Welcome to your journey into building and leading high-performing Customer Success teams. In this unit, you’ll discover how to attract, select, and ramp up talent who can deliver both exceptional customer outcomes and commercial results. Mastering these skills is essential for any leader aiming to scale Customer Success while protecting customer experience and driving business growth.

Throughout this unit, you’ll learn how to define what “great” looks like for your team, run interviews that reveal true consultative ability, and design onboarding plans that accelerate new hires’ impact without sacrificing quality. These foundations will set you up to consistently hire and develop CSMs who can deepen product adoption, drive expansions, and hit aggressive targets.

A well-crafted competency matrix is your blueprint for hiring and development. It should reflect the full customer lifecycle—balancing skills like onboarding execution, QBR storytelling, risk mitigation, and commercial acumen. For example, a robust matrix might include "Can map customer goals to product features" alongside "Can identify and close expansion opportunities". This balance helps you predict both how quickly a new hire will ramp to quota and their long-term retention impact.

When it comes to interviewing, behavioral questions are your best tool for surfacing real-world skills. Instead of asking, "Are you good at handling objections?", try "Tell me about a time you turned a skeptical customer into a champion—what did you do?" Look for candidates who provide specific, outcome-focused examples, demonstrating discovery questioning, value mapping, and negotiation. This approach helps you avoid hiring based on “resume mirages” and ensures you select people who thrive in your actual environment.

Here’s a sample dialogue that demonstrates how to use a competency matrix and behavioral interviewing to select the right candidate:

• Jessica: Ryan, I noticed your draft matrix weighs commercial acumen at 60%. Are you concerned we might miss out on candidates with deep customer success craft?
• Ryan: That’s a fair point, Jessica. I want to make sure new hires can drive expansions, but I don’t want to lose consultative depth either.
• Jessica: What if we merge the best of both drafts? For example, we could keep "Can map customer goals to product features" and "Can identify and close expansion opportunities" as core categories, then set proficiency tiers like Foundation, Advanced, and Expert.
• Ryan: I like that. It gives us a balanced view and helps interviewers probe for both skill sets. During interviews, we can ask for specific examples, like

Onboarding is where your hiring investment pays off—or falls short. A milestone-based plan breaks the first 90 days into clear learning, activity, and results checkpoints. For instance, in the first 30 days, a new CSM might shadow calls and complete sandbox exercises; by day 45, they could own a small book of business at 40% quota. Each milestone should map directly to your competency matrix, such as "By day 30: Demonstrate onboarding workflow in a mock call" or "By day 60: Lead a QBR with coaching feedback". This structure balances the need for early revenue contribution with long-term customer experience. To mitigate quality risks, pair new hires with mentors or use checklists for critical activities.

By applying these principles, you’ll be able to scale your team with confidence, ensuring every new hire is set up to deliver value quickly and sustainably.

In the upcoming role-play, you’ll get hands-on practice applying these concepts—starting with how to assess and refine a competency matrix for your own team’s hiring needs.