The Catalyst Mental Health Initiative

Data on Mental Health in CS

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Customer Success can be an extremely stressful field. We put together this report to highlight the ways in which the Customer Success community in particular has been affected by mental health and wellness issues, and to provide some tactical advice from industry leaders around how best to manage this in the workplace.

This ebook answers questions like:

Are you comfortable telling colleagues you’re taking a mental health day?
How much PTO did you take in 2019 and in 2020?
Have you ever received formal training on how to manage mental health in the workplace?
How can you make mental health a higher priority for company leadership?
How can you create a more connected team in this remote environment?

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Are you comfortable telling colleagues you’ve taken time off due to mental health and wellness concerns?

Yes

45.9%

54.1%

How to talk about mental health with colleagues

“If you want your team to engage, you have to go first. Be honest, vulnerable, and share how you're taking care of your own mental health and wellness. It'll help to create a safe space to talk about it and for everyone to understand that it's okay to not be okay.”

Junan Pang

Senior Manager, Customer Success, Slack

“Leaders can make mental health a priority by taking time off themselves, being open about what they're doing, setting an example, and then finding ways to create a trickle-down effect.”

Vanna Nguyen

Customer Success Manager, Enterprise, Braze

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Compared to last year, how connected do you feel with your team?

Less

49.4%

More

36.4%

No difference

14.2%

How to feel more connected with your team

“Be vulnerable. Share with your team some details about your personal and professional life and ask about theirs. Show empathy and encourage people to prioritize important aspects of their personal life as much as important work challenges. Support them by allowing the flexibility they need to make time for both.”

Celia Gouveia

Director, Customer Success Strategy & Operations, Glint, LinkedIn

“Put away all distractions (like Slack) during your 1:1s and be okay with allowing the first few minutes to be small talk. It's important to not always stay in the weeds about work with your team members. Create connections within your team and with other teams! I can't be in 15 places at once, so I've found it's been really helpful to set up peer mentorships within our team. In addition, we've started inviting one department outside of CS to a team meeting once a month for some bonding with us. Our team has given positive feedback on this, and loves making those connections with other teams that might be easier to establish if we were working in person.”

Ann Moenius

Sr. Manager of CSM Team, Qualia

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How often do you proactively speak with your team about mental health and well-being?

Weekly

42.4%

Monthly

36.5%

Quarterly

11.8%

We don’t discuss it

9.4%

How to be more proactive with mental health

“Mental health impacts everything, including the bottom line. Mental health can impact productivity, morale, and employee retention. It's really simple if you think of it that way. Investing in mental health initiatives is actually an investment in team productivity, morale, and retention, which can decrease the overall costs of recruiting. I've always been quoted as saying, ’Happy team members = happy customers,’ and that is one of the strongest churn fighters out there.”

Maranda Dziekonski

Vice President Customer Success & People Ops, Swiftly

“Mental health should not be a taboo topic with your team. For me, it's about ensuring your people feel comfortable prioritizing their work/life balance. Make your interactions a safe space for people to express how they are feeling, and if you are hearing signs of burnout, this is a great opportunity to proactively suggest that person take a mental health break.”

Ben Rosenberg

VP of Sender Experience, Sendoso

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Meditations For the CS Community

Put your mind first

You spend your work life making your customers happy, but what about you? This is the world's first meditation series designed specifically for Customer Success professionals. For 7 days, we will be guiding you through how you can use meditation to take care of your mind and mental health just like you take care of your customers. Best of all, these meditations are only about 10 minutes long, so they’re easy to fit into your day.

Renewal: a 7-day intro to meditation

[Trailer] What is Renewal?

We spend our working lives making our customers happy, but what about ourselves? This is the world's first meditation series designed specifically for Customer Success professionals. For 7 days, we will be guiding you through how you can use meditation to take care of your mind and mental health just like you take care of your customers.

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Day 1: Posture and Peace

There is no wrong way to meditate. On today's meditation, we guide you through step by step how you can practice meditation in a way that's comfortable and works for you.

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Day 2: Stress Mitigation Through Visualization

There are many tools we can use to find peace amidst a flurry of zoom calls. On today's meditation, we will be learning a powerful technique called visualization. This helps us practice mindfulness by walking through our own minds.

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Day 3: Finding Positivity

There will always be days where things don't go our way as Customer Success professionals. On today's meditation, we will explore how to find positivity in any situation.

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Day 4: Imagination Vacation

While we might be stuck where we live and only see the outside world through zoom calls, we can still have a vacation in our mind! On today's episode, we have another visualization to help you escape the stresses of Customer Success.

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Day 5: Improving Relationships

We may not always see eye to eye with our customers, and some customer situations can be particularly challenging. On today's episode, we look at a meditation to help us not only improve our customer relationships but any relationships we have in our life.

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Day 6: Dealing With Challenging Customers

Sometimes our customers (as much as we love them) take our their frustrations on us. On today's meditation we explore a method that can help us calm and heal after those experiences. We will also learn how we can better react, communicate and resolve issues when they occur.

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Day 7: Focusing on Healing

Congratulations, you have made it to our final meditation in the series! On today's meditation, we will look at where we have been feeling the most stress and how we can begin to heal.

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Breathing Exercises to Feel Calm & Collected

A breath of fresh air

These 3 breathing exercises are an excellent way to alleviate stress, nerves or anxiety, and they’re only 2 minutes long! They are perfect for before a big presentation, in-between meetings, or after a stressful customer call.

Deep breath in...

For Dealing With a Frustrated Customer

When you have to deal with a frustrated customer, turn to this brief exercise to calm your body and mind.

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For When a Situation Is Out of Your Control

It can be difficult to stay calm when things get out of hand. Use this brief exercise to center yourself when dealing with factors outside of your control.

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For When You Feel Like There’s Not Enough Time to Get Things Done

In Customer Success, you have to wear a lot of hats! With everything you do for your customers, it can often feel like you don't have enough hours in the day to get it all done. Turn to this brief exercise to help resolve your anxiety.

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Read the Mental Health in CS Report

This report highlights the ways in which the CS community in particular has been affected by mental health and wellness issues. We hope the data and insights might be used as a catalyst (pun absolutely intended 😉) to increase buy-in for employee mental health initiatives at work, and that your team or company might implement some of the ideas shared by those who contributed.

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