By @Giv Parvaneh, August 2022

Introduction

Account Management and Customer Success Management are often confused and used interchangeably. However, there are key differences between the two roles and this is an important distinction, especially in Web3 ecosystems.

What does an “Account Manager” do?

As the title suggests, Account Managers are mostly focused on customer accounts. Accounts are business relationships that typically involve some sort of financial engagement. Account Managers work closely with Sales teams to ensure products and services purchased by the customer meet their expectations. Further, the Account Manager is responsible for renewals and upselling other services for a deeper and longer commitment with the customer.

What does a “Customer Success Manager” do?

Customer Success Managers are similar to Account Managers in that they are the single point of contact between the customer and the business but it is less focused on sales. Instead, they are responsible for helping customers achieve whatever goals they have. This will vary from customer to customer and a key part of this role is to become a close ally and to understand the customer’s goals, needs, and challenges.

Customer Success at Harmony

With the above definitions in mind, let’s take a closer look at what Customer Success means through a web3 lens.

Whether our customers are developers, grantees, or partners, each one must have a single point of contact that they can reach out to for support. Through an initial onboarding process, the assigned Customer Success Manager will go deep with the customer and fully grasp their goals and challenges. For example, does the customer need introductions to tokenomics experts, investors, or engineering help? Are they looking to build and expand their own community? Do they need exposure through co-marketing efforts?

By checking in with customers regularly, the Customer Success Manager will earn trust and ensure they have everything they need to reach and exceed their goals.

Additionally, the Customer Success Manager is also responsible for ensuring the customer is informed of any internal decisions or incidents that may directly or indirectly affect the customer. For example, scheduled maintenance windows, key protocol upgrades, deprecation of tools, and incident management.

Conclusion

Customer Success is a critical role to ensure the growth of any ecosystem. By being customer-obsessed and building trust with customers, Harmony will inevitably thrive and stand out as a project that supports and treats its users with the respect they deserve. This is a quality that is not easily achieved and it trumps technical superiority against the competition and will attract an entire generation of projects that want to build on Harmony.