The Quick and Dirty Guide to Standing up a Customer Success Department

You’ve just stepped in and now have the task of creating a brand new department! The company is growing and they now need "a Customer Success function.”

This is so exciting! But also a little scary as you are now about to spin up a critical department from scratch! If the feeling is a mix of exhilarating, terrifying, and "where do I even start?"—congratulations, you’re in the right place.

I’ve been in the trenches—untangling legacy processes, rebuilding customer relationships, and building frameworks that turn chaos into calm.

This is the quick and dirty, field-tested playbook to help you hit the ground running.

Dig Into What Already Exists

Audit Existing Documentation

If so read it ALL… I’m serious. Every last outdated wiki page and forgotten Google Doc. You're looking for the ghost of a strategy—the original intent behind what was built. You don't want to be the hero who “fixes” a process only to discover you broke the one thing that was actually working.

• What’s currently in place (even if it's messy)

• What’s automated vs. manual

• What internal teams or customers have said about those processes

No Documentation? Go on a Listening Tour

Welcome to the club. This is more common than you think. It just means the "process" lives in the heads of your colleagues. It’s time to go on a listening tour. Book 30 minutes with the key players who touch the customer journey. Your only job is to listen, not to solve.

• Sales:

  • Who are our best customers, and why?

  • What pain points did we promise to solve?

  • Who are the "problem children" that keep you up at night?

• Tech Support:

  • What tickets come up again and again?

  • Where do customers get stuck?

  • What do you wish customers knew about the product?

• The Founders/Leadership:

  • What was the original vision for the customer experience?

  • Where does CS fit into the business strategy for the next year?

Your only job at this stage: Listen. Don’t fix. Identify patterns, pain points, and wins.

Talk to Actual Customers

Internal perception is one thing; customer reality is another. The gap between how the company thinks the product is used and how it’s actually used is where fortunes (and customer relationships) are lost...

This isn’t a time for a survey - think Coffee chat energy. Keep it open and honest

Start with:

• Current happy clients

• Recently churned clients or clients who will not be renewing this cycle (if they’re willing to talk)

A few questions to ask the client

• What made you buy the product in the first place?

• What’s working well?

• What’s not?

• What features do you wish were different?

• How many people at your company use it?

• How does the product feel to use?

Your goal is to find the patterns—the disconnects, the unexpected wins, and the low-hanging fruit.

A few ways to help frame this feedback

• Cluster feedback into themes

• Impact × Effort

  • Quick wins: low effort, high impact (e.g., tweak a tooltip)

  • Strategic bets: high effort, high impact (e.g., new report builder)

  • Back‑burner ideas: niche requests or low impact

Build your Minimum Viable System

Setting up processes is so important in a CS department. You need a way to track clients and client interactions. Without this you are going to be guessing a lot which can lead to new clients and existing clients slipping through the cracks . As much as I would love to say you can manage from a sea of sticky notes… it’s going to lead to a lot of headaches.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

This does not mean you need to spend a fortune on a fancy, enterprise-level CRM. Honestly, you can start with a well-organized spreadsheet if that's what you have. The tool is less important than the discipline of using it.

That said, if you have a small budget, a great place to start is a free or starter version of a tool like HubSpot. I'm biased from positive past experiences, but its user-friendliness is a godsend when you're a one-person shop.

Whatever you choose, start by tracking the essentials. Don't over-engineer it.

Your 'Minimum Viable CRM' Needs:

• Company Name

• Primary Contact (and their time zone—trust me!)

• Product(s) Purchased

• Renewal Date (monthly, annual, etc.)

Nice-to-Haves That will help you later:

• Key Stakeholders/Power Users

• "Why They Bought" Notes

• Length of time as a Client

• Health Score (even a simple Red/Yellow/Green will do)

• Last Contact Date

Onboarding (a.k.a. My Favorite Part)

Now that we understand our current clients we can move on to New Clients and Onboarding! I personally love onboarding as it’s a great way to get to know your new clients and really understand how we can help them and build the value for them long term.

Do you have a process now? Does it get the job done even if it’s not perfect?

Shadow for a few weeks before making changes here are some broad categories to think about when getting started

• Where is the Friction? During your review were there any places where they were confused or didn’t understand something?

  • Where was this? Demo, Email or call?

• Are existing templates showcasing the product? Is there missing information?

• Are there repeatable steps that are manual? Can you automate them

As you make changes start small - and make sure that the process can continue to run the entire time.

Onboarding Non existent? Let’s get started

• Email Templates: (for more details check out Guide to Email Templates)

  • The Welcome Email: Keep it short and clear. If the next step is booking a call, put that link right at the top. Don't bury your call to action.

  • The Post-Onboarding Follow-Up: Send a summary of what was discussed, key resources, and a clear "what happens next."

• Onboarding Deck: Yes, you'll probably do a live demo. But clients will always ask, "Can you send me something I can share with my team?" Have a simple, clean slide deck ready to go. Here is a simple PPT template to get you started

• To Record or Not to Record? This is a personal choice, but I find that recording client-specific onboardings can create privacy concerns and aren't often re-watched. A better approach? Record a crisp, generic demo video of your own that you can share with everyone. It's more scalable and just as effective.

Reporting becomes your Microphone!

Reporting is so important! It is also good to remember you do not need a fancy system or pay a bunch of money for a system with built in analytics. Is it nice to have?! Yes of course it is! But when you are getting started you might not want to put your limited resources into a fancy system to start.

I use excel and PowerBi to build my dashboards and reports when I am starting. Luckily now I have a great engineering team who can build reports in house but to start you absolutely do not need to spend money!

Start by Answering a few basic Questions:

• From your Ticketing System: What are our most common problems? Are we seeing trends by product or customer segment?

• From your Product Analytics (if you have them): Are users logging in? Are key features being adopted? Who are our power users?

• From your Onboarding Process: Are clients completing all the steps? Where do they fall off? How long does it take to get a new client to get their “first win”?

Reporting allows you to go back to leadership not with feelings, but with facts. It's how you make the case for more resources, advocate for product changes, and demonstrate the tangible impact of process improvement on the health of the customer base and the business.

Ongoing Engagement

Great onboarding is a start, not a solution. Don’t set it and forget it—education must be regular and bite‑sized. Your clients forget what they don’t use.

Simple ideas that make a big difference:

• 2-minute feature spotlight videos

• Monthly “Did You Know?” emails

• One-pager walkthroughs for complex tasks

Coordinate with Marketing to avoid newsletter overload—embed your content into existing channels. No one needs another newsletter.

Master the Strategic Check-In

Quarterly check-ins shouldn’t feel like a chore. Reframe them as Strategic Conversations:

A true strategic check-in isn't about you; it's about their business. This is your dedicated moment to elevate the conversation from tickets and tasks to goals and outcomes.

A Simple, Powerful Agenda:

• "Here’s what you said you wanted to do last quarter."

• "Here’s how we helped you get there."

• "What’s changed, and what does success look like now?"

This is where you shift from support rep to strategic partner. It’s where you find expansion opportunities and get ahead of churn risks.

Treat Renewals as a Consequence, Not a Crisis

If you're scrambling 30 days before a contract is up, you’re not managing a renewal; you're attempting a rescue mission. The renewal isn't a single event. It's the final, logical outcome of every single interaction that came before it.

By the time the formal renewal conversation happens, it should be the least surprising meeting of the year—a simple confirmation of the value they already see and feel. The signature on the dotted line isn't the victory; it's just the receipt for a year's worth of work well done.

Build Bridges Across Teams

Customer Success is the connective tissue of the company. Work with Sales to create a clean handoff so you know why the customer bought. Work with Product to funnel feedback in a structured way, tying requests to churn risk or expansion opportunities. You’re not the complaint box; you’re a partner in shaping the roadmap.

With Sales:

• Create a handoff checklist. Get the "why they bought" info into your CRM. This helps you deliver what was promised.

With Product:

• Funnel feedback in a clean, structured way

• Summarize trends, tie them to churn or expansion opportunities

• Become a partner in shaping the product roadmap—not just the complaint box

Final Thoughts

You don’t need everything perfect to get started. You just need to start—with listening, learning, and laying the foundation.

It might be cheesy to say but you’re not just building a department. You’re building relationships, trust, and long-term growth—for your company and your customers.