This article was originally published in December 2019 and has been updated and expanded in October 2023 to reflect new advancements and developments in Customer Success.
No matter your industry or job role, the work landscape today is continuously evolving: best practices change, technology changes, and customer behaviors and needs change. If you’re not constantly learning, you’ll soon find yourself likely lagging behind your colleagues and competitors, not meeting the expectations of your employer, and potentially losing out to others at promotion time.
For those in Customer Success, staying on the cusp of changing workplace needs and practices is crucial. That’s because the skills necessary to excel at Customer Success are rapidly evolving, as are the tools, technologies, and even expectations of customers. Because of this, continuing professional development is a valuable asset for anyone working in Customer Success, particularly when it's supplied by an accredited program.
Whether you’re just starting out in your Customer Success career or if you have many years of experience in your role, how do you make sure your skills are current and you’re up to date on the latest best practices so you can perform your job to the best of your ability? The answer is with continuing professional development.
In this article, we will cover:
What is continuing professional development (CPD)
The role of CPD in Customer Success
The importance of CPD and accredited programs
The benefits of CPD to you and your employer
How to find high-quality CPD programs that suit your needs
What is Continuing Professional Development?
Continuing professional development (CPD), also known as continuing education (CE), is the ongoing intentional maintenance and development of the knowledge and skills needed to adequately perform at your job.
Within different industries and geographies, there can be different terminology and different guidelines used. For example, CPD can be known as Continuing Education (CE) or Continuing Professional Education (CPE). It is important to note that these terms are often completely interchangeable with CPD and are both focused on a structured approach to lifelong learning.
Professional development could mean honing your current skills, developing them to a new level, filling knowledge gaps, or learning new skills that will allow you to perform your job better, expand your job role, or prepare you for a potential promotion or career change.
These skills may be gained informally through such activities as reading blog posts, listening to podcasts, or attending conferences and networking events. However, many employers use the term “continuing professional development” to refer to formal training or education programs, and may require a certain amount of development activity to be carried out and documented each year.
In professions where there is a requirement for employees to complete a certain amount of CPD on a regular basis, the CPD activities generally must be structured and accredited, meaning they’ve gone through a rigorous third-party review to ensure the quality of the training material and its delivery meet industry standards.
Why Is CPD Important?
The importance of continuing professional development should not be underestimated, especially when we look at the rapidly changing nature of the work landscape today. The skills and requirements for jobs are quickly changing, fueled partly by technological advancements and other economic factors. The World Economic Forum estimates that in the next five years, 44% of workers' skills will be disrupted and that “six in 10 workers will require training before 2027.” The top training needs are predicted to include both analytical and creative thinking, as well as AI and big data.
Continuing professional development is a powerful tool that can be used to combat and even eliminate skills gaps in your organization. So, how does CPD typically work?
Sometimes, CPD is mandated by employers or professional organizations, ensuring a constantly developing workforce and giving employees a clear path to success within their current role and progression to future ones. Despite this, individual contributors have a level of personal responsibility for ensuring that their knowledge and skills are up-to-date and that they’re not left behind.
Anyone who works within a regulated business sector (e.g. banking, accountancy, and financial services) is likely to be required to track and progress their CPD in order to maintain their license to practice and/or professional qualifications. Regulatory bodies are established to ensure that the public receives services of the required standard, so CPD is taken very seriously.
In non-regulated sectors, CPD is a valuable way for organizations to continuously invest in their employees, stay innovative, and provide exceptional service to customers.
The Role of CPD in Customer Success
While continuing professional development is crucial in all industries today, it’s particularly central to the work and outcomes of Customer Success teams. Research shows that technical skills rapidly become outdated and that in just two and a half years, they lose half of their value. For non-technical skills, that half-life is about five years.
Customer Success teams simply can’t afford to be left in the dust. Their work is far too important to organizational outcomes and business goals, and Customer Success Managers play too large a role in customer retention. If Customer Success Managers are not completing CPD, their skills, knowledge, and understanding of the industry will quickly become dated and obsolete.
On the other hand, Customer Success Managers who do complete regular CPD are learning cutting-edge skills, competencies, and practices, which they can instantly put to work. There are accredited CPD programs for every level of Customer Success work, meaning that a Customer Success professional doesn’t have to feel like they hit a ceiling. Newer CSMs can participate in beginner-level CPDs, while more seasoned CSMs can develop more advanced skills and practices.
Continuing professional development for Customer Success is similar to an upskilling program, and when you choose an accredited program, you’re ensuring it’s a targeted, specific program that is designed to achieve industry-specific results.
What Are The Benefits of CPD?
Continuing professional development is essential in helping individuals, leaders, and entire functions in Customer Success to keep skills and knowledge up to date. Specifically, accredited CPD Customer Success training courses, workshops, and events enable professionals to maximize the benefits of participating by applying the time towards satisfying their individual CPD requirements.
Benefits for Individual Contributors in Customer Success
CPD ensures that you and your knowledge stay up to date with current industry trends and best practices. By investing in your continued education, the currency of your knowledge and skills won’t become outdated.
CPD ensures that you maintain, develop, and enhance the knowledge, understanding, and skills you need to deliver exceptional service to your customers and be an asset to your colleagues.
CPD helps you continue to become more effective in the workplace and make meaningful contributions to your team. This allows you opportunities for career advancement.
CPD demonstrates your dedication to your profession, which is a key trait valued by employers and recruiters.
CPD opens you up to new possibilities instead of just doing what you’ve done before.
CPD and associated certifications will assist you in building your professional reputation, gaining credibility with clients, and becoming an attractive candidate for new employers.
CPD offers the opportunity to engage and learn from others in your field through interaction and idea-sharing at events, during courses, and in online discussions.
Benefits for Customer Success Leaders & Employers
For Customer Success leaders and employers, the primary benefit of CPD is ensuring that standards across the department and organization are high and consistent. In Customer Success, this means that desirable customer outcomes can be achieved in a predictable, repeatable fashion. It also means that individual contributors are exhibiting high levels of proficiency in the skills and competencies necessary for excelling in Customer Success.
CPD can also promote greater work engagement from the workforce and general commitment to job roles. Having a number of employees undertake CPD allows for the sharing of best practices and support. CPD also contributes to maximizing Customer Success potential, improves team morale, leads to better customer outcomes, and provides a useful benchmark during the annual review process.
What is Accredited CPD Training?
By pursuing accredited continuing professional development in Customer Success, team members can ensure they deliver a high level of service that meets the expectations of both their organizations and their customers.
CPD is critical to ensuring that you continue to develop your skills and knowledge, that your employers always get the best quality of work, and that customers get the best possible outcomes.
Accredited CPD training means the learning activity has reached the required Continuing Professional Development standards and benchmarks. The learning value has been scrutinized to ensure integrity and quality. The CPD Certification Service provides recognized independent CPD accreditation compatible with global CPD requirements.
The Benefits of Choosing an Accredited CPD Program
A well-crafted and delivered continuing professional development program in Customer Success delivers benefits to you, your employer, and, ultimately, the customers you service.
Prospective students will find that there are many programs offered that purport to provide you with the knowledge needed to develop your professional skills. However, there are a number of compelling reasons to look for an accredited program when choosing to pursue your professional development in Customer Success.
Specific to Customer Success: First and foremost, any accredited CPD program a Customer Success employee goes through is field-specific. This is critical because it’s not enough to just supply “training” to Customer Success Managers: instead, they need comprehensive education in the skills and competencies necessary for the highest-calibur Customer Success work. Only accredited CPD programs in Customer Success can supply this.
Superior Education Standards: Accredited programs have to demonstrate adherence to the highest external standards of educational quality in order to achieve accreditation.
Up-to-Date Curriculum: Accredited programs must maintain their status through a periodic renewal of their accreditation, showing continuous quality improvements, including keeping up with the latest developments in the field.
Increased Marketability: Employers recognize that students who have graduated from accredited programs were trained through a program with superior standards and this provides the learner with a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Risk Mitigation: Like any quality control, accreditation demonstrates that the program providers are serious about providing a superior learning experience and have demonstrated this commitment by seeking a formal evaluation of the program for compliance with a set of well-defined standards by a third-party accrediting body.
Finding The Right CPD Programs
There are plenty of options for pursuing ongoing education in Customer Success, but only a select handful of programs fit the bill for accredited continuing professional development in this field. Because of this, it’s important to find a program that is both high quality and fits your personal and professional needs.
With that in mind, here are some tips for finding a program of this nature.
Look for Accreditation
All programs are not created equal. The first indicator of a high-quality CPD program is to look for one that has been accredited by a recognized third party, such as The CPD Certification Service. By achieving accreditation, this denotes the program meets a strict set of standards for content and delivery. The learning value has been scrutinized to ensure integrity and quality. It denotes a positive reputation and credibility and can give you an assurance that the program will be worthwhile.
For employers that mandate a certain amount of CPD from their employees, accreditation of the CPD programs is usually a requirement. This ensures that the employees are learning relevant, thorough information that is structured in such a fashion that it maximizes retention of the information and can be practically applied in the employee’s job role.
Relevant Curriculum
Before choosing a CPD program in Customer Success, make sure the topics covered are relevant to your job role or the role you’re aspiring to. Read the curriculum carefully to ensure what you learn will help you hone your skills or fill in gaps in your Customer Success skillset and that you’re not going to waste your time learning irrelevant or repeat material.
What might a relevant Customer Success curriculum look like? It should specifically include skills and competencies relevant to Customer Success, such as active listening, having difficult conversations, problem solving, relationship management, and customer lifecycle management, for example. It should also include different learning mediums, such as videos, workbooks, real-world exercises, and resources.
Fits Your Resources
We’re all bound by certain constraints, most notably time and money. High-quality CPD programs don’t have to be expensive, and oftentimes employers will help foot the bill since it’s required or beneficial to them. Also, take into account how long the program will take to complete and what the time commitments might be. You don’t want to start a program just to find out that you can’t complete it because it conflicts with your other professional and personal obligations.
Suits Your Learning Style
Continuing professional development programs are available in a variety of formats. To maximize the learning you take from the program, be sure to find one that fits your learning style. Some people thrive in a classroom setting, while others will find more success with a self-paced online program, and still, others prefer a hybrid online/guided approach to learning. All of these formats can meet the requirements for accreditation, so it’s really a matter of personal preference and availability.
Offers Certification
Some CPD programs have the added benefit of including a professional certification. The acquisition of a certification demonstrates your expertise and personal commitment to your professional development. Certification positions you as a strategic thinker and opens up additional promotion and job prospects.
Conclusion
Continuing professional development and education is a career-long obligation for all professionals in today’s workforce and is particularly crucial for those in Customer Success. By pursuing CPD with accredited programs, you demonstrate your commitment to Customer Success, stay ahead of your competition, best serve your customers, and reap the benefits of a quality education in your field.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Continuing Professional Development
DO make sure the program you take is accredited. Accreditation indicates the program is high-quality and ensures you’ll get the most out of your efforts. Accredited programs may also be required by your employer.
DON’T think an informal “education” through casual learning is enough. A structured program will serve you, your employer, and your clients much better.
DO look for CPD programs in Customer Success that fit your learning style. Quality programs can come in all formats, so there is no need to settle.
