Customer Success Manager

Preamble & mission

We're disrupting the insurance industry with our platform Renew, which insurers use to build mathematical models and in turn to make complex pricing decisions. Our platform can help solve solve questions such as:

• What are the chances that SpaceX's next launch will fail?
• What are the chances of Kanye West cancelling his sell-out tour?

Renew is self-serve - allowing insurance professionals to login to our development platform and build their own models in a "pro-code" environment, using the open source language of Python.

Having grown our customer base to ~10 large Enterprise clients, hx is now looking to hire a Customer Success Manager with previous experience of nurturing and owning customer relationships.

This role will report directly to the Customer Success Lead, working closely with the hx model development team (MDT), and the other customer facing teams to ensure your customers are receiving a world class Customer Success experience

• Sales - beyond "just" a handover to onboarding, and in doing so ensuring a world-class customer experience
• Product - as de-facto business owner of the customer service portal, partnering extremely closely with the relevant product manager & team
• Learning & Education - building out learning pathways for users of our platform, Renew

Key Responsibilities

Note: hx is still a relatively early-stage business, and our culture prizes initiative highly - as such this section is a good indicator of your role, but the list isn’t exhaustive.

Your role needs to take ownership of the following:

Customer Retention

• Relentlessly focus on ensuring the customer relationship is as healthy as possible with a view to the next renewal, however far away that might be.
• Stress test potential risks to the renewal with key internal account stakeholders, agreeing on strategies and activities which are designed to minimise those risks.
• Use Account Plans as a focal point to discuss renewal account goals, and agree the approach on how we open the conversation and get the ball rolling with the customer

Business Value Realisation

• Understand and articulate the customer's executive priorities, business objectives and related initiatives where our platform and services can have an impact
• Evolve and develop shared Success Plans collaboratively with our customers, providing insights and thoughtful recommendations to ensure it accurately reflects our customers’ business, related objectives and what success truly looks like
• Quantify and describe the business value created by the customer's use of our platform, at present and at full potential
• Work with customers to identify specific metrics of success; track and communicate progress on an ongoing basis and during key moments in time (i.e. Quarterly Business Reviews)
• Work with our Services team and help facilitate strategic and creative problem solving to provide best practices, innovative solutions and drive end-user adoption
• Build customer advocacy by providing our customers with a platform for showcasing their success (i.e. Webinar participation, Event speaking opportunities, case study participation, etc.)
• Drive customer relationships that build advocacy in the form of indirect revenue growth (i.e., case studies, sales references, industry analyst references, software reviews, NPS, etc.)

Effective adoption

• Understand the customers’ journey and Success Path so far, then continue to proactively work with the rest of the Customer team on how adoption can be maximised in the future
• Empower our customers to be internal ambassadors for Renew and the Services team, and drive growth across the customer organisation as a result
• Deep-dive into our internal usage dataset, understand how to interpret and analyse the data and proactively focus on adoption gaps to ensure these are addressed as quickly and effectively as possible
• Work closely with our Learning team to feedback on new content required to help drive additional adoption based on feedback and experience from customer engagements

Customer Growth

• Identify areas in which we can increase value to our customers through the software and services we offer
• Use account planning sessions to cover whitespace, where there are opportunities to grow a customer, always thinking about how this will add tangible value and help solve business challenges
• Discuss and consult directly with the customer, using your existing knowledge of their business and by bringing in hx experts to help flesh out how it can work for that customer

Operational Excellence

• Develop a foundational knowledge of the workings of our platform, Renew, to enable productive conversations with customers focussed on driving best practice
• Serve as the main point of contact, leading ongoing communications and strategic discussions tailored to an executive audience
• Lead internal and external account planning; motivated by seeing customers grow
• Present new opportunities, services opportunities and high-level roadmap vision to customers
• Leverage technology and internal tools to identify potential risk and address escalations and issues as needed
• Partner with internal teams to share customer feedback and ensure delivery of all commitments and projects

Initial deliverables

You will:

• Review and analyse your initial customer portfolio and playback initial assessment of each - the current account health, any identified risks to renewals, opportunities for additional adoption and growth, and any extra activities you think we should action for each
• Become familiar and fluent on our Customer Health Score - what it is, how it works and how to interpret the scoring
• Deep-dive into the customer journey plan, ensuring your customers are getting the engagement on offer and proactively suggest any improvements
• Take ownership of QBRs and Account Plans for your customers, initially reviewing both, then updating and building on the initial content, and arranging appropriate meetings
  • Account Plans - an internal document detailing our goals and strategy for each account, ensuring we have a solid strategy for an upcoming renewal, any growth opportunities and exec sponsor next steps
  • QBR - scheduling new sessions and creating a new deck for each upcoming meeting

Competencies

If you're the right fit for this role, you will be able to show clear evidence of:

• Efficiency - we need to move fast in Customer Success, ensuring we’re great at getting things done quickly and with the minimum of fuss
• Organisation & planning - as meetings and customer engagements can come all at once sometimes, it’s important to be able to scale up effectively and manage a high workload at times
• Follow-through on commitments - to build trust with customers, we need to do what we say without fail. Set realistic commitments, then make sure you do them within the given timeframe
• Analytical skills - when understanding adoption and other customer health drivers, data is key. Being able to identify important trends and taking appropriate action on these is an important facet of the role
• Commercial acumen - while you will be primarily focussed on the health of the customer and the value they are seeing, both retention and opportunities to add further value through the software and services we provide, will involve the need for some commercial discussions and an understanding on what a good deal looks like
• Attention to detail - productive meetings, both external and internal, usually result in actions and follow-ups. It’s critical we manage to capture everything, record it in a clear visible way and stay across all the nuances for each situation and engagement. This also covers the wider role - including internal datasets, future customer strategy and planning
• Persistence - especially critical when working directly with customers: we need them to engage with us, execute actions on their side and work with us collaboratively - sometimes they need to be chased. This is also about getting things done internally and ensuring our voice is heard within a sometimes busy environment
• Proactivity - a world-class CSM is always thinking ahead, and identifying potential roadblocks and risks to customer relationships before anyone else, so we can have a better chance of nipping them in the bud. The same goes for opportunities and way to uncover additional value.
• Communication - there is constant back and forth internally and with customer follow ups, all of which need to be communicated in a clear, concise and thorough manner to ensure the best possible experience for colleague and customer alike, and that they ‘get it’ the first time around
• Teamwork - Customer Success is all about collaboration, working across internal teams to ensure we deliver for the customer, in terms of service, our platform and the overall engagement experience with hx

Experience and skills

hx is far less interested in counting years over evidence of delivery, and our requirements reflect this.

You will have:

• 2+ years account management experience in customer-facing role; strategy development and SaaS experience preferred
• Passion and aptitude for technology and business transformation
• Excellent presentation, written and verbal skills
• Strong organisational, time-management and prioritisation skills
• Creative self-starter; originates and drives constant improvement
• Keen analytical skills and ability to gauge and anticipate trends using data
• Exposure to SaaS contracts and involvement in some basic commercial discussions
• Thrives in a fast-paced startup environment
• Positive attitude and strong work ethic
• Aptitude for developing and nurturing positive relationships
• *Bonus points for an interest in Insurance or specifically how technology is disrupting the Insurance world
• *Bonus points if you have done this with a high-growth company, where the product has been changing and been updated regularly, requiring a dynamic and agile approach to ensure the content remains current!
• You'll also need to enjoy working and empathise with technical people, such as actuaries and engineers (who make up a lot of hx and our customers).