20 Customer Success Interview Questions to Ask CSM Candidates

Hiring the wrong Customer Success Manager can have a real impact on your company’s customer base and its renewal rates. That is why it’s important to make sure your Customer Success team hires are right for your team and more broadly your organization.

A CSM needs to be responsible for cultivating exceptional experiences and sustained value for your customers by acting as their trusted advisor and advocate from the point of sale through the renewal and throughout the rest of the customers’ lifecycle.

To help you make sure you are adequately evaluating your Customer Success Manager candidates consider pulling from this list of interview questions. We have broken the interview questions out by the following subgroups: Customer Success skills, project and time management, data management, account growth, and general Customer Success knowledge.  

20 Interview Questions to Ask Your Customer Success Manager Candidates

Customer Success Skills

• How do you go about identifying and establishing rapport with individuals in various customer roles (ex. company executives, department managers, admins, power-users, team leads and general users)?
• What is your approach to uncovering and working towards customer expectations, values, and desired outcomes?
• Tell me about a time where you reached a successful agreement with a customer in terms of goals, objectives, or timing?
• Describe a time when you had to re-set a customer’s expectation and what was the outcome?
• Tell me about a time when you had to translate a customer’s concern/desires to an internal team/team member that had what you considered to be a successful outcome?
• Tell me about a time when you believe that you established or increased credibility with a different department within your company (ex. Marketing, Sales, Professional Services, Onboarding, Dev, Product Management, Finance, Support, Training, and Senior Management)?
• Tell me about a time you went above and beyond for a customer?

Project and Time Management

• How do you go about managing both reactive and proactive activities in your day-to-day as a CSM?
• Let’s say you have to complete multiple tasks across your book of business, how would you determine their priority?

Data Management

• Have you used a Customer Success platform before? If so, which one(s) and what was your experience using the tool to track customer engagement, health, and usage? If you have not used a Customer Success platform before, then please tell me about how else you have tracked these items for your book of business.
• Give me an example of a time that you used data to proactively minimize risk with a customer.
• Tell me about a time you surfaced information about a customer and shared it with interested parties within your organization.

Account Growth

• Can you share with me what your renewal rate was this past quarter in your current role?
• Have you had ownership of account expansion in your previous roles? If so, what KPIs are you the proudest of in terms of up-sells or cross-sells?
• Tell me about a time when you overcame a customer’s objection with a renewal or expansion opportunity?

Customer Success Knowledge

• Can you describe to me in your own words the definition and general process of the customer journey?
• Can you please explain the concept of customer health scoring and how customer health indicators might be generated, evaluated and managed?
• In your opinion what are two of the most important Customer Success metrics a team can track?
• Describe the different skills and qualities needed to become a highly effective Customer Success Manager and tell me what your strengths are?
• What are your favorite books/podcasts/blogs/resources to learn more about and keep up with trends in the Customer Success industry?

If you are looking for a new Customer Success role, we’re hiring! Check out our open roles here on our careers page.