Use case: Scaled and pooled team structures

Common CS team structures

Here are three ways to structure your CSM teams to support high-touch, low-touch, and hybrid engagement models:

1. Traditional: Individual customer success managers (CSMs) are assigned specific accounts to manage and build personal relationships (1:1).
2. Scaled: Relies on both human and digital touches to engage with customers, allowing individual CSMs to effectively manage a large number of customer accounts while still providing personalized service (1:M).
3. Pooled: Instead of dedicated CSMs, you have a pool of CSMs working together to serve a larger segment of customers. There's no single point of contact for each client; any CSM in the pool can be assigned to help a customer at a given time.

Both scaled and pooled team structures aim to manage customer success efficiently, but they approach it in different ways:

Scaled: Personalized CSM Each scaled CSM has their own (large) book of business, which is typically segmented by region, vertical or other commonalities. This approach offers a personalized experience but workload balancing and PTO coverage can be difficult.

Pooled: Full coverage Multiple CSMs support a large pool of customers using a FIFO (first in, first out) queue. This approach ensures consistent coverage, but customers may not interact with the same CSM each time. A well-defined process and productivity monitoring are crucial for a consistent customer experience.

Configure scaled / pooled structures in Catalyst

If you want to implement a low-touch engagement model, consider setting up the following team structures for a scaled or pooled approach.

1. Set up a shared "team user"

Within Catalyst, create a shared "team user." This is a user that's associated with a separate email, such as digitalsuccess@xyz.com, for the purpose of managing scaled accounts.

Every Catalyst user must be able to log into your organization's email provider(Google/Microsoft). If you don't already have a "shared" email address set up within your email workspace, you'll need to create one before adding a Catalyst "team user.'

2. Create a shared "team user" layout

Create a team dashboard to manage the shared book. Recommendations include:

3. Task management

In a pooled model (full coverage), consider using the following approach to task assignment: 

4. Nurtured communications

Both scaled and pooled structures typically have an element of customer nurturing via proactive email messaging. Aligning a nurtured email campaign with the customer journey is a fantastic way to make a customer feel all the warm fuzzies with very little CSM lift. Considerations for a nurture campaigns include: