Best Customer Success Certifications 2021: The Ultimate List

Whether you are someone venturing into customer success, or looking to enhance your career in customer success, or looking to upgrade the knowledge and skills you already have- you can do that with a customer success certification. If you have wonder what the best certifications for aspiring customer success managers are, you are at the right place. You need to choose the right course that offers trainings, more information, and certifications.

To stay abreast with emerging trends, developments, and information you need to continue professional development with customer success trainings and certifications. These customer success certifications can give immense value and create an edge in the complex market. You can also hone your skills, increase earning potential, and expand professional network. In this list, you set a rundown of some stellar customer success certification so you can choose which is right for you.

Best Customer Success Certifications 2021

SuccessHacker Certifications and Training Workshops

Helmed by industry CS leaders such as Todd Eby, James Scott, Andrew Marks, and Aaron Thompson, SuccessCoaching offers multiple workshops and online training programs for customer success professionals. The course is led by trainers who have 60+ years of combined experience in the customer success space. They teach customer success managers best practices that enable them to engage, manage, and retain customers. There are four levels in the course-

• CCSM Level 1 focusing on engaging, managing, and retaining customers. Designing plans for onboarding success and building business reviews around the same.
• CCSM Level 2 curriculum focuses on refining the ability to manage multiple accounts and internal relationships.
• CCSM Level 3 focuses on developing skills that one needs to become a strategic customer success manager.
• CCSM Level 4 curriculum is based on instilling skills that drive portfolio or account expansion

The curriculum ranges from basics to instilling skills that drive expansion and increase in customer accounts. You will also learn how to manage time effectively, deal with customer discontent, NPS for customer success, and communication management. For course details, click here.

TriTuns Customer Success Training Program

This is another customer success training and certification program. The course is designed for early career professionals. Customer success leaders, and customer success teams to improve their skills and credentials. The course is great in 2021 as it is great path for those looking to break into customer success. One can boost skills and accelerate a career online. It is great for individuals who like learning at their own pace and prefer self-study. It is 100% online and highly interactive. CS Mastermind is another professional development programs that enhances skills via online training, group coaching calls, instructor-led sessions and more.

The online program gives subscribers 3-month access to the course. You will also get access to fast-paced, dynamic, problem-solving workshops. You can gain knowledge while sorting specific challenges in your organization. The participants also get a certificate that is shareable on your LinkedIn in recognition of professional caliber. For course details, click here.

Cisco Customer Success Manager

This remote certification course will help you drive business outcomes and become a trusted advisor of customers. The Cisco customer success manager certification offers solid skills and knowledge to deliver value to customers. You can identify adoption barriers, validate solutions, interpret customer usage data, help customers increase renewals, implement new frameworks, and cultivate better sales opportunities across the customer lifecycle. The course can also help you prepare for the Cisco Customer Success Manager (DTCSM) exam. The Cisco Customer Success Manager Specialist certification has a validity of three years. To earn the recognized Cisco certification, you need to pass the following exam- 820-605 DTCSM exam which tests discovery, benchmarking, evaluation, and enablement. The program offers experiential learning based on use cases, intuitive content, best-practice procedures and more. You can also understand key phrasings and ideas that are essential to succeed in a CSM job. For course details, click here.

PracticalCSM’s Certified Customer Success Management Professional (CCSMP) Customer Success Certification

This is a high value practical training experience. The CCSMP training program answers important questions such as “what”? “why”? “how”? The course provides tools that will ensure high quality task performance while improving efficiency and productivity. The topics in the certification include-

• What customer success means and why it is important
• Understanding the value customer success provides to the CSM and customer
• Benefits of a combined framework using skills and knowledge
• Customer engagement
• Consultative techniques that will help understand customer’s initiative and their needs
• Help customer manage change effectively
• Help customers report, measure, manage, and track value across the organization
• Report and measure customer success activities for improved customer advocacy

The CCSMP certification is based on the Practical CSM framework that works across the entire customer lifecycle. For course details, click here.

Like what you are reading?
Sign up for our newsletter

Customer Success Certificate Program by Portland State University

Customer success certificate program is a 12-week program that offers insights into the best practices, key fundamental principles, and examples of customer success. The program is a mix of weekly live sessions led by instructors with independent structured learning. Top level guest expert can also share their real-world insights and experiences.

On the successful completion of the program, you will get professional certificate as a Certified Customer Success Manager (CCSM). There is ample student interaction for professionals in any industry looking to move to customer success professionals. On completion, you will gain knowledge on-

• Customer success best practices and key concepts
• Navigate typical customer success challenges
• Develop success plans
• Chart metrics for customer success

For course details, click here.

CSM Certification Program – 15 Classes

From the stable of The Success League, you can build a good career in customer success with this comprehensive certification. The 15-class series has everything you need to grow your career including developing deep level account plans, creating and managing account portfolio, onboarding customers effectively, conducting business reviews for internal or external purposes, managing a customer life cycle, and tackling difficult conversations. These are live, instructor-led classes that require an active internet connection. Participants or course takers will get material as they sign up for the program. For course details, click here.

Customer Success Masterclass by WnTD

The masterclass is a combination of three levels. Let’s cover each level for better understanding.

• Customer Success Master class Level 1 is one that covers the fundamentals like strategic thinking, customer engagement and more. Some core aspects discussed include onboarding fundamentals, customer success metrics, managing churn risks, renewals and expansion techniques among others.
• Customer Success Master class Level 2 covers aspects such as managing customer health and customer portfolio, internal advocacy, customer education, and QBR management.
• Customer Success Master class Level 3 is all about effective sales to CS kickoff calls, renewals and expansion hacks, managing churn risks, enhancing product adoption, creating customer success plans and more.

For course details, click here.

CCSR Certified Customer Success Representative by AA ISP

 This accreditation board is established to maintain a set of competencies for customer success representatives to meet. The certification sets the bar high so that students can be capable of adding value to their hiring companies. Some of the core areas in the program include onboarding meetings, customer meetings, objection handling, communication skills, and more. The main measures include reliable testing, conflict of interest management, and impartiality. There are certai requirements to take the course, though. They include completing one of the following-

• Minimum of 32 hours of customer success specific instructor-led training. For example- college sales programs, internships, or bootcamps
• 6 months or more experience in customer support, customer service, or sales development

For course details, click here.

Graduate Certificate in Customer Success Management by RMIT

Gain the skills, tools, and knowledge required to keep and manage customers. Drive customer value and thereby increase company value with top class approaches in customer success strategy and accelerate your career in customer success management. The course aims to teach its students customer value strategies, understand customer data, increase customer longevity and loyalty. You can also track, predict, and optimize customer behavior with your learnings from this course. Course takers will also better communicate with stakeholders and offer better experience design. For course details, click here.

Customer Success Academy’s CS Course

This course is specially for customer success managers or personnel looking for a break in customer success in the SaaS industry. A SaaS company with a stellar customer success team is like a sinking boat and that’s what this course swears by. There are certifications for individuals and teams. You can pick any area based on your experience, interest, and education. Some of the areas mentioned are account management, technical services, team management, support engineer, program management, experience design, and more. These courses come with project plans, private group forums, email lessons, and more. You can claim free customer success badges that can be added to your LinkedIn profile. For course details, click here.

Customer Success Manager: Fundamentals to Your CSM Career by Udemy

This course helps you understand the job of a customer success manager. You will be prepared to handle a customer success manager job interview. The course content includes the basics of customer success management, the purpose, people, and culture aspect to it, important customer success terminology, and keys to becoming a successful CSM. You will also learn how to reduce time to value increase initial victory and reduce churn to an extent. You will also learn customer profiling and all about customer success gaps. The course is open for all and anybody who wants to be a CSM. For course details, click here.

Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) program by CXPA

A certified customer experience professional CCXP program is one that offers professional recognition to individuals with deep knowledge of customer experience. CXPA is an independent professional credential. The main benefits of the course are-

• Provides framework for advancement
• Validates expertise and credibility
• Increases how the CSM can be marketed
• Shows commitment to improve

The core competencies required include customer-centric culture, experience design, innovation, measurement, ROI, metrics, organizational adoption, and customer insight. For course details, click here.

Customer Success- How to Exceed Your Customers Expectations by Udemy

This course by Chuck Wall is to understand customer expectations. You can deliver value to customers and improve customer loyalty. The course comprises of video lectures, downloadable resources, and tools. You will also learn how customers perceive value and what their real needs are. You can also understand how small changes impact customer expectations to loyalty. For course details, click here.

Managing Difficult Customers by ICMI

This course by International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) is for dealing with difficult customers. The certification is great to add to your portfolio when you are looking at retaining customers, specially. There are five modules in the course. They include difficult customers, key considerations while knowing one, techniques that help, managing escalations, and stress management. You will also learn concepts such as active listening, paraphrasing, and more frameworks. For course details, click here.

Bottom Line

These are the best customer success certification or training courses you can take to become a better customer success manager. You will also improve your project management skills, boost your resume, improve chances of growing within the company and more. The scope for a customer success manager with a certification is huge and the right choice will add a lot of value to it. You can amplify your SaaS companies’ subscriptions and develop aptitude to face customer success challenges. You will also be able to identify ways to establish strong business ties with customers and enhance your retention aspects while reducing churn.

Get the #1 Customer Success Platform

For Growing CS Teams

Get a Demo