Why shadowing calls is an essential component of CSM onboarding and how to do it right

Onboarding new customer success managers (CSMs) is about more than just having them thoroughly study the product and review the business processes. It’s giving them the opportunity to experience what real interaction with the customer feels like and what are the best practices there. One of the most effective techniques to achieve that is shadowing the calls of experienced peers. But in order to make the call shadowing effective, a straightforward business process needs to be built around it. CSMs need to have a clear understanding of what to pay attention to, and trainers, in due turn, need to be able to evaluate the efficiency of shadowing. So how do you build a shadowing process in your customer success organization?

The starting point for organizing the process is setting clear goals for shadowing calls. What exactly do CSMs need to learn about conducting calls? How is that different from the information that can be found in help resources? Is there any benefit from shadowing calls versus simply watching the recordings of previously conducted ones? What are the expectations from the trainers regarding the outcomes of call shadowing? Those responsible for team enablement need to have clear answers to these questions before directing newly hired CSMs to shadow the calls.

The second step is to decide which types of calls CSMs would need to shadow. Since different categories of calls have different purposes, it’s important to communicate the information on this to CSMs so they would have a clear understanding of what to pay attention to during the calls. Obviously, each organization has a different way of categorizing the calls, so I’m just providing an example of how we do it here at Wrike in my team.

Onboarding calls

The goal of the onboarding call is to onboard the client’s team with the product, share all the essential information that is required for a quick start, and answer any immediate questions. When shadowing onboarding calls, CSMs need to pay attention to what areas of the product are covered, how the training session is structured, how CSMs use simple language to introduce new (and sometimes complex) concepts, and what questions are asked by the customers

At-risk calls

The purpose of the at-risk call is to get in touch with the customer that has a low level of product usage/adoption and to improve the situation. When shadowing at-risk calls, CSMs should make a note of the challenges the clients had with the product and which solutions were offered to address them, which recommendations have been provided in relation to change management, and how their experienced peers re-sell the value of the product if a need arises.

Health checks

The health check call is a way to review the client’s situation, confirm that they’re confident moving forward in achieving the goals they’ve set for the product, inform them of the new releases, share best practices, and address any questions they might have. Shadowing a health check enables new CSMs to witness a well-structured call that covers strategic questions related to the account.

Demo calls

The goal of a demo is to demonstrate the whole product’s capabilities or showcase specific functionalities, features, or plans. It’s important that those shadowing demo calls get a clear understanding of the difference between training (which often takes place during the onboarding call) and a demo. Since the latter is not about educating customers but about showcasing the value with a specific goal (upgrade, retention, and other).

One of the critical components of the shadowing process is the shadowing guide that CSMs would need to fill in when shadowing the calls. It’s important that the guide is simple and straightforward so team members wouldn’t have any trouble understanding what information needs to be added and where. Again, the sections included in your organization’s shadowing guide would, of course, depend on the specifics of the company. So you can consider the sections from my example as a starting point — feel free to modify them in the way you see fit:

• Client name
• Name of the CSM conducting the call
• Date of the call
• Call type (onboarding, at-risk, etc.)
• What areas of the product were covered
• What information you heard during the call was new to you
• What went well
• What things would you’ve done differently

As you can see, many sections of this sample guide are pretty general, which enables team members to put specific details they notice into different sections of the guide. Also, the standardized guide makes it much easier for the trainer team to manage the shadowing process as a part of the global customer success onboarding process.

In addition to the points highlighted in the shadowing guide, I also recommend junior CSMs who shadow the calls pay attention to the following things:

• How the CSM manages the time during the call

How much time is spent on introductions, small talk, discovery questions, solutioning, answering questions, sharing best practices, planning next steps, and closing out the call

• How the value is positioned

Which specific phrases are being used to position value? How the clients react to the value points presented. What are the “A-ha!” moments when the customer’s perspective is completely changed after CSM’s presentation

• How CSMs own the conversation

How the CSMs steer the conversation in the right direction and not let it go off track. Which topics are suggested to be taken offline?

• Which questions are asked in the discovery phase

How CSMs accumulate information about the client’s situation. How they ask follow-up questions and clarification questions. How are the data points discovered addressed later during the call?

I also recommend when hearing how your experienced peer answers a question or defuses an objection, ask yourself, “how would I address this question? Would I do it the same way or differently? Do I currently have the knowledge required to talk about this subject confidently?”

One of the key advantages of shadowing a live call versus listening to the recording is that you have the opportunity to review the call with the person who conducted it and clarify anything that wasn’t clear to you. In this follow-up conversation, I would like to strongly encourage the new hires to ask as many questions as possible. It’s highly likely that some of the things that seemed confusing to you have clear reasoning behind them. For example, the client might’ve asked to cover five specific areas of the product, and the CSM only talked about three while there were still a couple of minutes remaining at the end of the call. But experienced CSM had a clear understanding that each of the remaining two topics would require a minimum of fifteen minutes to discuss. So they made a conscious decision not to rush things up but instead to do a good closeout of the call and agree with the client to cover the remaining topics on the next one.

As you can see, the effectiveness of call shadowing depends on multiple factors, and only if a clear process is set up around it would the enablement team be able to achieve consistent results from it and quickly get the new CSMs up to speed.