Customer Success Specialist

Customer Success Specialist (CSS)

Role Overview

This role ensures the adoption of software and value realization that lead to successful renewals and business growth by leveraging AI-driven insights and a thorough understanding of customer environments and deployments to tailor adoption strategies.

It proactively develops and orchestrates technical adoption planning (TAP) execution, creating and driving TAPs that align with customer goals to maximize technology investments and promote the full utilization of Cisco technologies, with designated CSSs typically owning TAP creation and pooled CSSs contributing architecture-specific expertise.

The position facilitates alignment workshops to review adoption progress and drive expected customer outcomes and benefits, resulting in successful onboarding, adoption, and renewals.

It drives scale impact by creating and delivering advanced 1 technical enablement Expert Insight Series, stays current with the latest Cisco technologies including AI advancements, the competitive landscape, and industry trends to provide expert guidance, and participates in stakeholder workshops to articulate the state of the adoption business, including common barriers and market trends.

The role is also involved in 1:1 customer engagements and community events, supporting Customer Experience Managers (CXMs) and Customer Success Managers (CSMs) in TAP and execution, while influencing executive and customer technical decision-making and fostering trusted advisory relationships.

Additionally, the position collaborates with Customer Success Teams, Accounts, Sales, Partners, and others in GTM, leveraging AI and strategic insights to enhance customer adoption, address product concerns, and identify use cases that drive value and business outcomes.

It acts as a technology evangelist between customers and Cisco's product teams, providing feedback to inform product development and enhancements, and leads collaboration with Product teams to address systemic product challenges identified by customers, driving usability and serviceability enhancements.

What You’ll Do

• Handles adoption for a moderately-sized portfolio of mid-sized customers, managing deployments that may span multiple products/solutions within a single technology area, using AI-powered analytics to monitor adoption and inform engagement strategies.
• Specializes in a technology or specific product/solution set within an architecture; begins developing awareness of adjacent technologies within the same architecture.
• Conducts standard or moderately customized technical enablement sessions across multiple products and audiences; organizes and runs moderately detailed demo setups for customer meetings, highlighting key features and ensuring follow-up for successful implementation.
• Supports TAP execution by identifying adoption blockers, recommending relevant accelerators, and collaborating with CXMs to align activities with customer goals.
• Maintains detailed customer profiles by gathering insights on their operations and goals, and applying AI-driven recommendations to suggest improvements in product use.
• Proactively follows up with customers post-session to ensure adoption progress, answer follow-up questions, and support successful CSAT outcomes.
• Identifies common adoption blockers (e.g., lack of internal training, misconfigured features), recommends relevant accelerators, implements small enhancements in processes or products.
• Collaborates with CXMs to align session delivery with customer goals and lifecycle milestones.
• Applies product and service knowledge to guide onboarding and adoption conversations with customers.
• Configures and maintains low to moderately complex test environments for customer demos, troubleshooting basic issues to support effective sessions.
• Uses telemetry and AI-driven insights to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Shares customer feedback and competitive observations to support product and service enhancements.
• Mentors junior CSSs by reviewing their work, providing actionable feedback, and encouraging the use of AI to automate routine tasks.
• Champions unified engagement by coordinating with other Cisco teams on shared customer activities.
• Contributes to customer strategy by suggesting improvements, piloting new approaches.
• Fosters cross-functional collaboration by connecting with support, sales, or engineering to resolve customer issues.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelors + 5 years of related experience, or
• Masters + 3 years of related experience, or
• PhD + 0 years of related experience, or
• Equivalent relevant work experience.
• Professional level (e.g., CCNP) or equivalent relevant certification expected.

Why Cisco? 

At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.

Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere. 

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.