Monday Guest Keishla Ceaser-Jones-Y3-W36

Mohammed Alqaq September 2, 2024September 9, 2024

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Get to know Keishla Ceaser-Jones

By: Mohammed Alqaq | September 2, 2024 | Year 3 – Week 36/2024

Hello, Customer Success Middle East. I am Keishla Ceaser-Jones (she/her), and I live just outside of Austin, Texas but born and raised in Houston. I live with my husband of over 30 years, Major. We are parents of adult children who live in the city.

Professionally, I serve as a Senior Director, Partner Success at EAB where I lead across 3 teams and two products in support of higher education enrollment leaders. My team is responsible for post implementation service & adoption strategy as well as commercial objectives for renewal and expansion.

We asked Keishla to take us through a journey telling us about her career path, how she spends her workday, what advice she can share with someone starting as a customer success manager, and many other questions.

Enjoy reading this interview

Tell us about your career path?

When I reflect on my journey, I see it in four phases. Like many, I went to college after high school, but life took me down the path of motherhood shortly after. I entered the workforce and grew in sales management largely in the retail sector and the automotive industry. I developed my leadership, sales, and marketing acumen during this time.

Once my kids were in their early elementary school years, I returned to school with the goal of becoming a teacher. I was searching for “work-life balance” before it was a coined term, and I strongly believed that entering the field of education would allow me to have the time I needed for my family while flexing my passions for history and literature. I spent nearly a decade in the classroom teaching English/Language Arts and World History including Advanced Placement. In addition to my teaching responsibilities, I was a sponsor for Model UN and our districts first Gay-Straight Alliance club. I also organized and led six student trips to Europe offering them opportunities for cultural enrichment, learning, and fun!

After several successful years as an education, I moved into the burgeoning EdTech space in 2012 where I built a strong commercial career starting on an inside sales team. Eventually, I moved to a field role where I flexed my K12 subject-matter expertise in curriculum sales and training where I grew to a role that worked at the intersection of sales, marketing, and product supporting both internal teams and partner-facing engagement.

How did you join Customer Success?

After spending a little over five years in sales, I had a strong desire to move back into leadership and shift to support longer-term engagement with partners. I entered the CS profession at the director level role leading a team of partner success managers who supported both the service and renewal portions of the partner journey. About three years ago, I moved to a senior director role managing a similar team of leaders and success managers.

I enjoy supporting customers in solving their challenges and achieving their goals with smart tech tools. Equally, I see my success managers as my internal customer, and I want to make sure they are supported with the tools, training, and strategy to be effective in their work for our partners and the business.

How would you describe the ideal CSM candidate?

An ideal CSM candidate is:

a clear communicator, conveys complex ideas in an understandable way,
both customer-centric and results-oriented, focused on customer outcomes and business goals,
a problem-solver and strategy generator addresses problems in a timely manner and looks to develop new ideas to deal with partner and business needs,
a good collaborator works effectively across teams to meet customer needs,
adaptable and flexible, handling changing circumstances with a positive attitude,
a continuous learner stays updated on best practices in customer success and industry trends,
and works from a space of joy and delight.

What one piece of advice would you give to someone just starting out as a Customer Success Manager?

Don’t confuse relationship-building with being likable. Build a relationship that is professionally congenial, but the core of the relationship should be on your shared experience around their work and your product or service. Be friendly, but don’t confuse friendliness with business security.

Don’t confuse relationship-building with being likable.

Can you take us on a journey describing what your workday looks like?

I would rather like to tell you about my week over a day. Each week, I am focused on supporting my team and driving towards our commercial and service goals.

It starts with meeting with my leadership team and reviewing our commercial progress, celebrating wins, identifying commercial or service areas, partners, or team members that need attention or support, responding to risk.

We take a cross-functional approach to reviewing the business to include sales, product, marketing, operations, and personnel. Throughout the week, I spend time working in those work streams with my counterparts to ensure that teams are working together effectively.

I see my role as a connector of strategy that helps drive the business forward.

What makes you feel inspired or motivated?

I am motivated to show up as my best-self every day and help people around me be their best selves. I like to build and create things that are effective and last. I am inspired by learning new things or making connections between ideas that serve a need. The pursuit of knowledge and the chance to grow in new areas fuels me. Each new piece of information or skill I acquire adds to my drive.

What’s one thing that people are generally surprised to find out about you?

I am an adult learner and first in my family to graduate from college. I went back to school after starting my family, so I took a non-traditional route to where I am today.

Who do you look up to the most?

On a personal/internal level, I look up to my mom. My Mom is the cornerstone of our family and growing up, when my Dad got sick, she held everything and all of us together.

My Mom has always been a teacher for me and all my siblings to first, be good people and be of help to others, and second, to go after what you want.

Outside of my personal life, there are many figures past and present that capture my mind, so today, I would share that I admire Toni Morrison. She was not only an extraordinary writer but also a powerful voice for African American culture and history. Her ability to capture the complexities of identity, race, and human experience in her novels has always deeply resonated with me.

Morrison’s courage to tackle difficult and often uncomfortable subjects through her storytelling has inspired me to approach challenges with honesty and integrity. She taught me the importance of using one’s voice to advocate for truth and justice, and I strive to bring that same sense of purpose and depth to my work and interactions with others

What are your top 3 priorities now?

My top 3 priorities as a human being is to continue to be present for my family, get my wellness and work-from-home habits in a better place, and increase my IRL engagement in my local area.

Professionally, I want to continue building out our health scorecard, continue our integration of our customer success CRM, and execute the next phase of our customer journey with our outcomes-based/ROI tools and processes.

What advice would you give to Customer Success Managers to grow and develop their careers?

Know the Fundamentals

Familiarize yourself with the key building blocks of CS practice
Transition from tactical tasks to understanding the broader business impact of Customer Success.

Enhance Your Communication Skills

Be an active listener both with your customers and in your internal teams.
Work on clear and concise communication of your ideas and speak on impact

Make Connections

Understand how what you do day in and day out matters to the business
Find a Mentor/Be a Mentor
Be curious. Ask why?

Be a Title-less Leader

Lead by example and exhibit model behaviors
Develop your influencing skills to inspire and motivate your colleagues

Measure and Showcase Your Impact

Track Success: Use metrics like customer satisfaction and retention rates to measure your impact.
Share Achievements: Highlight your successes to gain recognition and support for career advancement.

What’s your favorite book, and why?

I have stacks of books that I love that have spoken to me in different seasons in my life. So it is really hard to pick a favorite. So, I will share this book, The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter by Michael D. Watkins.

I purchased this book when I stepped back into a leadership role about 7 years ago. While it’s written to executive leaders, anyone stepping into a people management role can benefit from these practical approaches to help you make the most of a transition period. This book stays on my desk, and I reference it frequently for it’s frameworks and approach.

» Check out the 10 Books a CSM should read to advance and improve their skills.

Have you had your “I’ve made it” moment yet?

I am proud of my accomplishments and the person I am today. I couldn’t have imagined that I would be a customer success business leader, largely because such a thing didn’t exist when I was a young woman.

My work has taken me to a lot of cool places and granted me so many wonderful experiences. But I respect and fully own my journey and can find moments of having “made it” at every turn.

I jokingly wrote in a Facebook post a few years ago, “you know you’ve made it when you can buy grapes without weighing them!”

What should I have asked you but didn’t?

What is the best praise you ever received? What made it so good?

The best praise I’ve ever received is from my former students. Each year, I asked my students to write letters of advice to the next year’s students. In it they shared things about me as a teacher that were how I was hoping to show up: supportive, challenging, fun, and knowledgeable. Occasionally, I got some negative feedback, but it wasn’t such that I couldn’t see where that student was coming from and how I could use it to grow.

In two instances, when I left an organization, I got amazing feedback from colleagues and team members. I was humbled by their kind words about my work. I try to show up every day and first do no harm and secondly, I want to leave things a bit better than it was when I showed up. Sometimes I get a chance to move the needle in a big way, other times it’s inches. Sometimes it moves backwards, and I hope to find the learning in that to help me next time. I really appreciate praise that makes me “feel” valued and seen.