How to become a Strategic Customer Success Manager with Erika Villarreal

May 1, 2024

Erika Villarreal, a strategic customer success manager at Eptura and a top 25 CS influencer of 2023, shares her compelling journey from Mexico to Dallas. She highlights the power of personal branding on LinkedIn and translating customer data into actionable insights. Erika discusses key skills for strategic CSMs, emphasizing proactive planning and the importance of quarterly business reviews. Additionally, she shares insights from her eBook on excelling in enterprise CSM roles, offering actionable strategies for career advancement in the customer success space.

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Intro

00:00 • 2min

Navigating Customer Success: A Career Journey

02:27 • 22min

Essential Skills for Strategic CSMs

24:18 • 7min

Leveraging Data for Customer Success and ROI

31:24 • 4min

Empowering Business Success Through Strategic Customer Engagement

35:07 • 3min

Strategies for Career Advancement and Visibility

38:09 • 2min

Building Internal Networks for Success

40:36 • 6min

Being a Customer Success Pro is no easy job, but this podcast will help. Remember that Customer Success is not a destination, but a journey and I am here to help you on your journey.

In this episode of the Customer Success Pro podcast, host Anika Zubair interviews Erica Villareal, a strategic customer success manager at Eptura and a top 25 CS influencer of 2023. Erica shares her journey from Mexico, to becoming a strategic CSM in Dallas, highlighting her use of personal branding on LinkedIn to advance her career. She discusses the importance of translating customer data into actionable insights, the role of strategic customer success managers, and how they differ from other CSM roles in terms of customer engagement and responsibilities. Erica shares her secret sauce for organization and proactivity, emphasizing success plans and business reviews as essential tools for demonstrating value and securing customer success. The conversation also explores Erica's career ambitions, the skills essential for a strategic CSM, and tips for managing workload and showcasing value to achieve promotions. Additionally, Erica's eBook, 'Raising the Bar: How to Excel in Your Enterprise CSM Role,' is discussed, offering insights into further advancing in the customer success field.

Connect with Anika:

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Website: thecustomersuccesspro.com

Coaching with Anika: CSM RevUP Academy

Connect with Erika:

Erika Villarreal is a Customer Success enthusiast, a thought leader, and an influencer in the CS space. She is an engineer at the core, curious by nature, and a process addict. Currently, she is the Strategic Customer Success Manager at Eptura, a leading workspace management solution where she helps her customers drive adoption and achieve their own definition of success. Erika is also very involved with the Customer Success community, where she shares content that helps other CS professionals succeed in their roles, she has her own newsletter and contributes to multiple CS blogs.

Send Anika a text :)

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Podcast Editor: https://podcastmagician.com/