For the last 20 years, customer success managers (CSMs) have worked hand in hand with our customers. They are trusted advisors with experience and experts knowledgable in best practices working with the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform. They live and breathe customer success — it’s one of our core values — but how are they working to ensure customer success every day? I interviewed Parisa Molanazadeh, Success Director in Success Cloud, to find out what it takes to be a CSM at Salesforce, and how she puts the customer first every day.

Parisa, what is your background, and how did you come to Salesforce?

I was a Salesforce customer for 10 years prior to joining Salesforce. My experience started with implementing Salesforce at a large enterprise company, and later in a variety of roles, including the ongoing development, optimization, and support of Salesforce. I also spent time doing change management, enablement, and adoption of the platform for end users in the organization. My experience working with Salesforce (and success managers) as a customer really prepared me for this role and allowed me to come in with a perspective of what our customers really need from us.

As a success manager, what do you like best about working with the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform?

Everything I could ever need to do my job is in one place. I am able to get a 360-degree view of my customers along with their interactions with sales, service, and marketing. I also capture all my activities so the entire account team has visibility into my areas of focus. I have reports and dashboards that allow me to proactively analyze and identify customer issues before they escalate. I can easily collaborate with other team members at Salesforce and request help from anyone in the organization. Finally, I have access to all the wonderful resources created by my peers so I don't have to constantly reinvent the wheel when trying to resolve a specific customer challenge.

What does customer success mean to you?

Customer success is when my customers are able to achieve their desired business outcomes by leveraging the platform. It is also the experience they have when they interact with Salesforce as a company. It is knowing they can trust and rely on us to solve their problems. If we can help customers get to their desired state and with a positive experience, we have achieved customer success.

What does your day-to-day job look like?

What makes this job interesting is that no two days look alike. Each customer works in a different way, and they each have their own desired end goals. How I support each customer will vary based on that. One day I may be engaged in a strategic conversation with their executive discussing business priorities and how we can help them achieve them. Another day, I will be helping solve a very specific, and sometimes tactical challenge. But ultimately, my job is to understand what is important to the customer, pull in all the appropriate internal resources, and tailor my actions and recommendations to their priorities and focus.

How do you empower your customers to create a culture of customer success at their businesses?

Lead by example and show them what customer success looks like. Lean in and listen, understand your customers, help them solve their problems, be trustworthy and reliable, give them what they need in the way they want it, and always be consistent. I believe that customer success is contagious, and they will want to model that behavior.

To learn more about customer success at Salesforce take the Success Cloud trail.