Interview Questions to Hire Customer Success Manager

A customer success manager or CSM specializes in customer service delivering both reactive and proactive solutions and plans for their consumers. They also need to be familiar with your organization’s product or service so they can answer any questions from customers.

When customers email your organization, CSMs must be able to compose emails and knowledge base newsletters for their consumers. They also need to strong negotiation skills to hold talks regarding upselling and cross-selling on top of everything else.

You can see that a great CSM should have a set of skills and characteristics that a hiring manager should evaluate during interviews. On top of that, you can always train people about the business' products and services as well as email approach. But, emotional intelligence and other personality attributes are must-haves when hiring a new CSM.

We have gathered interview questions for you to evaluate your candidates.

Empathy Interview Questions

• Was there a time you used empathy to solve a customer's or your teammate’s problem?
• How do you tell customers bad news while keeping them positive and engaged?
• What about when you’re delivering good news? What are your steps in delivering it?
• Sometimes you can’t answer a question right away. What do you when this happens?
• How do you react when you’re feeling upset at work?
• Is there a time when you’re action left a positive impact on a customer? What happened?

Quick Thinking Interview Questions

• Tell me about a time when you handled a difficult case.
• What’s your strategy to work cross-department to get things done?
• Do you have a time when you had to make a difficult decision? Describe the situation for me?
• You noticed your supervisor made an error either in their report or presentation. What would you do to tell them about it?
• When you’re anticipating possible problems, walk me through your steps to prevent them from happening.
• How do you make a decision when you need more information?
• When a customer is having issues with service during your previous role, how do you solve the problem?

Conclusion

When hiring a customer success manager, remember that the position is critical for sustaining and developing long-term connections with customers. If you make a poor hiring decision, you may experience poorer client retention rates.

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