My Top 10 "Ground Rules" for Customer Success and Collaborative Work
If you’ve worked with me over the last five years, you have likely seen the “Top 10 Ground Rules” that I share as my favorite sayings that encapsulate my Customer Success habits and general operating values on how to be a good partner to all stakeholders. These phrases have been learned, adapted, or created to help remind myself and others of the most important themes in doing high quality, enjoyable work. I share a slide of these sayings when introducing myself to a new team member. I also include them in my farewells when it is time to say goodbye. Lately I joke that if you were to train an AI on these, you’d get a good representation on how I would answer most questions.
I recently took time to expound on each one of them. With these details, I thought it was worth sharing them here to a broader audience. I hope they are valuable to you as you work with customers or in collaborative environments.
Note: This article was originally posted on LinkedIn in May 2024.
This copy includes small revisions but I continue to value these points as being important to guide my work.
If you’ve worked with me over the last five years, you have likely seen the “Top 10 Ground Rules” that I share as my favorite sayings that encapsulate my Customer Success habits and general operating values on how to be a good partner to all stakeholders. These phrases have been learned, adapted, or created to help remind myself and others of the most important themes in doing high quality, enjoyable work. I share a slide of these sayings when introducing myself to a new team member. I also include them in my farewells when it is time to say goodbye. Lately I joke that if you were to train an AI on these, you’d get a good representation on how I would answer most questions.
I recently took time to expound on each one of them. With these details, I thought it was worth sharing them here to a broader audience. I hope they are valuable to you as you work with customers or in collaborative environments.
Customer commitments come first: Without our customers, we don’t have a business. This does not mean that you must do everything a customer asks for, but if you make a commitment to a customer, you’d better keep it. Be intentional on the commitments that you make. Don’t over-promise just to feel good in the moment, that never works out. Customers will remember when you do what you said. They’ll remember longer when you fail to deliver what you promised.
Over communicate internally and externally: A company is an organism; for it to function, all the body parts need to work together. To survive, it needs to be part of the broader ecosystem. This means that you need to do everything you can to interact with all the other parts of the system. Communication is a two-way process – listen as much as you talk.
Never worry alone: If you are concerned about something, odds are someone else is too. Share these concerns so others can help you;if you both don’t know, ask around until you find someone who can help. This is the only way we solve problems. It also feels a lot better when you make progress as part of a team.
You are always entitled to ask “Why”: One of the top traits I look for in Customer Success is curiosity. Understanding the why behind a request can help you find the root cause or find an alternative path to meet the true need. Asking “why?” brings you closer to the person you are talking to, and it shows that you care. Starting with “why?” shows that you want to personally improve and be part of a purpose that is bigger than the immediate task at hand.
Your job is to help others do their job better: In Customer Success, you are enabling your customers to get the most value out of the solutions you support. Always think about, “what can I do to help my partner be a hero?” Do this internally as well. If you help coworkers with the same passion you have for helping customers, it will come back around to you when you need help.
If it’s not written down then it didn’t happen (or won’t happen): You’ve heard this one from me more than once this week. Our brains are great at solving problems, not so good at remembering things. Writing things down helps in busy times and in times of change. Writing things down keeps you and others accountable to your commitments (see above). Luckily, with technology, we have some really cool tools that can help record and write things down for us. Leverage this power!
“Shitty first drafts” to get started, but quality is better than fast: The first part of this saying is taken from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. By freeing yourself to write a S.F.D., you can get over the hump of not knowing how to do something. If it’s a particularly scary project to start, commit to a really shitty first draft. Throw it away if you need to and then ask for help (see above) but I bet you’ll have something that you can start to work with. The important part here is don’t settle for good enough - always strive for quality and improvement. Don’t be afraid to ask for more time if you think it will help you do better.
Saying “I don’t know, but I’ll follow up” is better than making it up: Just as failed commitments can soil trust, so can false info. Your job in Customer Success is not to have all the answers; your job is to help customers find the answers when they can’t find them elsewhere. If you don’t know the answer to a question, this is also a great opportunity to ask “why?”
Make hard work, fun work: You are going to spend 80,000 hours working in your career - don’t you want to have fun while doing it? Take a hard task and think of it as a puzzle or a game. Remember that the people you are working with are trying to solve the same problems as you are. Laugh at the absurdity of some situations. Laugh at yourself when you fail. Find the wonder in every task.
Customer Success is everyone’s job: It starts and ends with the customer. Your job in CS is to remind people of this. Your job is to bring the customer into the org so every part of the company cares for the customer as much as you do. Find what motivates other teams and help them relate to how that’s helping our customers. By the way, when I say Customer Success is everyone’s job, I mean everyone, even the customer. Hold the customer accountable to their own success. Remind them of what they need to do to make the partnership and their organization successful using our solutions.
I would love to hear your feedback, questions, or additions. With collaboration from others, I’m sure my list will continue to evolve. Feel free to adopt any of these as your own and develop your own top ten. I’ve found coming back to them helps me center myself in day to day decisions in many aspects of my life.