Emilia D’Anzica is the Founder and Managing Partner at Growth Molecules, a Vitally Service Partner, and a Vitally Success Network member.

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Customer Success requires effective communication skills, whether you’re an individual contributor, team leader, or executive. Over the years, I’ve learned the importance of being intentional as I engage with my customers and team members in my organization.

Whether you are meeting in person or virtually, one-on-one, or for a company-wide presentation, you must always use emotional intelligence to help guide your communications. 

Here, I share my key insights around intentional communication for Customer Success leaders to help establish a positive culture, convey the desired message, and support your team effectively.

Emotional Intelligence Is Essential

Regardless of your role, you need emotional intelligence. It’s more important than ever, especially when facing a customer, to understand how you feel and what kind of energy you bring to the call, the room, and yourself.

If you’re feeling anxious and running behind, it will bleed into the next call. Just standing up and stretching for 60 seconds before you get into that next meeting is important for resetting your mind so you can focus.

Every action as a leader becomes even more critical and requires emotional intelligence. Are you paying attention to what’s happening in the room and how your feelings or actions influence and impact the people around you?

For instance, if you’re doing something else during a meeting, like looking at your phone instead of paying attention, you’re giving your entire team permission to do the same. I think that’s one of the most important things that change as you advance from individual contributor to team leader or company executive — your behavior sets the tone for how others should behave. 

Prepare For One-on-One Meetings

First and foremost, you need an agenda when you’re having one-on-ones with direct reports. You may have three topics — max, four — and that’s a lot if you only have 30–45 minutes.

You need to understand the meeting's end goal. Do you need to get answers to include in your weekly reports to the board or the C-suite, or do you need to help that individual?

Then, understand who you’re working with. Is it someone fresh out of college, eager to soak in, learn, and grow their career, or someone seasoned who is excelling in their role, looking up to you and respecting you and your goals, wanting to grow to the next level or hit their goals? Either way, understand how you can help them.

Next, always consider your direct report’s background, such as gender and upbringing. I learned very quickly that different cultures vary in their communication styles. 

I was schooled in Canada and immigrated from Italy, and when I came to America, I found some American business practices rather jarring. I observed a very different style working with Israeli companies, where people want to get to the point with no niceties. (“Let’s get to business, and then we can party afterward.”) Understanding these elements should influence the way you communicate with them.

Communicate Upward With Respect and Data

My biggest regret starting my career is having this huge fear of talking to leadership. I had so much fear, especially as an immigrant to the United States, that my communication was shaky, and I avoided talking to leadership at all costs.

Now, I say, “Bring it on; let’s have a conversation!” It took me 20 years to build up my confidence. I have an MBA, 20-plus years of experience, and a different communication style.

When you speak with leadership, you must do it with respect. If you want to request something, bring data to back you up.

For example, if you want a pay raise, bring your accomplishments since they may not know them. And, if you feel like you’re heavily underpaid for the market, ensure you’ve done your homework so they can bring that back to HR and do their part for you.

Keep Attention With Engaging Presentations

It’s essential to understand who’s in the room if you want to keep people’s attention whether you’re giving a company presentation or a weekly or monthly update. Not everyone understands all those graphs and metrics up on the board or cares unless it will affect their commission or bonus. So, you need to make it about them or something they can relate to.

Make it interesting and a story. Have someone on your team share a story celebrating others in the room. If an onboarding went well, resulting in an upsell, call out the IT professionals who were brought in for the integrations or something cool that the client did with your product.

Beyond that, for any presentation, it’s important to remember to eliminate any nervous filler words that you use, such as “um,” “like,” or “you know.” Replace them with silence when you want to say that word, and you’ll quickly eliminate it from your vocabulary.

I think it’s important for people to bring their whole selves instead of trying to imitate or be someone else. Don’t hold back on who you genuinely are. If you want to say something exciting, make your voice louder. If you want to capture an audience, let there be silence at a key moment where they’re hanging on, wondering what’s going to happen. And talk with your hands if that’s what you do naturally, like I do.

Keep Written Communication Professional

When communicating through written digital methods like chat workspace tools such as Slack and Teams, always reread your communication before you send it. If you have a pit in your stomach that says, “Don’t send that,” or there seems to be a lot of aggression or anger in the message, hold back on sending it. You will probably regret it, and it may cost you your job.

Remember that this is business, even if you have resentment or anger toward someone. You never know what will come around. People move on to other chapters of their lives and can all help each other.

The present is only one phase of your career. So, you have to move on because you never know who’s reading that email or who’s watching, who may one day be at some top level that can help you in the future.

Developing Communication Skills in Team Members

You can develop intentional communication skills in your direct reports, so they’ll be ready once they have teams or departments of their own to manage. Give your team a platform to practice public speaking and presenting.

Instead of always leading your weekly team meeting, have them lead it. You can ask various team members to lead different sections of the meeting. This gives them instant credibility, practice, motivation, and an audience.

All too often, leaders are so worried about their own positions and about growing their own careers that they forget the people who are helping them get there. You must constantly nurture and enable them.

If someone’s doing a great job, make sure you call them out. Don’t take credit for something they’ve done. They deserve the recognition. Everyone knows you’re enabling them as a leader. So, you already have the credit. Now, let them shine! 

I will always remember the leaders who did that for me, letting me fail or stumble in front of the group and then privately giving me feedback afterward. That motivated me. But you should never humiliate team members by criticizing them in front of others. That’s not how you grow a team.

Thoughts On Career Development Advice

Ensure you educate your team on how they can get help promoting their careers. Tell them that they must work for it if they want something. If they want leadership to help them, they must tell them how and be prepared with relevant data.

That requires leadership to educate the team on how you can help them and what pieces of information they must prepare so you can help them succeed to the next level.

Things don’t fall on a silver platter. They just don’t.

Intentional Communication: Key to Customer Success

Intentional communication improves ordinary run-of-the-mill business communication by going beyond just checking the boxes. Often, Customer Success professionals tell me, “I got out of Sales because I don’t want to sell.” 

I want to gasp because Customer Success helps people achieve their goals and solve problems, which IS selling. To achieve growth for investors, companies, customers, and those serving, intentional communication is often the forgotten essential skill, as is an understanding of your audience and a plan for partnering to help them with their goals and challenges.

Visit the Growth Molecules YouTube channel for more insights from Emilia and her team.