In this episode of the Teacher Career Coach podcast, host Elizabeth Suto welcomes Carly Agar, a seasoned customer success coach.
Carly shares her journey into customer success and emphasizes the transferable skills teachers possess, such as communication, problem-solving, and empathy. She offers practical advice for teachers looking to transition into customer success roles, including starting in entry-level positions, investing in learning, and networking.
Carly also addresses common misconceptions about the field and highlights the importance of a proactive mindset.
This episode provides valuable insights and actionable steps for teachers considering a career change.
Listen to the episode in the podcast player below, or find it on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
Mentioned in the episode:
- Find Carly on LinkedIn and at her website carlyagar.com
- Use code “TCC” to get 50% off of everything at Aspireship
- Our career path quiz at www.teachercareercoach.com/quiz
- Explore the course that has helped thousands of teachers successfully transition out of the classroom and into new careers: The Teacher Career Coach Course
Elizabeth: Welcome Carly.
Carly: Thanks, Elizabeth! I’m so excited!
Elizabeth: Well, we’re really excited to learn about you. the teacher community has heard a lot about you. So could you kind of start us off by letting us know what got you into customer success in the first place? And tell us a little bit about that journey.
Carly: Yeah. Ooh, I like this question. I also love asking people in customer success, this question, because you never get the same answer. It’s always a different journey, so I’ll try to keep it somewhat short because it is kind of a long story, but I studied marketing in college. I went to business school and I would love to say. Oh, I had, you know, I was really strategic about my first job out of college. Like I really thought a lot about what I wanted my career to be. The truth is I didn’t, I had no idea what I was doing and I actually started my career in sales. The company was called News America Marketing. And so I saw the word marketing.
I had a marketing degree. And so I was kind of like. Oh, this is what I’m supposed to do. Right? So that first job, it really was a mix of account management. So I was working with existing customers, but then there was also a large new business aspect to the role where I was expected to. You know, go out and hunt and find new business. Lots of cold calling. This was back in the day where we would actually show up to businesses in person and try to get them to work with us. And truthfully, I wasn’t good at the new business sales part of the role. I also Didn’t really like it. I thought it was boring. It didn’t mesh very well with my personality.
I’m not someone who’s super competitive, and I’m kind of like a take it or leave it kind of person. So all of those things just don’t make the best new business. Sales person, at least in my experience. So long story short, that led me to really lean into the existing customer part of the role, the more account management aspect. And that’s really how I kind of fell into customer success.
Elizabeth: So tell us a little more about your journey in customer success, and now you’re a customer success coach. So how did that transition?
Carly: I was someone I would say throughout my whole career, I was always quite focused on the next thing. Like I was always working towards something, whether it was a promotion or trying to switch industries. Like at one point I switched over to the SAS industry. That was something that I had been working towards always working towards the next title.
And so I pretty quickly throughout my career moved up into strategic customer success, which is. Some would say kind of like the highest level that you can make it to as an individual contributor in CS.
At that point I had nine years under my belt, and I had known for a while that I never wanted to manage a CS team. It just wasn’t appealing to me. I had no dreams of being a VP or a CCO. It just was not part of my path.
Also from a skills perspective, of course, there’s always things to learn, right? I’m not at all saying like, oh, I was perfect. I had nothing to learn. There was no more room for growth, but I had kind of felt like after nine years in CS, I had maxed out. I was kind of bored, honestly. Because I’m someone who’s always looking for the next thing, looking for the next thing, I, I knew I wanted to stay within customer success. I knew I didn’t want to be a team leader. And so I had to do a lot of thinking around, well, what does that mean? Where can I go? And luckily I was working at a company who was so incredibly supportive of people finding what they really want to do in their career and supporting them and doing that. And so I transitioned over to customer success enablement, which for anyone listening, if you’re not familiar, there’s lots of different flavors of it. What I was doing was essentially coaching our CS team on essentially everything from career paths to on the job skills. And I freaking loved it. Like it was so much fun. I got to be more creative. I love teaching. I love talking about careers. So that was awesome. As soon as I started doing that, I was like, this is it.
This is the thing that I am meant to do. I’m really good at it. I really enjoy it. again, long story short, at a certain point in that role, I realized. I could make a much bigger impact. I can help so many more people. If instead of just focusing on this one team at this one company, I went out and did this on my own so that anyone could access my resources and my coaching. it’s been about three years that I’ve been doing this full time.
Elizabeth: that’s great to hear too, just about the growth potential. And it sounds like there’s a lot of different avenues in customer success.
So would you be able to just give us your best, general summary of what is a customer success manager? What does the role entail? I know there’s lots of avenues, but
Carly: Yes, absolutely. So I, I also like to give the explanation. I call this. Like the way that you would describe it to your parents, which is still the way that I describe it to them. So you think of any company that buys software or any service, but let’s just stick with software because that’s easier. So a company that buys a software like Slack, I think most people are familiar with Slack.
It’s kind of like instant messaging in a professional setting. If a company invests in Slack. That doesn’t mean that everyone is going to just wake up and be able to use Slack, you know, in their day to day. They’re not necessarily going to feel comfortable using it. They’re not always going to know when it’s appropriate to use it or the best, most effective ways to use Slack. And if after a year, that company who bought Slack realizes, This wasn’t really worth the investment. Like, I don’t think we’re going to pay for this again. That becomes a big problem for Slack, right? Because now they’re not keeping this customer. We all know it’s a lot easier to keep a customer than it is to acquire a new one. It’s also much cheaper to keep a customer than acquire a new one. So the way that I like to really simplify customer success is you are the person that as soon as a company decides, I want to buy Slack, You know, any other software product or service, you are the one that is making sure that not only are they enabled to use it, but they’re excited to use it and that the people who are investing money into it feel that it has brought them some ROI and enough to want to keep purchasing it.
Elizabeth: customer journey, keep them happy, engage and retain them.
Carly: Exactly. Yes.
Elizabeth: who are the clients that you serve? who do you help support with your coaching services?
Carly: Ooh. Yeah. So we actually started by just primarily helping career transitioners, which I think is something that makes us very different because a career transitioner’s job search is going to look very different from someone who’s very experienced in the field. So when we actually started, we were just working with career transitioners. I would even go as far as saying primarily teachers, because at the time, so many educators were looking to move into customer success. now we’ve kind of broadened our horizons a little bit, and we’re not only helping career transitioners move into customer success, but we are also working with folks who are experienced in the field and are job seeking, whether it’s Because they were laid off or they’re just looking for a new opportunity. I would say we specifically work with people who have decided that customer success is where they want to be. So if you’re listening to this right now and you’re. You know, kind of going back and forth, like maybe it’s customer success, maybe it’s marketing, maybe it’s sales. You’re probably not quite ready to work with us because once you start working with us, we are going all in on customer success and helping you land that job.
Elizabeth: Okay. So it sounds like you definitely want to have career clarity, know that you want to go into customer success and you’re ready to go, go that direction.
Elizabeth: speaking of all the teachers that you’ve supported, we’d love to dive in a bit deeper, um, into the teaching realm to see how we can kind of support these teachers who know that they’re ready to go to customer success.
what do you think are some of the skills that teachers have that maybe they don’t know some of these kind of hidden skills that they have under their belt that they could showcase?
Carly: that’s a really, really good question. So I’ll start by saying I, I think some of the, transferable skills are a little bit more obvious. These are things that I see all over LinkedIn, online, on blogs, wherever. Things like collaboration, effective communication, relationship building, De escalation. Those are all very valuable skills that teachers absolutely have and are transferable to CS.
But there are a lot, and I know this from working with so many teachers, there are a lot of transferable skills that teachers have for customer success that they just might not think of or just even realize that they have. I would say the first one is. Success planning and what I mean by that is, as a teacher, you’re working with lots of individual students, right? They all have slightly different goals. They all have slightly different learning styles. You’re also taking into account other stakeholders goals for those students, whether it’s a parent, whether it’s some other professional, even admin, right?
Everyone kind of has a say as to like where a student should go and what that student’s goal should be. being able to take all of that input, take all of those goals. And then also consider that student’s learning style and create a plan of action. To get that student from point A to point B in a certain timeframe. We would call that success planning and customer success. That’s what we’re doing with our accounts in a given quarter or year. And I think that that’s a skill that teachers have that they often just don’t even realize how valuable that is.
Elizabeth: such a great point because I feel like these are, you know, secret tips, things that teachers do every single day, except there’s not the definition of success planning, but it’s so helpful to hear you say that because you’re connecting the dots, to what those skills that they already have are.
Carly: Exactly. And actually, you just made a really good point. And I, I remind people of this all the time, especially career transitioners I say this so that anyone who’s listening right now and is feeling the weight of a career transition and how hard it is, I say this to provide you with some comfort and to remind yourself to not be so hard on yourself. And that is, it’s one thing to know. Innately that you would be good at a new career. Let’s say it’s customer success. You go out, you learn about it. You know, you, you get a good understanding of kind of what the job looks like the skills that it takes to do that job. And it’s 1 thing to know and to feel like you’d be really good at it. It is a whole other animal to try to connect those dots for someone who’s worked in the field for a long time. That part is really, really hard. So it’s easy for me to do that because I’ve been in customer success for so long. I’ve worked with so many teachers, but if that doesn’t come as easily to you, I just want to say like, that is so normal.
Elizabeth: And I think a lot of, teachers might have imposter syndrome. They look at the job description and it says, you know, one to three years and they think, well, I haven’t got that one year.
How do, how am I going to get into this field? So are there things that teachers can do now in the classroom? Maybe some different projects or things they can do to set themselves up for success as they Transition.
Carly: This is a really, really good question. I know I’ve said that already a couple of times, but I love this one. So. There’s a lot of things that you could do. First, I would say if you are still kind of unsure about customer success and what it looks like and what it feels like and what the day to day actually entails, I would start by investing in something to help you learn. That and to grasp what the day to day looks like. Now, you know that I would always recommend Aspireship first, because I think it truly gives you the best feeling of what that day to day looks like. There are also lots of like books and podcasts out there that you can listen to to learn about the day to day. So I would start there. If you’ve already done that great, you’re one step ahead of everybody else. But then what I would do is I would take. Certain things that you see come up time and time again, whether it’s in job descriptions or in those courses or in those books, and try to apply it to your current role.
one example that I have is we do business reviews with our customers. If you’ve never heard of a business review, basically what it is again, oversimplifying is a, it’s kind of a formal meeting, if you will, where the CSM will sit down with the customer. We’ll do a review of kind of what’s happened in the relationship thus far. So what progress have we made? What challenges have we overcome? What have we achieved already together? And then we’ll also use that as an opportunity to realign on expectations. So it’s great. We’ve done all this over the last six months. Now what are we focusing on in the next six months? What goals do you have that we can help you achieve?
What. Challenges. Are you currently facing that? Maybe we have a solution for, and I think that that’s something that teachers are probably already doing a version of right with their students, with parents. But if you can take what you’ve learned about the way CSMs approach business reviews and really try to apply that to what you’re doing in your current role, when you get into an interview and you start talking about how you’ve done that, That is going to make you stand out versus all the other career transitioners so much, and it’s just going to give you so much credibility.
So business review is just one tiny example, but there are plenty of things that you can do to apply what CSMs are doing in your current role.
Elizabeth: That’s such a good parallel because even just reflecting on my teaching experience, thinking about how far we plan in advance for the next year. Like we’re already starting in January for the school year to start in August. So that’s a great point for any of those, career pivoters to look into that and see how you can connect it to what you’re already doing.
Carly: Yeah. And listen, I’m very realistic. I’m a, I’m a very realistic person. I understand that teachers, first of all. The busiest people in the world. Like I truly don’t know how you all do it. There’s so much that you’re juggling at every given moment. So by no means am I saying like, Oh yeah, you should just completely transform your role and just pretend like you’re a CSM. I know that that’s way easier said than done, but if you can just take like one or two little aspects of what you learn about CS and apply it to things that you’re already doing, that’s great. So just maybe slightly changing the way you do these student reviews to incorporate some of that more like CS strategy, then even still, you’re going to be 10 steps ahead of everybody else.
Elizabeth: And can you tell us a little bit about, if there’s any misconceptions out there about the CS role and kind of maybe front load us with, with what you’ve seen.
Carly: there are a lot of misconceptions about customer success, and I think that happens for a lot of reasons. Number one, it’s a, it’s a pretty young industry. It’s always kind of going through, I call it an identity crisis because the meaning of customer success changes from year to year. it also has a different meaning from company to company to company.
So it overall is, as someone who’s been in it for a very long time, just a difficult kind of role to really grasp until you’ve done it for a while. But I would say some of the more common misconceptions that I hear is, Oh, customer success is just about like helping people. It’s just teaching your customers how to use something.
It’s just training them on how to use the software. And that is definitely part of the role, enabling your customers to use your product or your service and teaching them and kind of handholding them through that process is definitely part of customer success. But I would say it’s a very teeny tiny aspect of it.
So that’s one misconception. I think another one is there’s this misconception that when a customer purchases something like a software, That they are automatically bought in. Like they’re so excited to start learning it and to start using it. And that just couldn’t be further from the truth. Of course, there are going to be some customers who are very excited and are eager to learn. But think about it. I mean, in your, all your shoes, right? As teachers, when admin comes to you and says, Oh, we’re going to stop using this process. And now you have to learn this whole other thing. Like your immediate reaction is not, Oh, great. Yay. Another thing for me to worry about, right? It’s, Oh my God.
Another thing. I don’t have time for this. Like leave me alone. Let me just do my thing. And that’s how a lot of clients feel too. Right. When they’re being told, like, you have to use this new software. They’re not necessarily excited. They’re not necessarily waking up in the morning. Like, yes, another thing to add to my to do list. So I think that’s a big misconception is that customer success is just like talking to customers who are happy and excited, when the truth is a lot of times you’re having to like really resell people again and again and again on the value of the thing that you’re trying to get them to do before they will even pay attention to you.
Elizabeth: I’m glad you brought that up. Cause it kind of goes over a challenge of the position. And that’s a great example with you know, learning a new software, another thing on the to do list, how do you keep them engaged and retain them and, and get them to use your product.
Carly: and I think that that also we’re like creating a full circle here goes back to another skill that teachers have that they might not realize is super transferable to CS, which is just being able to engage an audience. And I don’t, I don’t mean just simply getting your students to respond in a classroom, right?
It goes further than that. It’s getting them to be bought in to the thing that you’re teaching them. Or getting them motivated to do the thing that you’re asking them to do. That is a lot of what CSMs are doing.
What would you recommend for someone who knows they want to do customer success when they start applying to these roles? Is there, you know, a junior customer success position to look out for or something that’s like a stepping stone, to get into this CSM role?
that is a loaded question because it goes back to customer success, being a difficult industry to grasp. And I’m going to try my best to simplify it. So. The term customer success manager could mean it’s an entry level role. It could also mean that it is a role that requires 10 years of experience. if you’re looking at the title, customer success manager, some keywords that you want to look out for are things like enterprise, strategic, or mid market. Those are going to be those more senior roles and are probably honestly just a waste of time as a career transitioner. I hate to say it, but those are not going to be the roles that you’re going to start in.
Now, there are also titles that more specifically refer to I would say a role that is, that requires less experience. So that might be customer success specialist. It might be customer success associate. Those are going to be roles that require less experience. I’ve also seen, especially in the ed tech world, titles like customer advocate. and then if you’re open to not starting in specifically a customer success role, but maybe transitioning from a more sales oriented role.
I have a customer, it’s actually great timing, um, who just sent me a message over the weekend. So I worked with her about a year and a half ago, and she transitioned into a sales specialist role. So she was kind of supporting the sales and customer success team. And that was her first role outside of teaching. At an ed tech company and now just over a year later, she is transitioning into A CSM role. So if you are open to sales roles, I would say that is sometimes a good stepping stone, but definitely do your research. A lot of those entry level sales roles are, they’re not for everybody. Um, especially if they’re cold calling heavy, I would say like just be very. Realistic and mindful of, you know, what’s going to make you happy and what you’re going to be willing to do. Cause. It’s a grind. other roles that I’ve thought of, I do have some clients who have started in more of like a support type of function where they are responding to customer inquiries. And that oftentimes is a good stepping stone into customer success as well.
Elizabeth: And then do you have any tips with, with the market? You know, I know A lot of teachers have said, well, it’s, it seems very hard to get into customer success or very competitive. Uh, would you agree? Disagree?
Carly: Yes. it is definitely
competitive. to be honest, I hear a lot of people say like, oh, it’s It’s competitive right now. The market’s really hard right now. I don’t think that’s going to change for a long time. So I think this market that we’re seeing right now is going to be kind of our new normal.
And it really has been for the last two or three years. So I would say just keep that in mind. If you’re thinking about making the transition, I wouldn’t. Wait for the market to quote unquote cool off because I don’t think that that’s going to happen. And the longer the runway you give yourself to make the transition, the better off you are. So it’s never too early to start. I don’t think the market is going to cool down anytime soon.
Elizabeth: go for it if you’re, if you’re interested. And we’d love to hear if you have a story about a specific teacher that you’ve worked with or seen someone get a new career after working with you.
Carly: It’s hard to pick just one because like I’ve said, we have worked with so many teachers over the last three years. Um, but what I did was I tried to think of ahead of this conversation, a couple of stories that stood out to me and specifically why. So that anyone who’s listening right now and is thinking about customer success can kind of like keep those stories in the back of their minds as like something that they can apply in their own job search.
So the first one, it’s actually two clients. They both transitioned from teaching into customer success roles. And I would say what stands out about them is they both took advantage of every resource that was available to them. these two clients specifically, like they stick out in my mind because they weren’t afraid. to try everything like LinkedIn, learning, reading all the books, attending all the networking events, doing a spireship, investing in coaching. And I know that investing in anything is risky, right? That’s, that’s kind of the, the deal with investing is it is a risk and sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t, but their attitude towards investing was very much like, if I’m going to invest in something, it might as well be myself because that is an investment that I have full control over, right?
If I’m investing in my skills, I have the control over taking advantage of those skills and putting them to good use. And that’s really the only investment where I feel like I can control the outcome to a degree. And that was the attitude of both of these clients and it definitely paid off.
I have another one who I, I kind of mentioned her story a little bit already. She started in a sales specialist role and just recently got promoted to customer success. And something that sticks out about her. Initial transition is she was very realistic about the transition and was very much forward thinking. she was willing to sacrifice a little bit of what she wanted initially in order to quote unquote, play the long game. And I think that shows in her career progression. So of course, when we started working together, she was like, I want to be a CSM. I want to be at an ed tech company. I want to be making this much money, but I want this to be a career. So I’m open to these other titles. I’m okay if it’s not ed tech to start, and I’m fine with it not being in my ideal pay range to start because I know that there’s opportunity in the long run. And that attitude definitely paid off for her because now she is. Not even a year and a half into her quote unquote new career. And now she’s got the title she wanted. She’s at an ed tech company, and she’s making the money that she wanted to make. So I think being a little bit more, uh, forward thinking and realizing that the first step doesn’t have to be the final step, right?
It can just be one step closer to where you want to go.
Elizabeth: Those are great success stories. I love to hear that. And especially like those first two used their resources, learned everything they could. And then this last one, her attitude, you know, she’s, she looked at it. It seems like kind of like a stepping stone is, you know, she’ll get that sales experience, which is only going to make her stronger at customer success.
Carly: Totally.
Elizabeth: I remember When I was looking for positions, I was kind of the same way in, at the beginning, like, Oh, ed tech, it needs to be an ed tech because I was a teacher. And so once like I opened my mind past that, there was just so many more opportunities available and you, you kind of like realize what’s out there.
Carly: it’s easy for me to sit here and say, like, “Oh, be realistic in your expectations and be flexible in that first step,” but I also understand how hard that can be. It makes me think of another client who she was teaching for 19 years. Making any sort of career transition after 19 years, like I have the utmost respect for people who can do that because that is so hard. Not just like physically hard to actually achieve, but mentally, emotionally, that is not easy to do. And I think that if you can be humble in the process and realize, you know, I’m not going to make a transition that is necessarily like equal where I’m taking my 19 years of teaching, and I’m all of a sudden at the same level as someone who’s 19 years in CS. And I know that that’s really hard. To accept. I truthfully, like I can tell you right now, I would have a very hard time accepting that. It’s kind of that idea of like starting back at the beginning, starting in an entry level role when you have so many years under your belt. But if you can look at it again, as this one year is just this tiny blip on the radar. And in the long run, it’s going to serve me. Then I think you will go farther, and I think things will happen more quickly for you.
but I do recognize how hard it is.
Elizabeth: Absolutely. how will people find you if they’re interested? They know they want to get some more customer success training. Where can they find your coaching services?
Carly: Yes. So I would say LinkedIn is a great place to follow me on. I’m always posting like different tips and tricks. And anytime I come out with a new free resource, LinkedIn is always the first place to hear about it.
Um, I do have a podcast, which is The Customer Success Career Coach. That’s where I’m getting into a lot more of the how to, so if I’m talking about interview skills, I’m like breaking it down bit by bit by bit, walking you through how to get better at interviewing resumes, networking, everything related to growing your career. And then if you go to my website, which is just carlyagar.com, there’s a whole section of free resources.
Elizabeth: When we wrap up, we love to ask this question and it’s just fun to hear, you know, from teacher’s perspectives, from, hiring managers perspectives and coaching perspectives. So you know, you started in sales marketing and customer success enablement.
Now you’re a coach. What have you learned about yourself during this process?
Carly: I have learned and II think it’s something that I learned about myself more recently, as opposed to earlier in my career. It’s just something that I didn’t notice back then, but I have learned that I can trust myself. And what I mean by that is if I ever found myself, you know, at a company or in a role where it didn’t feel good, or it wasn’t where I wanted to be. I could trust that I would use that experience to figure out, well, okay, what should my next step look like? How can I use this as a learning experience to make sure I don’t end up here again? the similar thing with career growth, just if I am craving that growth, or if there’s something that I want to be able to do in my career that I’m not getting out of my current role, I trust myself that I will, I’ll find a way to make that happen.
Elizabeth: Yeah Thank you for sharing that and for sharing your time today and your knowledge. and just appreciate you spending this morning or afternoon where you are with us. So thank you Carly for joining us.
Carly: Yes, thanks for having me. I know we chat all the time, but it’s fun to get to be able to do it like this.
Elizabeth: It’s so good. Well, I can’t wait for the episode to come out and everyone to be able to listen.
