Hopefully, you followed the advice in my previous post and qualified expectations and made sure the fit is right.
You are now preparing for the first interview, and whether you’re an experienced campaigner or this is your first time interviewing for a role in Customer Success, there are a few things you can do before you attend the interview to get well prepped and make sure you stand out as an exceptional candidate.
Company and Product Research
You’ll have carried out research ahead of applying but now it’s time to take it a step further and get into the detail.
Lots of SaaS tools have free trials or access to demo’s – have you signed up? I’d say that’s an essential requirement ahead of an interview.
If they don’t have a free trial, then there is still plenty of product research you can do via self-help centres, Slack channels and so on. It doesn’t take long to look through these and you can pick up some great insight.
Make sure you are using all available marketing content and get very familiar with it. Chances are you’ll find a product explainer on YouTube, possibly with some reviews.
If they have a blog or "Work for Us" page these are great for getting a feel for a company’s tone of voice and culture.
Also, check sites such as G2Crowd, Capterra, and glassdoor to find out what customers and employees are saying about the business and its products.
Getting into detail like this will help you really understand the business and will enable you to provide a snapshot of what customer experience will be like with you on board.
It will also enable you to answer the “Why us?” question a lot more accurately. If you can talk in detail and passionately about the product, company vision and culture you’ll be a lot more convincing.
This is the one basic question that is often poorly answered – that’s down to prep!
Research the Interviewer & Founders
Treat your interviewers like your customers. Make sure you know all about them. Check out LinkedIn, Google and Customer Success communities are great.
I’d encourage participation in Customer Success communities as your presence and contribution here demonstrates you’re a serious practitioner and have a passion in your chosen career.
If you don’t already do this then check out London Customer Success Meetup or Customer Success Network.
If you want to take it a stage further, do your due diligence on the Founding team. Finding out about them and their vision will help you buy into the company culture and you can reference this research during the interview to demonstrate you’ve done your homework. Cruchbase is great for this type of information, plus you’ll be able to get insight on funding and lots more!
This is your opportunity to thoroughly understand your audience and their roles, and in doing so you’ll be able to tailor your questions to be relevant to their needs.
And don’t be shy when it comes to connecting with them on LinkedIn ahead of an interview…… It’s a great opportunity to break the ice and build your network.
Come with Questions & Examples
It’s imperative you come with facts and figures to back up your previous success.
Again, if you’ve done your homework, you’ll know the objectives and drivers of the Customer Success team at the company you are interviewing with. That should make your task easier when pulling figures together that you can talk through and bring to life.
Consider areas such as Expansion and upsell targets, churn reduction, and retention/renewals or NPS if that’s your thing.
Be prepared to answer questions such as techniques you employ and any specific processes you’ve implemented that have contributed towards your successful performance.
If there are any processes that you have personally designed and implemented, be sure to get that across!
Beyond the numbers, scenario-based questions are increasingly popular so make sure you have some good examples to reference with areas such as handling difficult customers, onboarding scenarios and techniques, and how you managed your interaction with other teams internally.
Your interviewer will want to hear the good and bad experiences - so be prepared for both!
Behavioural interviews are more popular than ever, and you can prepare for these by understanding what STAR interview techniques are.
The acronym STAR is: Situation, Task, Action, Result
This will help explain - STAR.
When it comes to asking questions, it’s vital you know who is in the room and what their role is before you walk into the interview.
Make sure you come with lots of great questions and be sure to engage everyone. I’d suggest making sure you have prepared at least two questions for each interviewer. You may not get a chance to ask all of these and there may be some overlap; however, you should aim to get some level of rapport established with everyone on the room.
Close the Interview
Always close! It can be daunting but be forward and make sure you ask for some brief feedback at the end of the meeting.
How you phrase this can make all of the difference!
First, briefly recap with some key points as to why feel you’re an outstanding candidate for the role and reiterate your excitement for their business and the opportunity.
Once you’ve done this then ask a question along the lines of “Based on today’s meeting/assessment, do you have any reservations/objections about my experience that would prevent you putting me forward to the next interview stage?”
Wouldn’t you rather know if something had been misunderstood or they were unsure about an element of your profile?
You’ve invested all this time into preparing for this interview and this one question can make all the difference.
You might just get a chance to cover an objection the moves the process in your favour.
These are just a few helpful tips from my experience hiring Customer Success roles within B2B SaaS over the last five + years.
Hope they help : )
Alan
#customersuccessrecruitment #customersuccessjobs #customersuccess #saasjobs #recruitingtips
Always close! It can be daunting but be forward and make sure you ask for some brief feedback at the end of the meeting.
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