“What the customer success world needs are more mentors and coaches, and a lot fewer superstars and lone wolves who’re only out there to make a name for themselves,” Josh Zamora decidedly remarks, his words bearing a welcoming whiff of révolution. 🇫🇷

In this week’s episode of CS Connect, Microsoft’s Vish Walia is joined by Josh Zamora, Director of Customer Success Advocacy at ServiceNow.

Josh discusses a very important topic: transitioning customer success from an IC (individual contributor) role to a management role. Customer success is one of the fastest-evolving business functions in the industry, and an organization’s growth can be so large that it demands new customer success leaders on a daily basis. 🌱

A little about our guest

Josh has been in the CS space for 10 years now and has worked in customer-facing roles for the vast majority of his career. Since college, Josh has done everything from project management and account management to implementations. His foray into the customer success space happened almost accidentally; a former VP of his thought that it was an interesting concept and introduced Josh to the idea.

Josh has been working at ServiceNow for the last two years and started just before COVID-19 hit – he was in the office for only a few days before remote working became compulsory. Fast-forward to the present day, he’s been enjoying the transition back into some sense of normalcy and immensely enjoying working at ServiceNow.

Key takeaways

Takeaway #1

As a manager, there’s zero room for ego. You shouldn’t wish your team success because it reflects well on you; that shouldn't be the end goal, but rather a fortunate byproduct of what happens when you allow your team to be successful amongst themselves.

Takeaway #2

The one-to-one meetings (1:1s) you lead with your team members should be both tactical and strategic. Now, sometimes that might necessitate generating a separate meeting to strategize, but if you can encompass both of those aspects in every meeting, then you'll have a better opportunity for coaching and mentoring.

Takeaway #3

In certain scenarios, you may have team members considering other opportunities within the organization, or at an entirely different company. No one wants to lose team members, but it boils down to one thing: they're not yours to lose. And as a manager, you should help facilitate their success. A manager’s job is to help expedite their growth into other departments or into other companies, in some cases.

Want to level up and become a customer success leader?

If you enjoyed reading what one of the world’s brightest CS leaders had to say, you might want to enroll in our Customer Success Leadership Accelerator program and become one of tomorrow's champions of customer success.

What to expect in this nail-biter of a course

🧠 Non-stop, actionable insights

🔧 Practical applications every week

🤫 Total privacy with your closed CS leadership group

👥 Tons of networking opportunities

📚 Hands-on coursework activities

💡 Endless ideas from your peers and presenters

🔥 Fuel to shape your gold-standard CS strategy

Learn today. Lead tomorrow.