Stop Rewarding Burnout - Rethinking the “Hero CSM”
By Kristen Hayer
You have seen it. You may have even lived it. The CSM who is everything for their customers. They support, well, support. They provide services. They renegotiate poorly set expectations. They stay late helping customers navigate the solution they didn’t get enough training on. The one thing they aren’t doing is tapping into their cross-functional teams. And, they are probably, slowly burning out.
Being a hero feels great, at first. You get praise from your boss, your customers, your coworkers. You are seen as the one who always saves the day. But is this the right thing for your business? Is this the right thing for you, as a CSM? Is this sustainable in the long run?
Being everything to everyone is exhausting. It also masks potentially severe internal problems, keeping the company from addressing them in a more productive way. The hero mentality causes a host of issues including employee turnover, poor performance across teams, and challenges with scaling. It is time to move away from being the hero and toward systems that reward collaboration.
The Rise of the Hero CSM
When CS got its start, it was a little chaotic. Some companies thought of CS as rebranded support, others thought it was rebranded Account Management. Others thought of it as a unique new thing, but didn’t have the structure to keep it from being the dumping ground for every project that was related to customers and nobody wanted to do (like collections or data entry). To succeed, CSMs needed to wear a lot of hats. They also needed to be incredibly responsive. This turned into a lot of hero work. And that work was rewarded with the praise of leadership.
As CS matured, unfortunately this approach stuck. To this day, CS teams are often overloaded with tasks that don’t really belong to them, overstep into the realms of other teams, and end up burned out.
The Hidden Costs of Hero Culture
Hero culture takes a personal toll on CSMs. When people face a constant, unrelenting grind at work, without breaks that allow them to grow their skills and develop processes that drive long-term improvement they get frustrated. Their performance declines. Ultimately, they quit. But beyond burnout there are a number of other downsides to hero culture.
Bottlenecks – whenever a customer only trusts one person, there is no redundancy and no point of escalation. This is a huge risk to customer care, and a real problem if the point person takes a vacation!
Unscalable Processes – CSMs who overstep their role often mask problems on other teams that need to be addressed with training, more staff, or different processes. This isn’t really helping, it's hiding real problems.
Imbalanced Rewards – Instead of rewarding CSMs and other teams who create lasting impact, teams with a hero culture reward those who have the loudest, most visible effort. This frustrates team members who are contributing in quieter ways, and results in unnecessary turnover.
Redefining Success
So, what should we be rewarding instead? What will create lasting change, strong team performance and engaged CSMs?
Collaboration – Sales, Services, Support, Product, Finance, and CS all need to collaborate to deliver what customers need in a way that is scalable for the organization. Reward frequent collaboration.
Knowledge-Sharing – Each team needs visibility into what others are doing so they can respond to customers consistently and effectively. Reward creating documentation and use of tools that support cross-functional collaboration.
Automation – Building systems that operate on their own takes the pressure off teams across the board. Plan a customer journey that automates where possible and plugs CSMs and other team members in where a personal touch improves the experience. Reward automation.
Customer Outcomes – Effort doesn’t always equal results. The ultimate measure of success is whether a customer sees a return on their investment and sticks around. Reward positive customer outcomes.
Of course, some of the responsibility of a hero culture falls squarely on the shoulders of CSMs who don’t balance their workload or set limits. As a CSM who sets boundaries, prioritizes their time and doesn’t overextend themselves, you deliver long-term value to your company and customers.
Building a Team-Centric Culture
What can you do, as a CS leader, to encourage a team-centric culture that discourages hero-work?
1. Normalize balance and healthy boundaries. The best way you can do this is to set a great example.
2. Build processes and deliver training that drive scalable, cross-functional work. A single point of failure is never a good plan.
3. Explore how your teams might be masking issues on other teams and address them directly.
4. Set expectations and goals around team accountability instead of individual heroics. Back your expectations up with praise for the right behavior.
The strongest CS teams aren’t full of heroes. They are built on healthy teams, smart processes, automation and rewarding results. Consider whether you’re rewarding heroes or teams. If the answer is heroes, you need to update your approach to drive stronger scalability and performance across your organization.
Unlock the full potential of your customer success initiatives with our specialized Customer Success Program Assessment. The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that can help you elevate your CS strategies and achieve long-term success. Visit TheSuccessLeague.io to learn more.
Kristen Hayer - Kristen founded The Success League in 2015 and currently serves as the company's CEO. Over the past 25 years Kristen has been a success, sales, and marketing executive, primarily working with scaling tech companies, and leading several award-winning customer success teams. She has written over 100 articles on customer success, and is the host of 3 podcasts about the field. Kristen has served as a judge for the Customer Success Excellence awards, and is on the board of several early-stage tech companies. She received her MBA from the University of Washington in Seattle, and now lives in San Francisco.
