Effective Work Sample Exercises for Hiring Senior Customer Success Managers

Customer Success Managers play a pivotal role in ensuring that customers achieve their desired outcomes while using your product or service. Senior CSMs, in particular, are responsible for managing strategic relationships with your most valuable enterprise and mid-market clients. Their ability to build trust, drive adoption, and identify expansion opportunities directly impacts your company's retention rates and revenue growth.

Traditional interviews often fail to reveal how candidates will actually perform in real-world customer success scenarios. While a candidate might articulate impressive strategies during an interview, their ability to execute those strategies when faced with a challenging customer situation is what truly matters. This is where practical work samples and role plays become invaluable.

By incorporating realistic work samples into your hiring process, you can observe candidates' strategic thinking, relationship management skills, and problem-solving abilities in action. These exercises provide insight into how candidates approach complex customer situations, communicate value, and drive results—all critical competencies for a successful Senior CSM.

The following four activities are designed to evaluate the essential skills required for a Senior Customer Success Manager role. Each exercise simulates a real-world scenario that your CSM will likely encounter, allowing you to assess their readiness for the position while giving candidates a realistic preview of the role.

Activity #1: Strategic Account Planning Exercise

This exercise evaluates a candidate's ability to develop comprehensive account strategies that align with customer objectives and drive growth. Strategic account planning is a fundamental responsibility for Senior CSMs who must balance customer success with business growth opportunities.

Directions for the Company:

• Provide the candidate with a fictional customer profile that includes company information, current product usage, business goals, challenges, and renewal timeline.
• Include relevant data such as product adoption metrics, NPS scores, and support ticket history.
• Allow candidates 24 hours to prepare their account plan before the interview.
• Allocate 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for questions.
• Prepare specific questions about their prioritization decisions and growth strategies.

Directions for the Candidate:

• Review the customer profile and develop a 90-day strategic account plan.
• Your plan should include:
• Key stakeholders to engage and relationship-building strategies
• Specific success metrics aligned with the customer's business goals
• Adoption and engagement initiatives to increase product value
• Potential expansion opportunities with estimated revenue impact
• Risk mitigation strategies for any identified challenges
• Prepare a 15-20 minute presentation of your plan, focusing on your strategic approach rather than tactical details.
• Be prepared to explain your reasoning and answer questions about your strategy.

Feedback Mechanism:

• After the presentation, provide one piece of positive feedback about an aspect of their strategy that was particularly strong.
• Then, offer one constructive suggestion for improvement, such as a missed opportunity or alternative approach.
• Give the candidate 5 minutes to verbally explain how they would adjust their strategy based on this feedback.
• Assess their receptiveness to feedback and ability to quickly iterate on their approach.

Activity #2: Customer Escalation Role Play

This role play assesses a candidate's ability to handle difficult customer conversations, demonstrate empathy, and resolve issues while maintaining the relationship. Senior CSMs must excel at navigating challenging situations that could potentially impact retention.

Directions for the Company:

• Create a scenario where a key customer is experiencing significant challenges with your product and is threatening to cancel their contract.
• Develop a character brief for the person playing the unhappy customer, including specific pain points, objections, and emotional state.
• Select someone who can realistically portray a frustrated but reasonable customer (ideally someone with customer-facing experience).
• Provide the candidate with basic background information about the customer and situation 15 minutes before the role play.
• Limit the role play to 15-20 minutes.

Directions for the Candidate:

• You will participate in a role play as a Senior CSM handling a call with a frustrated customer who is considering canceling their contract.
• Review the background information provided about the customer's situation.
• During the call, you should:
• Demonstrate active listening and empathy
• Ask clarifying questions to fully understand the issues
• Propose realistic solutions to address their concerns
• Establish clear next steps and set expectations
• Maintain a professional demeanor throughout the conversation
• Your goal is to de-escalate the situation, address the customer's concerns, and develop an action plan that rebuilds trust.

Feedback Mechanism:

• After the role play, the interviewer should highlight one aspect of the conversation that was particularly effective.
• Then, identify one area where a different approach might have been more successful.
• Give the candidate 5 minutes to role play that specific portion of the conversation again, incorporating the feedback.
• Evaluate their ability to adapt their approach and implement feedback in real-time.

Activity #3: Quarterly Business Review Presentation

This exercise evaluates a candidate's ability to demonstrate value, analyze performance data, and communicate effectively with executive stakeholders. QBRs are critical touchpoints where Senior CSMs reinforce the ROI of your solution and identify growth opportunities.

Directions for the Company:

• Create a mock dataset showing 3-6 months of customer usage metrics, business outcomes, and support interactions.
• Include both positive trends and areas of concern in the data.
• Provide information about the customer's original goals and success criteria.
• Share details about the stakeholders who will attend the QBR (roles, priorities, communication preferences).
• Allow candidates 24 hours to prepare their presentation.
• Allocate 20 minutes for the presentation and 10 minutes for questions.

Directions for the Candidate:

• Using the provided data, prepare a 15-20 minute Quarterly Business Review presentation for a key customer.
• Your presentation should include:
• A summary of achievements and progress toward defined goals
• Analysis of product usage and adoption metrics
• Identification of both successes and areas for improvement
• Specific recommendations to increase value realization
• Strategic initiatives for the next quarter
• Tailor your communication style and content to the executive audience described in the brief.
• Be prepared to handle challenging questions about performance metrics and ROI.

Feedback Mechanism:

• After the presentation, provide positive feedback on one aspect that was particularly effective (data visualization, executive communication, strategic recommendations, etc.).
• Offer one piece of constructive feedback about an area that could be improved.
• Ask the candidate to revise one specific slide or section of their presentation based on the feedback.
• Evaluate their ability to quickly incorporate feedback and improve their communication approach.

Activity #4: Customer Health Analysis and Action Planning

This exercise assesses a candidate's analytical skills, proactive problem-solving abilities, and capacity to develop targeted interventions for at-risk accounts. Identifying and addressing customer health issues before they escalate is a critical skill for Senior CSMs.

Directions for the Company:

• Prepare a portfolio of 5-7 fictional customer accounts with varying health scores and metrics.
• Include data points such as product usage, support tickets, NPS/CSAT scores, stakeholder engagement, and renewal dates.
• Provide context about your company's customer health scoring methodology.
• Allow candidates 45-60 minutes to complete the analysis during the interview process.
• Be available to answer clarifying questions about the data or product.

Directions for the Candidate:

• Review the portfolio of customer accounts and associated metrics.
• Identify which accounts are at risk and prioritize them based on both risk level and strategic importance.
• For the two highest-priority at-risk accounts, develop detailed action plans that include:
• Root cause analysis of the issues affecting customer health
• Specific interventions to address each identified issue
• Success metrics to track improvement
• Timeline for implementing your recommendations
• Cross-functional resources needed to execute your plan
• Prepare to discuss your analysis and recommendations in a 15-minute debrief.
• Be ready to explain your prioritization decisions and the reasoning behind your proposed interventions.

Feedback Mechanism:

• After the candidate presents their analysis and recommendations, highlight one particularly insightful observation or effective strategy they proposed.
• Provide one piece of constructive feedback about their approach, such as an overlooked risk factor or alternative intervention strategy.
• Give the candidate 10 minutes to revise their action plan for one account based on this feedback.
• Assess their analytical flexibility and ability to incorporate new perspectives into their planning.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much time should we allocate for these work samples in our interview process?
Each activity requires approximately 30-45 minutes, including time for feedback and discussion. We recommend selecting 1-2 activities that best align with your specific needs rather than attempting all four. The Strategic Account Planning and Quarterly Business Review exercises require advance preparation, so factor in 24 hours of lead time before the interview.

Should we use real customer data for these exercises?
While using real data would create the most authentic experience, it's best to create fictional customer profiles based on your typical customers. This protects confidential information while still providing realistic scenarios. Ensure the mock data reflects the complexity and challenges your CSMs typically encounter.

What if our product is highly technical and requires specific domain knowledge?
For technical products, provide candidates with a simplified product overview and focus the assessment on their strategic thinking and customer management skills rather than technical expertise. Alternatively, you can extend the preparation time to allow candidates to familiarize themselves with the basics of your solution.

How should we evaluate candidates who have experience in different industries?
Focus on transferable skills rather than industry-specific knowledge. The core competencies of strategic planning, relationship management, and problem-solving transcend industries. During feedback, acknowledge that industry-specific approaches might differ and evaluate their ability to adapt their thinking based on your context.

How do we ensure consistency when comparing multiple candidates?
Use a standardized rubric for each exercise that evaluates specific competencies on a defined scale. Have the same interviewers conduct each activity across all candidates whenever possible. Document specific examples from each candidate's performance to support your ratings and facilitate objective comparison.

Should we combine these activities with traditional interview questions?
Yes, these work samples should complement, not replace, behavioral and situational interview questions. Use traditional interviews to explore past experiences and these activities to assess how candidates apply their skills in your specific context. Together, they provide a comprehensive view of a candidate's capabilities.

Customer Success is the lifeblood of subscription-based businesses, and hiring the right Senior CSM can significantly impact your retention rates and expansion revenue. By incorporating these practical work samples into your hiring process, you'll gain deeper insights into candidates' abilities to strategize, communicate, analyze data, and solve problems in real-world scenarios.

Remember that these exercises also give candidates valuable insight into the role and your company's approach to customer success. The most qualified candidates will appreciate a thorough process that demonstrates your commitment to excellence in customer success management.

For more resources to enhance your hiring process, check out Yardstick's AI Job Description Generator, AI Interview Question Generator, and AI Interview Guide Generator. You can also view the complete Senior Customer Success Manager job description that inspired these work samples.

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