Customer Success Manager

IBM; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM is seeking a passionate and organized Customer Success Manager (CSM) to work with large clients in Seattle, focusing on the adoption of their SaaS solutions. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in customer success and a demonstrable capacity to manage complex customer relationships.

In this role, you will guide customers through engagement strategies, develop strong relationships, and ensure successful usage of Apptio applications. This role requires a collaborative spirit and the ability to adapt in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• 2-4 years of experience as a Customer Success Manager or Technical Account Manager in a SaaS organization.
• Proven experience in a B2B SaaS environment focused on customer adoption and renewal.
• Experience managing a demanding customer portfolio.

Responsibilities

• Maintain a portfolio of large, complex customers as a CSM.
• Develop strong customer relationships, engaging across operational and management positions.
• Serve as an Apptio coach and product expert.
• Coordinate with Customer Success teams and Account Management functions.
• Provide overall program management oversight.

Skills

Customer Relationship Management

B2B SaaS

Program Management

Influencing Skills

Job description

We are looking for an organized, passionate individual with extensive customer-facing experience. As an experienced professional in the SaaS industry as a Customer Success Manager (CSM), you will bring your experience leading our largest, most complex customers from deployment to broad-scale usage, managing the risks associated with successful adoption. You will be comfortable working independently across all levels within an organization, and have experience working with Partners and System Integrators, along with an appreciation of the demands of working within IT, tech operations or finance disciplines.

The successful candidate will be able to adapt to a fast-moving organization and collaborate with technical and non-technical stakeholders. The successful candidate should be outcome-focused and demonstrate excellent interpersonal and soft skills.

Your Role and Responsibilities

• Maintain a portfolio of large, complex customers as a CSM: create an engagement strategy with a sense of urgency by working closely with customers to understand and drive use cases; monitor and track usage of Apptio applications; identify and react to adoption risk, both in terms of threats and opportunities; build, agree, then coach customers to deliver against their success plans to ensure achievement of roadmap targets and defined success metrics.
• Develop strong customer relationships: proactively engage with customers across both operational and management positions to promote their Apptio solution and showcase value back to them; understand the customer business and empathize with their circumstances in order to build a relationship as a trusted advisor and foster deep trust.
• Serve as Apptio coach and expert: provide product knowledge and expertise as it relates to customer needs; coach customer TBM team on best practices, reference examples across your portfolio, and leverage your Apptio internal network to guide and mentor customer to achieve their goals.
• Collaborate and partner with Customer Success teams: Lead solution architecture, new capabilities, patches and upgrades, etc. discussions in partnership with Customer Success Advisors, Engineering, technical experts, etc. Ensure that the right solutions get implemented, upgrades and patches are timely, following Apptio best practices.
• Coordinate with the Account Management Function: working alongside Account Managers to ensure alignment with the efforts of the Account Management team to maximize retention, adoption, and customer satisfaction; periodically engage directly in the sales process, specifically within existing accounts.
• Maintain Product Knowledge: Understand the business and technical problems the Apptio solution addresses; stay current on product roadmap as well as understanding the scenarios, features, and functions within each of the products and how these are applied to address business and technical problems; collaborate with product management and development functions to channel client feedback and enhancements as appropriate.
• Program Management: Provide overall program oversight, working in partnership with Apptio Product and Engineering teams, Apptio University, Global Deployment, Customer Success Advisors and Delivery Services to execute high-quality projects and initiatives aligned to agreed outcomes. Provide mentorship to Apptio customers which includes product and operational best practices, rollout, Month End Close Practice as well as other client processes best supported with the Apptio solution. Act as the escalation point for the team, working to communicate and resolve issues related to value realization. Support the completion of project deliverables by assisting with sponsor / executive coordination within the customer, process invocation / alignment and value conversations.

Required Technical and Professional Expertise

• Candidates must have 2-4 years as a CSM or Technical Account Manager role in a SaaS organization
• Proven experience in B2B SaaS environment delivering against operational metrics focused on adoption and renewal, upsell and expansion, subscription services and margins
• Proven experience managing a demanding portfolio of customers, driving customer value and adoption through use case elicitation and roadmap execution

Preferred Technical and Professional Expertise

• Experience within IT Finance and/or Technology departments
• Technical / hands-on implementation experience
• Experience positioning or selling software and/or services within software industry
• Capable influencer with proven ability to build and maintain strong customer relationships at all levels
• Team player who will innovate to continue improving the way Apptio serves its customers
• Excellent organization, program/project/time management and communication skills

One or more of the following knowledge areas is a plus:

• PMP and/or Agile Methodology certification or relevant experience
• Apptio product knowledge
• TBMA certification
• FinOps certification
• AWS/Azure/ GCP practitioner certification