Undervalued, shallow working environment - Customer Success Manager (CSM) Presence Employee Review

There’s been a lot of good, but the last two years things have become more corporate. Early on our work culture was focused on people. We focused on how we could improve customer satisfaction and the customer’s onboarding experience, as well as our internal team processes and our book of business. New tools were tailored to streamlining communication and transparency between teams and customers, and data integrity mattered. We were working to build a solid foundation and were improving year over year. Training materials and templates were constantly being worked on, and playbooks were being developed. Projects were collaborative between teams and leadership. Things were going well, and I was proud of the team’s accomplishments. The last couple of years under new leadership, the team’s culture had shifted to a sales focus. Major changes were introduced and it felt like we were starting from scratch. There was a lack of focus on internal processes and defining clear roles and responsibilities. Those were now seen as “roadblocks to success,” and improving the customer experience was no longer an important part of our team. The lack of clarity created an environment where my work depended on the different personalities across teams, and unnecessary stress was added wondering who does what. The team often jokes about “flying the plane as we’re building it,” but it took its toll having to restart after so much work had been put into building a solid foundation. Projects became non collaborative, and all decisions were top down to where even some managers weren’t aware until the changes had been made. Being busy is one thing, but having to rebuild with little to no clarity is another. There’s now a severe lack of playbooks, training documents, templates, and poor management of any materials that already existed. Team meetings were all high level, questions weren’t taken well and with little follow up. One team member was talked at by leadership for 15 minutes about how our mindset needs to be aligned with the new “culture” after they had asked a simple clarifying question about an administrative task. An onsite working session was once scheduled, and we spent the entire day on shallow team building exercises rather than focusing on things that would actually affect our work. We were constantly promised more “tactical” information during meetings but it never came. Roles weren’t well defined, and we were all rebuilding the plane as we flew it. They’re lucky most of the team were experienced customer success associates/managers. After complaints to our managers were seemingly going unheard, it became about survival and keeping a low profile. I had to buy in no matter what and “drink the kool-aid,” which wasn’t the culture I wanted to be a part of. We sat through hour-long meetings pretending like everything was fine and we were happy. Things started to feel ‘icky’ due to the all revenue focus. I’d once been directed to withhold information from a customer about their contract to make a few extra dollars rather than being transparent up front. The customer was just trying to do what was best for their students. We were also encouraged not to follow up on certain billing issues unless customers realized they were happening rather than being proactive if we saw them occurring internally. Any new tools or reports were revenue driven, and recognition we received was based on dollar amounts. I understand the need for a budding corporation to shift its CS team to be more revenue focused, but customer satisfaction and retention should come first. Well organized internal processes, and a collaborative environment with leadership leads to better experiences for the customer. The leadership team and executives seem out of touch from the services we actually provide. Compensation became another issue. In my 7 years of working with Presence I only received 2 or 3 merit raises (honestly can’t remember now). This past year on the customer success team there was a giant re-org, two people were fired and my portfolio almost doubled from ~35 accounts to ~65 but my commissions didn’t increase. I was slated to make just as much as I did owning 35 accounts, and commissions would only really kick in if I reached 80% of my revenue goals. The Customer Success Associates including myself received a title change without increased pay to the higher tiered position of Customer Success Manager. One of our only opportunities for a promotion was taken away (CSA to CSM), and our pay effectively remained the same. Now it’s tiered based on the revenue of your accounts, and it’s unclear if teams would expand since our increased portfolios were “all by design.” The changes under our new leadership and the team’s culture shift was disappointing, and no longer aligned with my own principles. Rebuilding for no apparent reason other than to appease the ego of new executives became exhausting. They seem more interested in hearing themselves talk and implementing their own big ideas rather than maintaining the integrity of our services. I felt undervalued and unheard as if anyone on the team could be easily replaced. All that seems to matter with this current leadership are the dollar signs over your head, and shallow team building rhetoric.