Corporate mentoring regardless of the department it might be related to is always a challenge. Mentors are pivotal figures who play a great role in shaping the future of potential leaders. Mentees, on the other hand, are often recruits who have to be nurtured carefully so that they develop expertise in their field. The problem is that mentors know nothing about the mentees and vice versa until the two are paired together and hence there is a lot of adjustments to be done from both sides – both in the learning and the emotional angles.

Customer success mentoring is a notch more difficult than other areas of mentoring. The reason for this is that this is an area that is slowly in the process of transitioning from traditional customer service ideas to the customer success platform. There is a world of difference between the two and team leaders and managers in customer success are themselves often in the learning stage. Hence, for customer success mentoring how do you start the process?

Mentoring has a lot of scheduled programs like an automated calendar with the focus mainly on job shadowing and calls listening. But if you are into customer success mentoring, you have to go beyond that and more. Teaching how to deal with customers so that churn can be prevented is not always outlined in black and white. You have to be on a more personalized level with your mentee. Go outside the daily routine, have a cup of coffee together occasionally, and try to understand each other better. The mentee will subsequently not feel awkward to open up before you to clarify any doubts.

Instead of just ticking off the boxes in the schedule calendar, have periodic check-ins with the mentee. Provide valuable guidance and professional feedback as and when the mentee approaches and crosses career milestones.

Another angle that you should focus on in customer success mentoring is to show your genuine self to the mentee. As said, customer success is not a cut-and-dried department, and handling a customer later will need a lot of persuasive powers. Customer success professionals are the human face of any organization that customers feel comfortable interacting with. This trait should be imbibed into your mentee from the early stages of customer success mentoring. How your mentee deals with customers later and becomes a success depends largely on how you handle the mentoring process.

One of the main qualities of a customer success professional is a high level of organizational skills. Learning this aspect can be tough for a mentee who has to know how to balance the responsibility of everyday regular jobs and that of customer success which often entails going beyond the call of duty. Take time off to help the mentee evaluate priorities and map out timelines so that they can be set up and a new skill learned quickly.