Chandu Rao: How to Have a Great Career in Customer Success (#1)

Chandu Rao is a highly experienced customer success manager with over a decade of experience in the industry. Throughout his career, he has worked with a diverse range of clients, from startups to Fortune 500 companies helping them achieve his customer success goals.

In this episode, Chandu shares his insights on what it takes to be a make the leap to become a Customer Success manager. He goes into details about what the key skills and qualities are for anyone looking to excel in this domain, as well as the challenges and opportunities that come with it.

Enjoy this conversation with Chandu where he shares his unique insights and real life experiences as a customer success manager.

Chandu Rao’s LinkedIn Profile: https://sg.linkedin.com/in/chandu-rao-39455839/

You can also watch this podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/pV_rJJJS9-M

Timestamps

0:00 Episode highlight

03:34 One career myth debunked

04:50 How Chandu defines what makes a job ‘great’

06:49 The evolution of the Customer Success Manager role

09:31 The start of his career journey

13:54 Pivoting from backend support to a customer-facing role

17:17 Thoughts on breaking into Customer Success

20:32 Strengths you need as a Customer Success Manager

23:17 Practical strategies for landing the role in interviews

25:52 Getting to a 70% confidence level

26:32 Preparing to have a conversation

30:47 Key lessons from Chandu’s experience

Click on the Chapter icon on the bottom left of the podcast player above to access direct links to each timestamp

We hope this episode will inspire you to take action today, no matter how small it may be!

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Quotes from the interview

“You can't just make up stories in these interviews because they will drill down further and ask you the details of it so you'll be caught bluffing out if you're telling the story. So I think what has served me is that I have been in these tough situations, handled it exceptionally well and then when I go to interview, I have that confidence because I have my data to back up that.”

— Chandu Rao

“'Great' for me is having supportive people around and those interactions that I have with the customers, helping them in their endeavors and making them successful.”

— Chandu Rao

“So when you talk about retention, that's where customer success managers come into play that's why the role has become important.”

— Chandu Rao

“Find your passion and see whether is this your cup of tea and the rest of it is you will enjoy the ride actually.”

— Chandu Rao