11-Step Checklist To Build A Customer Success Team From Scratch

Have you ever wondered what makes some companies great at keeping their customers happy while others struggle with churn? A big part of that comes down to having the right customer success team.

However, building a high-performing Customer Success (CS) team from scratch comes with challenges. 

What roles are essential? How do you define clear metrics? And how can your team check customers don’t just stay but actively advocate for your brand? Without a solid strategy, the risk of inefficiencies and churn skyrockets.

This blog lays out an actionable 11-step checklist to help you create a CS team that delivers measurable results—whether you’re scaling operations or starting fresh.

Table of Contents

• Importance of a Customer Success Team
• How to Build the Best Customer Success Team in 11 Steps?
• Common Challenges in Building a Customer Success Team
• Conclusion

Importance of a Customer Success Team

Here’s how a good customer success team helps: 

1. Driving Customer Retention and Loyalty

Keeping a customer is far more valuable (and cost-effective) than finding a new one. 

According to a study, acquiring a new customer can cost *five times* more than retaining an existing one. A CS team makes sure your customers aren’t just satisfied but are thriving with your product or service.

Let’s say a small business owner is struggling to use your software effectively. A proactive CS manager steps in, offers personalized training, and helps them succeed. That customer is not only less likely to leave—they’re also more likely to recommend you to others. When customers feel supported, they stick around longer. And long-term customers don’t just bring in consistent revenue—they become part of your business’s success story.

2. Reducing Churn and Maximizing Revenue

Every business loses customers, but a good CS team knows how to minimize that loss. They spot the warning signs—like a drop in engagement—and step in before things go south.

For instance, if a customer hasn’t used a key feature in weeks, a CS team might reach out to offer help or show them how it works. That small gesture can prevent a cancellation. On the other hand, a CS team doesn’t just prevent churn—they drive revenue. Spotting when a customer’s needs grow can open the door for upselling. 

3. Strengthening Customer Advocacy

Happy customers don’t just stay—they spread the word. A CS team plays a big role in creating these advocates by ensuring customers feel heard, valued, and successful. Think about the brands you recommend to friends. 

Chances are, those companies made your experience seamless and memorable. That’s the power of great customer success. When customers become advocates, they bring in new business without you even asking. It’s a win-win.

4. Accelerating Product Feedback Loops

Your customers use your product daily. Who better to tell you what’s working and what isn’t? A CS team acts as the bridge between your customers and your product team, making sure feedback leads to real improvements.

By listening to customers and passing insights to the right teams, you make sure your product evolves to meet their needs—keeping them around longer.

5. Aligning Customer and Business Goals

Customer success isn’t just about keeping people happy. It’s about aligning what your customers want with what your business provides. When those goals match, everyone wins.

For instance, if your customer wants to improve team collaboration, your CS team can make sure they’re using tools and features that make that happen, creating value for both sides.

How to Build the Best Customer Success Team in 11 Steps?

Building a customer success (CS) team from scratch is a strategic process. Follow these actionable steps to lay a solid foundation and deliver exceptional results.

1. Define the Mission and Goals of Your Customer Success Team

Start by answering a key question: What do you want your CS team to achieve? Clearly defining the mission guarantees alignment with your business goals.

Outline specific objectives, such as reducing churn, improving customer satisfaction, or increasing lifetime value. A strong mission might be: “To empower customers to achieve their goals efficiently, ensuring long-term success and loyalty.”

A Reddit discussion highlights how small businesses prioritize churn reduction as their primary CS goal, to achieve customer satisfaction at every touchpoint. 

You can also assess your existing processes and teams. Identify gaps—whether in onboarding, communication, or customer engagement—that need addressing as part of your mission.

2. Identify Key Roles and Responsibilities

A successful CS team thrives on clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Some core roles include:

• Customer Success Manager (CSM): Builds relationships with customers, ensuring they see value in your product.
• Account Manager: Focuses on renewals, upselling, and revenue growth.
• Support Specialist: Handles day-to-day troubleshooting and escalations.

According to Forbes, businesses that clearly segment roles within their CS teams see a 30% improvement in task efficiency, reducing internal friction. Assign measurable KPIs for each role. For example, a CSM’s goal could be reducing churn by 10%, while a Support Specialist could aim to resolve 90% of tickets within 24 hours.

3. Hire the Right People with the Right Skills

The success of your Customer Success team starts with hiring individuals who bring more than just technical customer service skills to the table. The right team members combine communication, problem-solving, and empathy to make the customers feel valued and supported.

• Communication: Strong communicators simplify complex solutions and actively listen to customers’ concerns. They adjust their tone and approach to match each situation.
  
• Problem-Solving: Great CS hires anticipate challenges and address them with creativity and logic. They don’t just react to issues—they find solutions tailored to the customer’s context.
  
• Empathy: Empathy forms the foundation of meaningful customer relationships. Team members who connect on a human level foster trust, ensuring customers feel understood and valued.

To identify these qualities during hiring, it’s essential to go beyond traditional interviews. Ask scenario-based questions like “How would you handle a customer upset about delayed support?” You can also include role-playing exercises to evaluate how candidates engage and solve problems in real time.

4. Establish a Clear Onboarding Process

Onboarding is where your customer success hires transition from potential to performance. A structured program fosters new team members to fully understand your tools, workflows, and customer engagement strategies.

How do you design an onboarding process for a high-impact CS team?

• Clarify workflows early: Break down how your team handles customer issues, escalations, and follow-ups. Use live examples to show how these processes work in action.
  
• Engage new hires with different activities: Pair new hires with experienced team members to observe and practice customer interactions in real scenarios. This hands-on learning builds confidence faster than manuals or theoretical training.
  
• Focus on role alignment: Outline specific responsibilities for each role, helping hires understand how they contribute to reducing churn, driving retention, or increasing customer value.

HubSpot provides an onboarding process that combines interactive training modules with role-specific shadowing. New hires participate in live workshops to understand workflows and customer engagement strategies, ensuring they can align quickly with the company’s mission.

5. Invest in Training and Development

Effective training builds expertise, enabling the customer success team to proactively address challenges and consistently deliver outstanding service.

Focus your training program on these key areas:

• Mastering tools and technology: Train the team on essential platforms like shared inboxes (e.g., Hiver),CRMs, and customer success tools. Include practical applications, such as using analytics to track customer health or identify workflow bottlenecks.
  
• Building product knowledge: Regularly update the team on new features and use cases. Show how specific features solve customer pain points to enable more meaningful recommendations.

An effective training structure might include:

• Month 1 – Onboarding: Combine tool training with shadowing experienced team members. Start with low-priority tasks, gradually increasing responsibility.
  
• Weekly Micro-Sessions: Address specific skills like active listening, reducing response times, or interpreting customer data.
  
• Quarterly Advanced Workshops: Explore behavioral analytics, customer journey mapping, and conflict resolution with real-life scenarios.
  
• Annual Refreshers: Revisit core principles, introduce product updates, and certify team members on advanced tools.

For instance, training your team to analyze behavioral data can help identify at-risk customers through patterns like reduced feature usage. Acting on these insights allows the team to engage proactively and prevent churn.

6. Define Customer Success Metrics and KPIs

Measuring the success of your CS team requires clear metrics that reflect customer health and team performance. Customer success metrics provide actionable insights and guiding strategies to drive engagement and retention. Some of these metrics include: 

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures customer loyalty with, “How likely are you to recommend us?” Use scores to identify advocates and at-risk customers.

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Highlights long-term revenue potential, helping your team prioritize high-value accounts.
• Churn Rate: Tracks customer attrition, providing early signals to act on disengagement trends.
• First Response Time (FRT): Gauges team efficiency; faster responses typically lead to higher satisfaction.
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Reflects how well your team meets customer expectations through specific interactions.

7. Implement the Right Tools and Technology

The right tech stack helps your team stay organized, work efficiently, and deliver the best experience for your customers. Without the right tools, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks, communication to get messy, and response times to slow down.

Here are a few key tools to consider:

• Customer Support Software (like Hiver): Hiver integrates directly into Gmail, making it simple for your team to manage and collaborate on customer conversations. It allows you to bring in emails, live chat, phone, and WhatsApp messages into one platform, so your team can easily see the full context and respond faster. No more switching between different tools or dealing with cluttered inboxes—everything is in one place.

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools: A CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce helps you track customer interactions, manage accounts, and analyze behavior. This allows your customer success team to stay proactive, follow up on important tasks, and provide personalized support. It also helps align your team with the sales and marketing departments to ensure a smooth customer journey.
• Collaboration Tools (like Slack): Customer success is a team effort. Tools like Slack make it easy to communicate and collaborate in real-time with your team members. You can quickly tag colleagues, share updates, and get alignment on customer issues to ensure timely resolutions. This is especially helpful when working across departments or when you need quick responses.

• Customer Feedback and Survey Tools (like SurveyMonkey or Typeform): Gathering feedback is vital to understanding how well your team is doing and where improvements are needed. Tools like SurveyMonkey or Typeform help you gather insights directly from your customers, so you can address pain points and continuously improve the customer experience.
• Project Management Tools (like Asana or Trello): Keeping track of ongoing tasks, especially when you’re managing multiple customers, can get overwhelming. Project management tools help your team stay on top of their responsibilities, prioritize tasks, and stay organized.

What to consider when choosing tools?

• Avoid tools with steep learning curves. Choose platforms that integrate naturally into daily workflows, saving time and reducing frustration.
• Make sure your tools can grow with your business, adapting to increased customer volume and evolving needs.
• Opt for solutions that offer analytics dashboards, helping your team make informed decisions quickly.

8. Create a Proactive Engagement Strategy

A proactive engagement strategy makes your customer success team anticipate customer needs and build stronger relationships. By focusing on regular communication and personalized insights, your team becomes a trusted partner, guiding customers toward success.

• Schedule regular check-ins: Set up periodic calls, emails, or automated reminders to stay connected with customers. Schedule monthly calls for high-value accounts to discuss progress and upcoming goals, while using automated emails for smaller accounts to share updates and tips.
  
• Act on customer feedback: Use surveys, post-interaction reviews, or direct conversations to collect insights. For example, a post-support survey asking, “What could we have done better?” can highlight areas for improvement. Acting on feedback, such as introducing a requested feature, demonstrates your commitment to customer needs.
  
• Spot opportunities for upselling: Monitor customer usage data to identify where additional products or services can add value. If usage analytics reveal a customer heavily relies on one feature, suggest an upgrade or complementary add-on that enhances their experience.
  
• Leverage behavioral data: Use tools like CRM or customer success platforms to track customer engagement trends. For example, a decline in logins or feature adoption could signal disengagement, prompting a targeted outreach with personalized resources or a re-onboarding session.

9. Build Cross-Functional Collaboration

Customer success teams thrive when they collaborate seamlessly with sales, marketing, and product teams. By aligning on customer goals and sharing insights, you can create a cohesive experience that drives retention and growth.

• Align goals across teams: Regularly meet with sales to understand promises made during the onboarding phase. Coordinate with marketing to develop resources like FAQs or tutorials that address recurring customer challenges. Engage product teams to prioritize features based on feedback from CS and support teams.
  
• Establish a feedback loop: Create processes for sharing actionable insights. For example, CS teams can provide marketing with success stories to highlight in campaigns or inform sales of upcoming upsell opportunities.
  
• Collaborate on proactive solutions: Work with product teams to co-develop enhancements based on recurring issues raised by customers. This not only improves the product but also reinforces trust with your customer base.

With Hiver’s collaborative inbox, your team can work together seamlessly without cluttering individual inboxes.

• Easily align with teams across your organization to tackle queries together, speeding up response times without opening new threads.
• Use features like notes, @mentions, and conversation history to keep everyone on the same page. 
• Set up escalation and approval workflows to quickly resolve queries. Plus, get notified if someone else is working on the same query to avoid sending duplicate responses.

10. Establish a Customer Escalation Process

A well-defined escalation process enables your Customer Success (CS) team to resolve complex issues quickly, reducing frustration and building customer trust. By ensuring clarity at every stage, you empower your team to act efficiently and maintain customer satisfaction.

• Define tiers and assign roles: Categorize issues based on complexity (e.g., Tier 1 for common queries, Tier 2 for technical challenges, Tier 3 for critical escalations) and assign clear roles. For example, Tier 1 may be handled by support agents, while Tier 2 is routed to technical specialists.
  
• Set specific response times: Establish clear timeframes for each escalation level to maintain urgency. For instance, Tier 1 issues are to be acknowledged within an hour, while Tier 3 escalations require immediate attention from senior teams.
  
• Provide training for escalation protocols: Equip your team with the skills to recognize when and how to escalate. Regular training sessions can include mock scenarios to reinforce consistency and improve communication during handoffs.

11. Continuously Improve Through Feedback

Feedback is the cornerstone of growth for any customer success team. By integrating insights from both customers and team members, you can identify opportunities to refine processes and enhance performance.

• Gather feedback regularly: Use post-interaction surveys, team suggestion forms, and quarterly reviews. For instance, ask customers, “How could we improve your onboarding experience?” while team retrospectives can highlight internal challenges.
  
• Analyze and prioritize: Identify recurring themes in feedback. If delays in issue resolution are a common concern, consider reallocating resources or improving training.
  
• Take action: Implement concrete changes based on insights, such as streamlining workflows, updating engagement strategies, or introducing new tools.
  
• Communicate improvements: Close the loop by informing customers and team members about changes made based on their feedback. For example, “We’ve reduced response times by introducing a staggered shift system.”

Common Challenges in Building a Customer Success Team

Building a customer success team comes with its own set of challenges. Here are some common ones you might face:

1. Finding the Right Fit

It’s not just about hiring people who are good at their jobs – it’s about finding those who genuinely care about customer success. The right team members need a mix of empathy, problem-solving skills, and a deep understanding of your product. It can take time to find that perfect balance.

2. Defining Clear Roles

When you’re starting from scratch, it’s easy for roles to blur. Who’s handling onboarding? Who’s responsible for renewals? Without clear definitions, your team might end up duplicating work or, worse, leaving important tasks unaddressed.

3. Building Cross-Department Collaboration

Customer success doesn’t live in a silo – it needs to collaborate with sales, support, and product teams. But getting everyone aligned on priorities and communication can be tricky, especially when different departments have different objectives.

4. Scaling for Growth

As your business grows, your customer success team needs to scale with it. But scaling isn’t just about adding more people – it’s about making sure your processes and tools can handle increased demand without compromising quality.

5. Tracking Success Metrics

How do you measure the impact of your customer success efforts? It’s not always straightforward. Whether it’s customer satisfaction, churn rate, or product usage, finding the right metrics to track and ensuring they align with your business goals is essential but challenging.

6. Maintaining Team Morale

Customer success teams often deal with tough situations, and burnout is a real issue. Keeping the team motivated while managing high expectations and difficult customer interactions requires strong leadership and a supportive work culture.

7. Adapting to Changing Customer Needs

Customer success isn’t static – what worked last quarter might not work now. As customer needs evolve, so must your strategies and processes. Staying ahead of the curve and being adaptable is key to long-term success.

Conclusion

Building a high-performing Customer Success (CS) team requires thoughtful planning, clear strategies, and an unwavering focus on the customer’s needs. 

To get started, it’s important to focus on the foundation—hiring the right talent, setting clear expectations, and defining your processes. In this blog, we’ve covered the 11 essential steps to building a customer success team from scratch. 

But one of the most crucial factors in ensuring your team’s success is having the right tools. The right tools will empower your team to be more efficient, collaborative, and focused on the customer.

For example, Hiver offers a simple, yet powerful solution. It integrates directly within Gmail, making it super easy for your team to get started. Since Gmail is already a platform your team is familiar with, there’s no steep learning curve or complicated training sessions. Plus, with Hiver, you can bring together customer conversations from email, phone, live chat, WhatsApp, and more, all in one unified platform. Take a free trial of Hiver.

*five times*