One of the most interesting things a Customer Success Manager
(hereafter referred to as a CSM) ever gets to do here at Lithium is to
hold a kickoff meeting with a customer. When the customer enters the
launch process, we get a refresher about what people think about
community in the business world. We eat, breathe, and sleep social
media here at Lithium, so having exposure to the occasional n00b group
(and I mean that in the most playful sense of the term) affords us the
kind of renewed perspective that our department needs in order to stay
innovative. It keeps us on our toes. The goal of the CSM in the
kickoff meeting is to convey to this new customer that:
a) Lithium has a launch process
b) This process works for all customers
c)
and finally, it is an opportunity for the CSM to gather information on
what the vision is of this customer for their community
Lets
talk about point "c" for a minute. Customers, indeed companies, come
in all shapes and sizes, and with that comes some pretty diverse ideas
of what is going to make for a successful community. Most businesses
treat a community launch as any other business project. But a
community is slightly different. It requires an ongoing commitment
from an operational owner; so the first thing that we always like to
clarify is whether the customer has the resources to meet two tracks;
the engineering track, and the community management track. Both are
equally important during the launch, and once the community goes out
into the wild, the latter is vitally important. It is one thing for a
company to have a business stakeholder that managed to get a budget for
the community platform that they purchased, but there is another huge
component to consider after the purchase, and that is the question of
who will continue to own (and grow) the community in the operational
sense.
The online world knows this
role/person as the "Community Manager", and the Community Manager is an absolute
necessity for a successful community.
Lithium
heavily invests in a customer's community manager. Not only do we
train a new community manager on how to use the software, but we also
impart our best practices. These best practices have been gleaned from
launching 150+ communities, and also from the years of experience many
of us have in running and participating in communities before we came
to Lithium. This experience and training is ongoing, but it starts
right at the beginning of the launch process. So when we get into the
kickoff meeting and we've got everybody assembled from the customer's
side; a business stakeholder, a project manager, and a technical
resource, but no community manager, we're faced with having to tell the
customer that they are missing an absolutely crucial component. Not
good.
But that's ok. Once we lay it all out,
somebody gets called upon to fill the shoes eventually. Sometimes the
project manager graduates into the community manager, sometimes the
customer has to hire from the outside. Sometimes the business
stakeholder fills in until they can get a budget for another resource.
Once in a great while the community manager is the business
stakeholder and project manager right from the outset (that is always
fun, because then the CSM gets to do one-on-ones a lot with that person, and
there is some really great creative energy that can open up in that
context). One of my most successful customers is like that, but I also work quite well with other customers that have the big traditional team. Lets look at what the roles look like
again:
- Business Stakeholder
- Project Manager
- Community Manager
- Technical resource(s) (mainly necessary for the launch)
Those
are four roles that a customer needs in order to have a successful
launch. When we start the kickoff, we're immediately checking in to
make sure that these roles are covered. If they're not, its not like
the train stops on that dime. No, we move on, but we let the customer
know that they're going to need another team member.
In
my next blog entry I'll talk about what we actually drill down into
during the kickoff meeting. Believe me, confirming the resources is
just the beginning....
