Employee Spotlight: Marianne Schrader, Senior Customer Success Manager

Customer success (aka customer success management or client advocacy) is the process of increasing customers’ satisfaction with a company’s product or service. It’s a specialized form of customer relationship management, and when done effectively, can help reduce churn, improve retention and renewals, and drive revenue. Customer success is an integral part of Reciprocity’s success – which is why Senior Customer Success Managers like Marianne Schrader play such a key role!

Becoming a CSM

As a Senior Customer Success Manager (CSM), Marianne is the primary point of contact for our customers. Her main goal is to give every company that works with the Reciprocity^® ROAR platform the best service possible by getting the most value out of the platform, meeting their goals and making sure they’re delighted. We asked Marianne how she got into Customer Success, and she explained that she took ‘an interesting road’ to get into the role:

I like to say that I’ve been doing Customer Success since before it was called Customer Success… During my technology start-up career, I wore many different hats, dabbling in project management, implementation, and corporate training. But early on, I found my true passion is Customer Success – helping customers with adoption and ensuring their satisfaction, retention and growth. This is what gets me up in the morning.

Building Relationships

When it comes to customer success strategy, the critical ingredient is customer focus. Our CSMs spend time building relationships with our customers, getting to understand them and their motivations, and then working in partnership with them to develop processes that best support their company’s goals and objectives. Lucky for us, this is what Marianne really likes to do:

I mostly enjoy the social aspect of it: building relationships with my customers, getting to know them, and helping them reach their goals. What can I say? I’m a people person! Seriously though, it’s really rewarding to go from simply knowing someone’s name to eventually understanding their needs and pain points and helping them help their business succeed.

Tips for Success

Customer success is about making it as easy as possible for our customers to use the ROAR platform to their best effect. Communication is key – whether it’s setting up regular check-in calls, creating video tutorials, or providing ‘tips & tricks’ to getting the most out of our platform. Here is Marianne’s top tip for using the ROAR platform:

My top tip for using ROAR is to use Community – there is a wealth of information such as Knowledge Base articles, product updates, details on upcoming events and helpful training videos in Reciprocity University. I also encourage everyone to ‘Ask the Community.’ It’s a great way to get help from your GRC peers!

Join the Community

The Reciprocity Community is a free resource hub that is available to everyone, not just our customers! Through the Community, you can access hundreds of useful articles, as well as join online conversations with thousands of InfoSec professionals and peers.

To read the rest of our conversation with Marianne and learn more about her hobbies – including barn hunting with her dog Gertie – visit the Reciprocity Community. (You can sign-up here.)