Best customer success certifications
Contents
The five customer success certifications covered in this guide are SuccessCOACHING’s CCSM program, The Success League’s CSM certification, the Cisco Customer Success Manager (DTCSM) exam, Udemy’s CSM fundamentals course, and the Customer Success Masterclass by WnTD. Each one fits a different experience level, format preference, and budget.
Digital credentials have made these programs more portable: a qualification earned online can be verified and shared anywhere. That is one reason customer success professionals increasingly use the best customer success certifications to keep up with the field and prove their approach to hiring managers.
Certifications to enhance your career in customer success
Here is what made our list for best current customer success certifications.
SuccessCOACHING
SuccessCOACHING runs the Certified Customer Success Manager (CCSM) program, which certifies and teaches customer success managers the strategies that help them engage, manage, and retain their customers effectively. The certification has 5 levels, running from the foundations of customer success management to advanced topics such as stakeholder mapping.
- Level 1: The starting point of the program and the base for the later customer success certifications. It covers the fundamental information all customer success managers need in order to engage, manage, and retain their customers.
- Level 2: Builds on the foundation and adds new topics. Level 2 develops your capacity to handle a portfolio of accounts and internal relationships effectively.
- Level 3: Goes deeper into the craft. Level 3 targets the abilities required to become a strategic customer success manager.
- Level 4: The penultimate level. Level 4 focuses on the knowledge and abilities you need to grow your portfolio of client accounts efficiently.
- Level 5: The last course in the CCSM road to mastery. This curriculum concentrates on developing your talents and skill set to advance your CSM profession and customer success techniques.
Success League CS certification
The Success League’s CSM certification has been running since 2017, which the company says makes it the longest-running active training program in the field. The program is accredited by the Customer Success Association.
The full certification program consists of 15 live, expert-led online classes, each built around a practical tool CSMs can add to their professional toolbox. Students value the real-time conversations with classmates and access to an instructor who can help them adapt the material to their own program. This certification fits people who want real CS abilities rather than just passing an on-demand program’s checkbox requirements.
Cisco Customer Success Manager (DTCSM)
The Cisco Customer Success Manager certification provides a strong framework and a foundational set of abilities to help you add immediate value to your customer relationships. Passing the 90-minute 820-605 CSM exam earns the Cisco Customer Success Manager Specialist certification.
Develop new sales possibilities throughout the whole customer lifecycle by demonstrating your capacity to create and integrate solutions, recognize adoption barriers and how to overcome them, deploy adoption frameworks, interpret customer usage data, and lead clients to renewals.
Customer Success Manager: Fundamentals to your CSM career
This Udemy course awards a completion certificate and covers the foundations of the CSM role. The course description is upfront that it is not aimed at experienced professionals. Many reviews note it also works as a recap for people already in the field.
Customer Success Masterclass by WnTD
With a level-based progression similar to SuccessCOACHING’s, the Customer Success Masterclass builds fundamentals in the early stages and expands on them later.
- Level 1: Creates a fundamental understanding of customer success management and introduces the core concepts early.
- Level 2: Encompasses QBR management, internal advocacy, customer education, and managing customer health and customer portfolio.
- Level 3: Covers sales-to-customer-success kickoff conversations, renewal and expansion tactics, minimizing churn risk, boosting product adoption, setting customer success goals, and more.
Sum up
Customer success professionals have several solid options for customer success certifications. With more work happening online than ever, a verifiable digital credential is a practical way to strengthen your standing in the profession.
As the list shows, customer success certifications teach new skills and also help professionals review knowledge they already have. Pick the one that matches your experience level and learning style.
Watch the webinar below to learn more about the role of digital credentials in customer success training.
