Monday Guest Maria Rodberg-Y3-W46

Mohammed Alqaq November 6, 2024November 6, 2024

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Get to know Maria Rodberg

By: Mohammed Alqaq | November 11, 2024 | Year 3 – Week 46/2024

Hi, I’m Maria—a certified Customer Success Manager based in Helsinki. I’ve worked in sales all my life, and for the last six years, I’ve been focused on Customer Success. My main achievement in 2023 was achieving a 94% retention rate! In addition to my work, I also host professional events in Finland. At Customer Success – Helsinki NGO, we organize face-to-face events every other month, where we discuss the latest challenges in our field. Next year, I plan to expand to Sweden—exciting times!

We asked Maria 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?

All my life, I’ve worked in sales. I started in the FMCG industry, working as a Key Account Manager at Coca-Cola and Colgate-Palmolive, where I developed and nurtured relationships with key distributors in my territory, managed local promotions, led a team of sales representatives… It was a fun time! Then, my family moved to the Philippines, where travel and leisure are core industries.

I challenged myself by taking on a Sales Manager role at a large travel agency, where I was responsible for inbound sales. I sold tickets, destinations, accommodations, and tours for VIP tourists and groups who travelled to Philippines. It was incredibly interesting—at one point, I even developed my own three-day trip to the rice terraces (imagine creating your own Product!).

I often joined my groups, which gave me the opportunity to personally explore many islands. Working in travel industry felt as selling a paradise dream for a week or two.

How did you join Customer Success?

In 2018, my family moved to Finland, and I felt it was the right time to switch to IT and finally put my Computer Science degree to use 🙂 I joined OptiKPI as a Sales Manager and acquired our very first customers. We operate in a B2B and SaaS business model, so I quickly realized we needed to focus on the outcomes our customers achieve to ensure they wouldn’t churn. This is how I discovered Customer Success!

In 2020, I began studying Customer Success methodology and earned both basic and advanced Gainsight certifications. By the way, I highly recommend getting a proper certification—it provides a solid foundation in the philosophy. Customer Success isn’t just about being nice or a people-pleaser (although all the CSMs I know are very empathetic); it’s a strategic, revenue-driving role within the company.

Now, I can confidently say I’ve found my happy place in Customer Success. I absolutely love being a CSM, and I’m excited to share this passion by hosting events for the professional community in Finland.

How would you describe the ideal CSM candidate?

If I were hiring a CSM for my own team, I’d look for someone with clarity of mind—someone who listens more than they talk, who asks the “right” questions and is eager to understand the root cause, and who can explain complex concepts or challenges in simple terms.

I also believe that an ideal CSM should be empathetic, results-driven, and efficient.

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

Take a Customer Success certification to gain a solid understanding of the role.
Think deeply and focus on important tasks. Don’t get buried in customer communications—replying to emails and tickets alone doesn’t drive value. Remember it!
Understand how your customers expect to gain value from your product. Shadow calls, ask questions (to customers, your manager, and colleagues). Learn how to demonstrate this value effectively.
Make it a habit to update your manager weekly on the results you’ve achieved. Share 2–3 brief sentences about how you detected a churn risk and the actions you took, metrics you tracked, and any insights gained.

Think deeply and focus on important tasks.

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

Since I work fully remotely, I have a very flexible day—most mornings, I drop my kids off at school and then go for a short hike in the forest. A 30-minute morning walk clears my mind and helps me focus on the day ahead. Sometimes I listen to books, and sometimes I just enjoy the walk.

After that, I spend 3-4 hours working at home on my laptop, followed by lunch, and then a few more hours of work in the afternoon. I plan my week so that I have two days full of customer calls and another two days with team calls. It doesn’t always work out perfectly, but I prefer this structure when possible.

I also reserve Friday mornings for uninterrupted time with my Miro whiteboard and myself—I focus on strategic, cross-functional initiatives like Customer Journey mapping, creating a new Onboarding deck, or drafting a Welcome Doc for new team members.

One trick I often use during the workday is creating voice notes and asking ChatGPT to transcribe them, which I save as text notes in Google Keep. This habit helps me keep track of ideas, important reminders, and key takeaways from meetings. Try it out too!

What makes you feel inspired or motivated?

Seeing the growth of my customers or team members… Knowing firsthand how long and challenging the journey can be, watching customers achieve results in a tough, competitive market is priceless. And of course, I’m here with my product to help deliver value to them.

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

If I weren’t in sales and customer success, I’d be a pastry chef! It might surprise people because I also love sports 🙂 I bake almost daily for my teens—mostly cookies and pies. And I still have yet to invent my own Rödberg pie 🙂

Who do you look up to the most?

In Customer Success world, I love almost everything what Daphne or Greg are talking about – it is always very sharp and practical.

Mostly I look up to real people around me because I believe that great leaders like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos are humans like you and me, so I can find unexpected insights talking with sports athletes from the gym, or with attendees of my events in Helsinki, or other Monday Interview guests on this page.

What are your top 3 priorities now?

We’re developing an enhanced platform set to launch in Q1 2025, so my main priority is to ensure customers stay with us through this transition and are smoothly transferred to the new platform. It’s quite challenging, as the old product has issues we can’t fully address (since the new platform is our main strategic focus), which makes everything a bit tricky.

My three priorities now are:

Customer retention;
Ensuring the new product is fully prepared: data integration, provider integration, and product tutorials for customers;
Success stories.

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

Be open and proactive, things will happen in unexpected ways. Don’t complain—just work hard and even harder. Focus on value drivers—the strategic efforts that will provide the highest impact. And don’t forget to celebrate your achievements!

What’s your favorite book, and why?

Principles: Life and work by Ray Dalio (https://www.principles.com/) – this book is a fundamental book that I have as the Bible on my bookshelf, I open it from time to time and I always find answers for myself. Briefly, this book is about how to see reality clearly and interact with reality in more efficient way. How to make decisions better. The book has 50 author’s principles about work and life, I also formulated my own principles (not so many) – and once I have them, my life is much easier! My favorite quote: “Remember that each particular case is just a repetition of the past, determine what category of events it belongs to, and then apply carefully thought-out principles to it. This will allow you to radically reduce the number of decisions and also improve their quality.”

» 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?

Yes! While it’s not directly related to Customer Success, it was one of those moments when I felt I was born in this life for this purpose. I volunteered for Missing Kids Europe from 2019 to 2021, and I helped one family get back their kidnapped child, who was just 8 months old. This case took five long months and involved both Spain and Finland. When the mother was finally able to take her child back after those five months, I felt a (difficult to describe) sense of accomplishment—yes! I’ve made it!! As a volunteer, I assisted her with police matters, child welfare, Interpol, courts, etc.

What should I have asked you but didn’t?

A big part of my life is sports and hiking 🙂 My teenage kids play basketball, so I sometimes serve as a deputy referee.

I go to the gym 3-4 times a week and hike daily in the forest next to my house. In the last couple of years, I initiated “social sports”—instead of having coffee or lunch with colleagues or business partners, we play table tennis or badminton, where we can chat and play at the same time. I love that!