Owning the conversation with the customer

For customer success managers (CSMs) who are new to their role, it usually takes some time to become comfortable at revealing the value of the company’s product or service to customers of various sizes and industries. But even after conducting the first 50–100 calls, it may be a challenge for them to take control of the conversation and own it. This could lead to conversations drifting out of the CSM’s control, and leaving both customer and CSM dissatisfied. So, what does it mean to take control of conversations with the customers, and how does one do it?

Owning a conversation means managing it in a way that the goals of both parties are achieved. These goals may be aligned or may be completely different, so it’s the customer success manager’s job to make sure that all of them are addressed. A well-managed conversation leaves a good impression for the client and gives the CSM the opportunity to build and maintain their reputation as an expert. But what are the risks of not taking control over the conversation? Common ones include:

• Not having time to discuss all the topics planned
• Not communicating certain critical information to the customer
• Having the conversation steered away from the topic at hand
• CSM not having the time to cover certain important questions (such as decreasing usage trend, potential opportunity to upgrade, and more)
• Customer getting less value from the call in general

As you can see, most of these bullet points are related to time being limited during the call and the necessity to use that time well to achieve results. Now let’s talk about the “how” and discuss specific actions CSMs can take to gain control of the customer conversations.

Ask the customer to share the list of topics in advance

Having a clear understanding of the agenda before the call enables the CSM to prepare any answers their client may need, as well as plan the topics that the client needs to hear about. Some customers may go as far as sending detailed lists of topics with highlights, screenshots, and more. But I would not expect that to happen in the majority of cases, so it would be a good idea to come up with a more simple way of prompting customers to share their topics in advance. For example, here at Wrike, we use one SaaS call scheduling tool. And whenever the client uses their CSM’s personal link to schedule a call, in addition to providing their company name and email address, they are asked to fill in a comment box listing the topics they would like to discuss. This would free several minutes at the beginning of the call that could be repurposed to address some other questions you or the client may have.

Confirm the topics at the beginning of the conversation

As we have already discussed, the ideal situation would be to have the customer send their list of topics in advance. If for any reason that doesn’t happen, it would be important to spend a couple of minutes during the call on discovery questions to get a clear understanding of the critical topics for the customer. Make notes of those topics and before diving into the first, ask the following question: “Is there anything else that you would like to be covered?”. Our experience here at Wrike tells that this simple question often leads to the client remembering one or several other important items to discuss. And in some cases, these items help the CSM to uncover even more value for the client.

Once the CSM confirms the full list of topics, it’s important to quickly evaluate whether it’s possible to cover everything without rushing the meeting. I recommend being realistic when setting expectations for the customers. For example, when a client arrives with big questions on seven major functionalities for a 30-minute call, I immediately communicate that we can do a high-level overview, but if the client needs a deep dive, it might be a better idea to choose, say, three topics for today and leave the remainder for the follow-up call. Initially, CSMs may not have a clear understanding of how much time would be required on average to discuss a certain topic. But as they conduct more and more calls, they will become better and better at making an educated guess.

Manage the time during the call

Not only is it important to evaluate the time required to discuss each topic, but also to mind those timeframes during the call should the conversation start to steer off-course. It’s quite common that several team members from the client’s organization would be present on the call. They might start enthusiastically discussing a certain topic that you kickstarted and at some point, it may become obvious that the CSM’s presence is not really needed for this conversation and that it should be taken offline. Should that happen, make sure that you communicate to the customer that in order to cover all the planned topics, it’s important to keep things moving, and discuss any extra topics later..

That said, one of the skills customer success managers need to have is the ability to interrupt — politely and persistently. This may seem counterintuitive, since interrupting, in general, is considered bad manners. But doing it respectfully and, most importantly, with good intention, is something that one should be able to do if needed. You can use phrases such as “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I just want to make sure that we cover all the topics you consider critical and get maximized value from this call. Would it be possible for you and your colleagues to continue this specific discussion offline?”

Sometimes it’s needed to push customers in a certain direction

Clients arrive on the call with a customer success manager to address certain challenges they’re facing. Sometimes they have a clear list of topics to discuss, but in other cases, they might only have a general idea. A customer does not know the product inside out like the CSM does — in other words, they don’t know what they don’t know. In these situations, it’s important for the CSM to politely push the customer in the right direction, even if the original plan was to discuss other things.

Take an example from our experience here at Wrike. The client arrived on a call with a CSM with a clear agenda — about 5–6 bullet points to discuss, with most of the topics being pretty advanced. But after several minutes spent on discovery questions, it became clear to the CSM that the client didn’t have an understanding of the basics of the product. It didn’t make sense to dive into advanced areas of the product when there were some clear gaps in the core areas. The customer success manager explained this to the client and agreed that the remainder of the call would be repurposed to review the basics and the advanced features would be discussed on the follow-up call. While the customer was initially hesitant, he actually was very thankful in the end when it became clear to him what exactly he was missing all the way through.

Focus on the aspects that are not covered in detail in your help resources

Managing a book of business as a CSM involves a lot of juggling priorities. When many customers require your attention and support, it’s not always possible to jump on a call with the same client every week — which makes it even more important to make every call count. It’s a good idea to spend time on the call discussing the best practices that are not described in detail in your help resources. And for those that are covered, you can always include links to the relevant resources in your follow-up emails. Of course, I’m not recommending ignoring the client’s questions, but to highlight that clear instructions are available and that it might be a better use of the client’s time to discuss some other topics while on the call.

Again, sharing an example from our experience, one of the questions that a customer wanted to discuss on a call with Wrike was Wrike’s integration with Salesforce. The customer asked whether it was available and after getting a confirmation from a CSM, asked to see how to set it up. The CSM responded that, while she would be happy to explain, there’s a five-minute tutorial video with detailed instructions on the topic which leaves zero room for confusion, and since the client had many other topics they wanted to cover, it might be a better idea to simply follow the steps in the video and use the call to discuss other issues. The client was supportive of that approach.

Give all attendees the opportunity to speak

Among other things, owning the conversation means that every person present on the call feels attended to. For SaaS (software as a service) companies, adoption is the key, so it’s critical that not only the management’s questions are addressed properly, but also other team member’s. It’s important to keep in mind that some people may not proactively jump into the conversation. So, as the main driver of the conversation, CSMs need to pay constant attention to involving everyone. Every now and then, pause and ask a question like “We haven’t heard from [employee name] yet. What do you think about what we just discussed?”. Make sure that you use open questions — not the ones that can be answered with a simple yes or no.

Have arguments ready for common objections

As you continue growing as a CSM, you’re going to notice that there’s a certain number of common objections made by customers on various topics — from not seeing the need to upgrade to not being willing to commit to a follow-up meeting. As you continue testing out different strategies and tactics to defuse these objections, make note of everything that has proved efficient and start replicating these successful approaches moving forward. The idea here is simple — when you know that a certain tactic has already worked well for several customers, you can present it with confidence and do a good job justifying the idea. As a result, the probability of it working well again is increased.

I hope these recommendations will be helpful for customer success managers aspiring to take better control over their conversations with customers. Also, I would be very interested to learn your best practices of owning the client conversation in the comments.