio.
If you’ve stumbled across this article, you’re probably curious about what a Customer Success Manager is. Have you ever wondered what a person in my role does all day? Well, there are some days when I get to talk to people from three different continents in one day and learn about various businesses and industries. Sounds intriguing? Then, let me walk you through the details of my workday, and you’ll see for yourself what my job entails.
I will guide you through a typical day based on my strategies and how I manage volume, communication, and multitasking at my job.
What does a Customer Success Manager do?
A day in a Customer Success Manager (CSM) role can look very different depending on the week, season, and the number of deals closed last week. What makes a good Customer Success Manager? When you look at Customer Success Manager responsibilites, the most essential thing in the job is to plan ahead. I can guarantee you that each day in this position looks different because each client has different strategies, plans, time zones, and their business might fall under seasonality, etc. So, there are always many variables that contribute to how your week ahead looks. And if you’re in a SaaS start-up environment (like we are at Tidio), speed and efficiency are crucial to navigating your day successfully.
Since I juggle different time zones and clients from all over the world, my week’s availability looks very different. Since I work on Eastern European Time (EET), Monday and Tuesday I start later and finish later, so if a client overseas in the US or Canada needs a comfortable time to meet, I can accommodate.
So, let’s assume it’s Monday, then.
My Monday Schedule
12 PM - 2:30 PM Slack and Emails (although emails take priority)
I quickly scan my Slack for any mentions of anything that needs my immediate attention, like a client who perhaps contacted support about something urgent that they need help with. If it’s urgent, I make it my priority. If it needs my attention but can wait, it goes into my saved items for me to check after I finish with my emails.
Next step is emails. I have two inboxes: one for software and in-company updates and one purely for communication with clients. Before I start my day, I check the volume on each, and I know exactly how much time I will need to clear my inbox. Emails come first. We have an SLA of 24 hours, so unless there is a pending emergency over Slack, I begin with my emails, starting with older ones and slowly moving to newer ones.
It’s a particularity of mine, but I hate a messy inbox. I only mark emails read if I’m done with the task and the response to the client. A clear inbox for me then means no more tasks (yey!)
During this time, it’s more of a multi-tab switching between email, the clients’ Tidio panels for optimizations, Jira tasks for the implementation team, Hubspot to check deals and pending upgrades, Totango to note any significant updates about the client, forwarding feature feedback and requests on Slack. This is definitely the most active multitasking time for me.
2:30 - 3:30 PM Lunch
A solid half an hour goes to food preparations. The rest of the time is a fair competition between my favorite sitcom, Modern Family, and check-ins on Slack messages and pings.
3:30 - 4:00 PM Kick-off Call
In truth, my availability for calls on this specific day starts at 3:30 PM EET and goes until the end of the work day. It can be one call, four, or five. But let’s assume there is a call at this hour.
Calls can vary in nature. My clients have my Calendly link, where they can book calls based on their needs at least a day in advance. Let’s say this one is an onboarding call, or as we call it, a kick-off call.
Before every call, I’m “profiling” the client. I learn what I can from the team that signed them, check their Tidio activity, and have a look at their website, services, and what they do. Before having a call, I’m already decently informed on their case, but I would like to have that face-to-face interaction to get to know their business from their perspective.
During the meeting, we explore their goals, needs, and how they envision Tidio in it. This is the most important part of our collaboration. Automations, implementations, and trainings will come, but to assist them well, you need to understand their business, their vision, and how we can help it. After doing the groundwork, we build a plan moving forward. If time permits, we also have a look at their Tidio panel together via shared screen and discuss what to optimize until our next meeting. Every client will then receive a detailed follow-up email with the recording of our call, our action points moving forward, and also answers to any pending questions that could not be answered right away on the call.
Here’s an important note – It’s okay not to know the answers to some questions 🙂 We often get very custom and technical requests. Never promise or confirm something you don’t know how to make happen. That’s my stance on this.
After the call, on the backend, I mark all collected information needed for our collaboration in Totango, our client management software. It’s the most important entry, and I often return to this touchpoint.
4:30 - 5:20 PM Training Call
Once we have some work done with the client, I always recommend a training call. It helps clients understand how to use the panel, optimize their current flows/automation setups, and become more independent and confident using Tidio.
Again, before the call, I make sure to go over the notes in the booked call (personal recommendation: make them mandatory; it’s good to know in advance what the client is interested in discussing), kick-off touchpoint, previous emails, check on their activity in the panel, and how they’re doing using Tidio. That should get you prepared before the call. However, I still like to make a little intro on what we’ll discuss in the training so we’re on the same page, and if needed, we can change the direction of the training. After all, the training is here to best answer the client’s needs.
As always, the client receives a follow-up email with the recording, links to guides, and videos about the setups we discussed, as well as any case-specific guidance from me with screenshots or Loom videos.
5:30 - 6:20 PM Emails
Communication never ends. By this time, my US and Canadian clients are awake and ready to tackle the new week with questions and tasks, so I’m expecting a few more emails around this time of day. If emails are quiet (I guarantee you they won’t be, but let’s assume), I jump into internal tasks and projects or do a quick evaluation on client accounts that have a low health score*.
*Sidenote: Every account has a health score defined by its goal. We aim to keep things green there, so every bit of help is always needed.
6:30 - 7:20 PM Weekly Team Meeting
We have an agenda that we can fill out throughout the week. We can freely add the points we want to discuss, and when the meeting happens, we go over the pending topics. This is also a call to sync with other teams on pending processes and questions. Updates, changes in processes, and important company-related matters come first, then individual topics from the agenda follow.
It’s also a great time to reconnect face-to-face with your team and catch up on the latest life updates while we’re waiting on a late-coming team member (kidding, of course, no one is ever late for our meetings…).
7:30 - 8:30 PM Anything-can-happen Window
Honestly, this time can be another call, or depending on the volume, another go on the emails. If it happens that I have a window like this, I will use it to finish a quick task for the client that potentially was planned for another day, help with their flows, update something in their panel, do a quick accounts check, catch up to anything that was either low-priority or scheduled for another day. However, for the most part, and the usual case, this is a window to catch up on the new tasks and emails that rolled in while I was on calls.
Events out of the Agenda that Happen at Any Point
Slack. Slack doesn’t have an agenda. You can get pinged at any time. I make sure to save items on Slack to check at the next available window. For some, I set a timer notification. If I get updates regarding client product feedback and requests, those emails go out as soon as that update is available. If there is an emergency case needing my attention, naturally, that takes priority.
In general, the day can look very different based on the time of the month or week. By the end of the month, I have scheduled time for a general accounts check-up. There is a time scheduled by the end of each week to go over any pending tasks still needing attention in our client management platform. Once every two weeks, we have a Zoom meeting with our team leader for feedback and hot topics. Once every three months, we have quarterly account reviews. And, of course, depending on the volume and client cases, the next day’s schedule (emails and Slack priority aside) can look very different, but that’s the beauty of this job. It’s always different, ever-changing, and evolving, yet, luckily, you can still organize a routine even in the most fast-paced environment.
The Best Part of the Job
My colleague once asked me what I find to be the most rewarding part of my job. It might sound cliché, but the most rewarding feeling is seeing my clients grow and do better than when they first started with us. It is called a “Success Manager” position for a reason. My personal favorite is seeing stories and highlights of my clients’ successes featured in our blog. You should check it out for yourself here. Nothing brings me so much joy as seeing your clients succeed and grow throughout your collaboration.
