39 questions CSMs should ask their customers

How often do you ask questions from your customers? Do you engage with them regularly or as and when it’s required? A lot of businesses miss out on a lot of opportunities because they assume that they already know how their customers are doing. However, there are multiple factors that shouldn't be overlooked at any cost.

In this article, I’ve attempted to list questions that a CSM should ask their customers. These questions can serve as directions in which you can drive your conversations.

These are just directions in which you can have your conversations. Consider these questions as a discussion guide for your customer research. Also, it's not necessary you ask them all questions in one meeting, but to understand your customer better, you should know these answers (the sooner, the better). This will give you better insight into what their next step is and what you must do.

I’ve segregated the questions into 5 sections, based on the Understanding of:

• Business
• Customer
• Process
• Product
• Position

1. Understanding the customer’s business goals

These questions will help you work around your customers’ business goals. Your product value will be measured around these business goals.

1. How do you measure success? How can I support you in achieving those success measures?
2. What is the one thing you must accomplish in the next 12 months?
3. What are your 3 focus areas for the next 3 months?
4. What are your current challenges? What is the biggest one of them?
5. What impact does your team bring to the overall business? Can you measure it? If yes, what has been the trend lately?

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2. Understanding the customer’s personal goals

These are the questions that will help you to build a personal connection with your customers and make them aware that you value their personal goals as much as their business goals. For a long-term relationship to thrive and bring positive results, it’s important to know each other’s motivations.

1. How are you being evaluated on your performance? Can we measure that?
2. What metrics are you rewarded for so we can concentrate on those?
3. What are your personal goals for growth?
4. What do you wish you had more time to do?
5. What are your current challenges?

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3. Understanding your process

It is crucial for you to know what the customer feels about your process and their experience with you. These questions will tell your customers how much you care about giving them the best experience.

1. What was your experience with our onboarding process?
2. In what ways do you think we can make our onboarding process better?
3. What do you think about our engagement frequency? Should we increase or decrease it?
4. How much do you think you’ve adopted the product? How can we improve product adoption?
5. Are you seeing value in the product? If not, how do you think we can deliver the best value for you?

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4. Understanding what they think about your product

Product is the base of your business, and your customer can be the best critic of your product. Learning more about the product from your customers will help in making your product more valuable.

1. On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate our product?
2. On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate our product experience?
3. How can we improve your product experience?
4. What advantages did our product bring to your team?
5. What disadvantages did our product bring to your team?
6. What are your favorite features?
7. Why do you like those features?
8. What particular objectives are those features enabling you to accomplish?
9. Do you have any concerns or apprehensions regarding our product?
10. Which features do you think need improvement?
11. What more features would you love to have?
12. How frequently do you require our product value realization?
13. How do you find our product's speed?
14. Do you have any additional feedback for us?

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5. Understanding your position as a software provider

These questions will help you understand where you stand with the customer and what they think about you in comparison with your competitors.

1. How is this project being evaluated?
2. How will we know if something goes wrong?
3. If things are fantastic, how will we know?
4. Do you want to be introduced to similar consumers who are receiving better value?
5. How does it feel doing business with us?
6. How can we make you a raving fan?
7. How do we measure against your best-of-class suppliers?
8. If another supplier tried to entice you, what might be the most compelling part of their offer?
9. How can we help you seem better within your company?
10. If the subscription renewal was today, how likely are you to renew?

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As I already mentioned, these are just a few ways you can prod your customer. Ideally, you will need to modify them based on your business, see what insights you want to study, and how is the relationship between you and the customer.

We hope these questions help you start a conversation with your customer and prepare a customer success checklist accordingly.