Customer Success Manager - Global Public Sector (Education)

Salesforce•Chicago, IL

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Salesforce is the #1 AI CRM, where humans with agents drive customer success together. The Customer Success Manager (CSM) is a versatile expert responsible for ensuring high-value customers who purchase the Signature Success Plan achieve a significant return on their investment with our platform. This role functions as an extension of the customer’s workforce and a trusted advisor, providing guidance and advice to customer organizations. The CSM is responsible for identifying and addressing both technical and business concerns, aligning them strategically with customer priorities, projects, and problems. We are looking for candidates who have experience supporting customers in one or more of the following industries: Education – Partner with K-12/higher education institutions to modernize legacy systems and enhance constituent engagement, requiring understanding of diverse regulatory environments and budget cycles across jurisdictions. This is an Individual Contributor position.

Requirements

Experienced business professional, preferably with 3+ years of relevant industry expertise in Customer Success, SaaS platform use, or related fields.
Strong consulting skills and demonstrated ability to drive business value, facilitate discussions, handle objections, and influence C-level conversations.
Possess industry-relevant expertise and begin honing skills in a relevant functional area.
Should understand the broad impact of the industry on the customer’s business.
Excellent communication skills to articulate technical issues to diverse audiences and the ability to translate technical concepts into business terms.
Actively seek out relevant learning activities, approach obstacles as growth opportunities, and seek experienced mentors to accelerate personal development.
3-4 years experience with deep Salesforce Service Cloud expertise.
Knowledge of advanced Service Cloud features: Omni-Channel, Service Cloud Voice, Digital Engagement (messaging, chat), Field Service Lightning.

Nice To Haves

Service Cloud Consultant certifications.
Salesforce Admin + Service Cloud Consultant certification.
Data Cloud experience/certification.
Additional Salesforce product certifications are a plus (AI Associate, Administrator, Advanced Administrator, Platform App Builder, Data 360 Specialist, Agentblazer).
Understanding of Service Cloud integrates with telephony, chat, messaging, and self-service portals.
Understanding of Einstein AI for Service (case routing, chatbots, predictive service).

Responsibilities

Serve as the single point of customer accountability responsible for the delivery of all Signature deliverables, the overall customer experience, and renewal and expansion.
Coordinate all deliverables the customer is entitled to, overseeing the experience throughout the Signature lifecycle.
Apply the correct processes to address customer needs and ensure value is delivered through the Signature offer.
Successfully align with and manage both Business and Technical Stakeholders, focusing on aligning Business Value and Technical Goals to the Signature offer.
Prioritize the most urgent work activities, organize tasks to avoid missing key steps, and create basic plans to focus time, taking responsibility for assigned tasks.
Use internal resources to increase effectiveness and rely on managers or mentors for guidance on priority problems.
Conduct enablement sessions on opportunity and case management, forecasting, pipeline hygiene, knowledge creation, and omni-channel routing.
Share best practices for sales and service process optimization, data quality, and customer experience.
Drive adoption of Sales and Service Cloud features with reps, agents, managers, supervisors, and ops teams.
Track usage metrics (opportunity updates, activity logging, forecast submissions, report usage, case resolution times, knowledge article usage, channel adoption, and CSAT scores).
Develop and maintain strong relationships at key stakeholder levels, including cultivating executive-level relationships within customer IT and business leadership.
Act as a trusted advisor by gaining trust through mutual goals, understanding the customer’s business model, and applying proven solutions to their problems.
Solidify partnership commitments and drive innovation aligned with customers' business challenges.
Increase customer engagement with products and services and identify major political barriers to customer success.
Partner with more experienced team members to solve complex problems and develop strategic success plans when needed.
Conduct quarterly reviews of feature usage to drive adoption of tools like Journey Builder or Commerce Promotions, ensuring platform stability and performance.
Identify underutilization of contracted entitlements (e.g., messaging volume or GMV tiers) and align platform features with customer priorities to increase throughput.
AI Literacy: Proficiency in using AI agents to automate routine tasks such as meeting summaries, QBR data collection, and initial health monitoring.
Prompt Engineering Basics: Ability to use natural-language commands to guide AI agents in retrieving accurate customer data and generating first drafts of success plans.
AI Engagement Monitoring: Using AI-driven sentiment and intent analysis to flag early customer concerns for human intervention.
Collaborative Learning: Actively seeking out "Agentblazer" training and certifications to stay current on autonomous agent capabilities.
Learning & Development: Apply product knowledge and expertise to address technical concerns, use this knowledge to ask effective diagnosis questions, and align platform features with customer priorities and roadmaps.
Proactively monitor and conduct quarterly reviews, identify trends, and provide tailored release recommendations to ensure stability, performance, and feature enhancement.
Serve as the primary interface for major incidents (e.g., checkout failures or email deliverability drops) to protect peak revenue.
Forge strong multidisciplinary relationships with Sales, Engineering, and Product Management to lead and coordinate customer relationships for success and revenue opportunities.
Form a clear plan for client engagements, communicate clearly and proactively with collaborators, and keep the customer goal central to decision-making.
Escalate complex automation, data model, routing, or integration questions to technical resources.