A Simple Framework to Evaluate Customer Success Talent

Download our CSM evaluation rubric and see how we assess thinking, not templates.

Hiring is hard, especially when what you’re hiring for can’t be measured in a test or degree.

We’ve been using a Customer Success Manager Evaluation Rubric that helps move past the usual “how many accounts did you manage?” or “how do you handle churn?” type of questions. The goal is to see how someone thinks, differentiates, and structures their process.

The exercise has two stages:

• Pre-live assessment (70%) — candidates complete short written exercises that test clarity, prioritization, and data-driven thinking.
  For example, we might ask them to structure a QBR, outline how they’d approach an onboarding plan, or explain how they’d manage competing priorities in a renewal scenario. The goal isn’t to check for “right answers,” but to see how they frame problems and communicate tradeoffs.

• Live role-play (30%) — to assess composure, objection handling, communication, and how they reframe value in real time.

We also include probing questions such as:

“You mentioned time-to-first-value—why does it slip, and how would you detect it early?”
“If the exec team only gave you 20 minutes for a QBR, what would you keep or cut?”

In the age of AI, it’s unrealistic to expect people not to use it. What matters is whether they can go beyond the prompt, connect dots, explain tradeoffs, and show initiative in real situations.

If you’re hiring for Customer Success (or any role that blends empathy with strategy), you can use this same template.

👉 Download the CSM Evaluation Template

You can adapt it for your own use—adjust weightage, swap the exercises, keep the structure. It’s a simple way to bring clarity and depth into interviews that usually rely on instinct.

Hiring for CS skills isn’t about guessing who’s good. It’s about designing a test that reveals how people think.