Since 2015, there’s an increase in poaching vacancies — vacancies intended for employed workers. By implication, firms are becoming more competitive by poaching top talent from their competitors. That insight comes from a working paper by Anton Cheremukhin and Paulina Restrepo-Echavarria. I write about the topic here.
Good firms conduct exit interviews when talent leaves. Admired Leadership via their blog, Field Notes, posted 10 Exit Interview Questions admired leaders ask. “Exit interviews are a best practice for an important reason. The best leaders want to know why people really left and what they can possibly do about it.” I think differently.
Customer success managers (CSMs) obsess over why and how customers make decisions. Decisions to adopt an innovation grow, or churn out. They seek to understand when customers make buying decisions and they seek to understand the factors that go into that decision-making process. The goal is to feed insights back via cross-functional channels and help the organization become more intelligent about their customers. Ideally, customer-centric organizations adapt to meet the needs of their customers and growth occurs. Worst case, customers churn. Just like employees.
Skilled managers, like you, are wise to think like a CSM when it comes to retaining their top talent. What if we took the 10 Exit Interview Questions offered by Admired Leadership and reframe them the way we might use them in customer success? They are:
- How does the job deliver on your expectations? Are the challenges and growth you expected before starting here being realized?
- Is it your intent to start thinking about your next opportunity soon?
- What do you like most and least about the work now?
- I would love your thoughts. Am I investing in you and supporting your success? How might I be more supportive?
- How do you rate the quality of the recognition you receive for your work and contributions?
- What makes it difficult to be productive? What gets in your way to achieve high performance?
- If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about our team culture, what would you change and why?
- How about the organizational culture? What might you change if you could change one thing?
- If we hire in the future, would you recommend a job on our team to a friend or former colleague? Why or why not?
- What do you think we need to do to retain our best talent?
Conducting an interview of this kind with an employee is courageous — for you and the employee. Your questions may cause someone to start looking for a new job. You may only receive positive “everything is great” type responses. You may hear some hard truths. There could be other reactions. I’ve been there, here’s how you manage that.
- Listen, and be open.
- Actively listen – ask clarifying questions, rephrase what you heard, and ask for the employee to check how well you understood them.
- Do not debate. Listen to learn.
- Thank them for their time.
- Commit to following up so that your employee believes their feedback mattered.
Ultimately, the quality of your answers may be a function of your ability to create open and trusting relationships with your team. It’s the same thing with your customers.
If you find that neither your customers nor your employees will be honest with you, you may have a deeper problem.
Talent Revolution 