What Does a Customer Success Engineer (CSE) at a B2B SaaS Company Actually Do?

In the current B2B SaaS companies the IT solution lives in a cloud and is updated periodically. That means a lot of technical questions can come up during the installation of the SaaS product as well as during its ongoing use of it.

Since not all customers are tech-savvy, the B2B SaaS company needs somebody who will resolve these technical issues for their clients and this person needs to understand the technical side of the product. 

CSE solves technical issues of the clients

That is the main reason a B2B SaaS company needs a CSE. The CSE at Leadfeeder answers technical questions and is invited into the conversations and calls with the clients by their Sales, Support, and Customer Success Managers colleagues.

When, for example, the client has an issue with the installation of the tracker script, the CSE goes on a call as soon as possible to help. This way the client does not have to wait but gets to start using the Leadfeeder product right away.

The same applies when it comes to solving issues connected to the integration of the Leadfeeder product to other platforms and/or using the Leadfeeder web application.

CSE works with developers

To answer technical questions, the CSE needs to have some technical background and technical knowledge of the product. At Leadfeeder, CSE's work directly with the developers. This allows the CSE to understand the computer program behind the product and what impact it has on the entire life cycle of the product.

In order to do this, CSE's at Leadfeeder need to understand how the backend and frontend work together, what APIs are and how they are called, be able to read technical documentation, and have to have some HTML/javascript coding skills.

This kind of technical background and knowledge allows the CSE to talk in technical jargon with the developers and help contribute ideas on how to solve the technical issues of the clients. 

While resolving clients' technical questions, CSE's can also participate in bug catching and testing new features for the developers.

CSE creates a shared knowledge base

By answering the technical questions of the sales, support, and colleagues, CSE's get an enormous amount of knowledge about the product. To use the knowledge, CSE's at Leadfeeder take partial care of the internal and external shared knowledge base.

With every client’s question answered, the CSE is in the best position to decide if such an answer could help all the other customers and update the help center articles accordingly. If the answer is more suitable for internal solutions to similar issues, the CSE updates or creates inputs in the internal knowledge base.

That way all the other colleagues can benefit from the information, and find an answer for a similar question in the future without the need to ask the CSE the same question again. This means in the long run the CSE is saving time and work for new, more important technical questions.

CSE educates their colleagues

Because CSEs have the opportunity to learn so much about the product, they can help train their sales, support, and customer success managers (business) colleagues on the technical side of the product. At Leadfeeder this includes providing hands-on training on the tracker script installation, API calls, integrations, automation, etc.

Regular intra-company training allows all business colleagues to feel more comfortable with the technical side of the product and provide better help to Leadfeeder customers.

CSE brings the customer issues to the Product Managers 

CSEs have direct access to clients’ potential struggles with the product so they're best suited to report these issues back to Product Managers in order to improve the product and its features. At Leadfeeder, CSEs have regular meetings with a Product Manager and marketing to improve the automated onboarding process of potential new customers.

The CSE can also report other product feature improvement needs to Product Managers through the internal process as well as participate in the introduction of new features.

CSEs sit in the middle

By working closely with so many departments in the B2B SaaS company, CSEs can easily become the go-to person to ask questions about which developer works on which part of the product, how a certain feature works in connection with another feature, etc.

It means the CSE has a bigger picture of the product, its lifecycle, and its use by the company’s clients. The Leadfeeder CSEs are kind of a “Jack of all trades”. They foster interdepartmental communication in the company and save time for the developers as well as provide fast problem solving for the Leadfeeder clients.