In my experience, around 3-4 hours per week should be spent in meetings to ensure adequate communications and engagement. Develop a regular cadence for meetings with clear purpose. I recommend establishing these four meetings for your Customer Success operations
This is the most important meeting from the list. It keeps everyone on the team informed, connected and calibrated. Here is the format we use at Commerce7:
“Since the last Standup, I have…” (how many tickets resolved/responses sent yesterday, if you wrote doc articles, made progress on a project, etc.)
“Before the next Standup, I will…” (set a target for resolutions/responses, other work you plan on tackling today)
“What’s slowing me down is…” (any blockers or impediment in accomplishing the task)
Each team member comes ready with their answer to each of these questions every morning. I recommend keeping this meeting brief and scheduling spin-off meetings if something comes up that’s worth discussing further.
For us, the weekly team meeting is a chance to review changes, check in on our metrics, discuss bugs and feature requests. This should be attended by everyone in the department. The department lead should facilitate the meeting and prepare content for discussion. We start by discussing team KPIs. Then, we go over operational updates and discussion items. Lastly, we go over customer feature requests submitted in the last week and assess how valuable they are. The product manager attends this portion of the meeting and chimes in with their thoughts. This helps the team learn about the product direction and strategy. The topics covered can really vary. Find the right mix for you and your operations.
One-on-ones are the most important meeting for your team member’s performance. In my experience, they increase employee happiness and motivation. The meeting has to be recurring. They may be rescheduled on very rare occasions but never cancelled. They should be authentic and enjoyable for both parties involved. Like a lunch or a walk with someone you want to impress. They should never feel forced. For those reasons, it’s best not to schedule too many of these on the same day. I’ve read a good rule of thumb for length and frequency - around 30 minutes per week since the last one-on-one. Have them weekly or bi-weekly.
I recommend creating an agenda. Here is a format I use:
Save the link to the shared file on the meeting invite so it’s easy for both parties to add items. Topics mostly revolve around business updates and career growth. Figure out how much you want to spend on each before the meeting. It’s nice to have a mix of what went well, what needs improvement and ideas.
Retrospective is a common meeting for development and product teams. But they can also work with customer success teams, especially regarding processes. The retrospective gives you a chance to reflect on the last month and be better next month. Here is how I run retrospectives.
