Ready to find your next customer success representative?

After reviewing thousands of open CSR roles (which are also often referred to as account managers, customer service and client success), we’ve identified the most common responsibilities outlined in CSR job descriptions:

  • Build and maintain strong, long-lasting client relationships
  • Ensure the timely and successful delivery of our solutions according to customer needs and objectives
  • Clearly communicate the progress of monthly/quarterly initiatives to internal and external stakeholders
  • Collaborate with sales team to identify and grow opportunities
  • Own multiple account management projects at a time, while maintaining sharp attention to detail

While these are specific responsibilities or requirements, what’s missing are the skills required to successfully execute them, which is especially important for entry-level hires who don’t have the professional track record and where GPA or major doesn’t demonstrate them. To help, we’ve worked with human capital leaders and marketing executives to map the underlying skills to the typical responsibilities below:

RESPONSIBILITY

SKILLS
Build and maintain strong, long-lasting client relationships Grit/drive Analytical thinking
Ensure the timely and successful delivery of our solutions according to customer needs and objectives Problem solving Empathy
Clearly communicate the progress of monthly/quarterly initiatives to internal and external stakeholders Communication Presentation
Collaborate with sales team to identify and grow opportunities Team Player

Persuasiveness
Own multiple account management projects at a time, while maintaining sharp attention to detail Attention to detail Organization

Many of these skills can’t be measured from a GPA, aren’t captured on a college student or recent grad’s resume, and can’t be assessed through an interview process, especially those Core Skills that often make the difference. In reality, the only way to evaluate these skills is when you see these candidates in action. Micro-Internships are a perfect, easy, low-risk and low investment way for employers to see candidates demonstrate these skills first hand.

Building upon this, we have crafted and tested a handful of Micro-Internships that not only provide hiring manager with immediate value, but also will help you uncover these skills:

Sample Projects

We would like you to go through our social media platforms for the last three months and identify various customer service opportunities and how we can address them as a company. Identify trends, positive and/or negative, patterns, outliers, etc.

We would like for you to create a welcome nurture campaign for new customers. This should be a three part email campaign to help the new customers get onboarded. Outline and draft the content for each and email.

We would like you to create a mockup of a monthly dashboard for our clients that could be used internally and / or shared with each specific client. Think about the critical information that should be included and how to present it so that it resonates with our clients.

In order to help you pick the best candidate, you can also ask a question or two to screen the applicants - while not required, this is a great way to quickly learn about the candidates so you can select the best career launcher for your project. Here are the following we would recommend:

  • Why do you want to work on this project?
  • How would you approach this project?
  • Are you available to accept an internship or full time role? Please only apply if you are interested in the full-time role or internship following this initial project.

While there may not be any “right” answer, these types of questions allow a Career Launcher to stand out by conveying an insightful perspective or passion for the role.

Assessing The Career Launcher

As highlighted above, these assignments are a great way for you to assess if a Career Launcher has the Core Skills that are required to be successful in this role. To help, we included a things to look for in what the Career Launcher provides. 

Download the full assessment here.

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Win. Win.

The benefits are invaluable. As a result of the Micro-internship you will get:

  • Completion of valuable work that wasn't the best of time for you or others at your company
  • Identify and connect with candidates to move through your interview process for an internship or full-time opportunity
  • Save time (and money) on wasted interviews of individuals who are not the right fit
  • Aid in working towards your company’s diversity and employee retention initiatives

Of course this is not just limited to customer success roles. You can see some additional examples tied to other roles or departments here.

Get Started!