Personal Evaluation: What, Why, and How?

Performing Personal Evaluation for Customer Success Managers. 

Once a Customer Success strategy has been implemented and, let’s say, completed, the role of a CSM doesn’t end there. Aside from evaluating the engagement itself, it is also essential that CSM evaluates themselves and their performance.  

In today’s customer-centric world, Customer Success Managers are the ones who need to make sure that their customers are on the road to outcome attainment. However, to do so, a CSM must understand precisely what Customer Success is, its implementation, and any gaps in their knowledge and skills that require learning or training.  

What is Personal Evaluation for Customer Success Managers? 

Self-assessment is a great strategy to start identifying gaps that affect your performance as a Customer Success Manager. It can be a standalone assessment or part of an ongoing program. Either way, it helps you evaluate which responsibilities of a CSM you are doing well and failing to do better.  

Why is it Necessary? 

The purpose of this type of evaluation is to identify knowledge gaps in Customer Success and be able to resolve them through either training or certification quickly. There are two main reasons why this should happen: first, customer satisfaction levels depend on how well CSMs know their business (they may not be able to fix a problem they don’t know how to solve), and second, organizations can’t afford to let CSMs coast.  

How to Perform a Personal Evaluation? 

A Personal Evaluation tool that we use here in Practical CSM is explicitly tailored for Customer Success Managers. It has 8 Matrixes, namely: 

1. Time Management 
2. Productivity/Efficiency 
3. Quality of Output
4. Customer Experience
5. Customer Outcomes
6. Our Outcomes
7. Technical Skills
8. Soft Skills 

With each of them, you will grade yourself from 1 to 10, with ten being the highest. Now, ensure that you remain objective in scoring yourself in each category and truly identify if you have been effective in each. 

First, assess whether you could finish everything (productivity) on time (time management). Then, evaluate your output- was it able to deliver what it is expected to do? 

Customer Success Managers have a lot of work to do, from identifying strategies to implementing implementations to help customers achieve their expected outcomes. And most of the time, some projects fail because a CSM can’t deliver value on time or lacks quality.  

To evaluate your performance, you can also use the KPIs that identifies the customer’s satisfaction (customer experience), the customer’s value realization (customer outcomes), and your company’s goals (our outcomes). It is essential to remember that CSMs work aligned with the company’s goals rather than just focusing on the existing customers. What is your progress in retaining customers? What is the MRR, NRR, or ARR? Keep in mind that the KPIs to choose and present to your investors and stakeholders are only the ones that matter for the company.  

Technical and Soft Skills are all critical to delivering CS strategies in the best way possible. Technical skills refer to those you learn in the job itself; on the other hand, soft skills are primarily transferrable (i.e., leadership and problem solving).