Today, B2B SaaS products live in the cloud and are continuously updated, creating ongoing technical challenges during both setup and daily use.

So what does a Customer Success Engineer do? Because many customers are not highly technical, companies rely on a Customer Success Engineer (CSE) to bridge the gap, leveraging their technical expertise to resolve issues and ensure customers can use the product effectively.

So, what is a Customer Success Engineer? In this article, we will explore the role, including their key responsibilities, required skills, and the value they bring to B2B SaaS organizations.

1. Customer Success Engineer responsibilities: solving technical issues for clients

That is the main reason a B2B SaaS company needs a CSE. The CSE at Leadfeeder, also known as a client success engineer, answers technical questions and is invited into client conversations and calls by their Sales, Support, and Customer Success Managers.

When, for example, the client has an issue with installing the tracker script, the CSE goes on a call as soon as possible to help. This way, the client does not have to wait and can start using the Leadfeeder product right away.

The same applies to issues related to integrating the Leadfeeder product with other platforms and/or using the Leadfeeder web application.

2. CSE works with developers

To answer technical questions, the CSE needs a technical background and product knowledge. At Leadfeeder, CSE's work directly with the developers. This allows the CSE to understand the computer program behind the product and its impact on the product's entire life cycle.

The customer success engineer job description at Leadfeeder covers understanding how the backend and frontend work together, what APIs are, and how they are called, reading technical documentation, and some HTML/JavaScript coding skills.

This kind of technical background and knowledge allows the CSE to communicate in technical jargon with developers and contribute ideas for solving clients' technical issues.

While resolving clients' technical questions, CSEs can also participate in bug-catching and testing new features for developers.

3. CSE creates a shared knowledge base

By answering the technical questions of sales, support, and colleagues, every CSE, from a new hire to a senior customer success engineer, gains an enormous amount of knowledge about the product. To use the knowledge, CSEs at Leadfeeder take partial responsibility for the internal and external shared knowledge base.

Once every client’s question is answered, the CSE is in the best position to decide whether that answer could help all other customers and update the help center articles accordingly. If the answer is more suitable for internal solutions to similar issues, the CSE updates or creates inputs in the internal knowledge base.

That way, all the other colleagues can benefit from the information and find an answer to a similar question in the future without the need to ask the CSE the same question again. This means, in the long run, the CSE is saving time and effort for new, more important technical questions.

4. CSE educates its colleagues

Because CSEs have the opportunity to learn so much about the product, they can help train their sales, support, and customer success managers (business) colleagues on the technical side of the product. At Leadfeeder, this includes providing hands-on training on installing the tracker script, making API calls, integrating with other systems, automating workflows, etc.

Regular intra-company training helps all business colleagues feel more comfortable with the technical side of the product and provides better support to Leadfeeder customers.

5. CSE brings the customer issues to the Product Managers 

CSEs have direct access to clients’ potential struggles with the product, so they're best suited to report these issues to Product Managers to improve the product and its features. At Leadfeeder, CSEs meet regularly with a Product Manager and marketing to improve the automated onboarding process for potential new customers.

The CSE can also report other product feature improvement needs to Product Managers through the internal process and participate in the introduction of new features.

The Customer Success Engineer role sits in the middle

By working closely with so many departments in the B2B SaaS company, CSEs can easily become the go-to person to ask questions about which developer works on which part of the product, how a certain feature works in connection with another feature, etc.

It means the CSE has a bigger picture of the product, its lifecycle, and its use by the company's clients. The Leadfeeder CSEs are kind of a "Jack of all trades". They foster interdepartmental communication within the company, save developers time, and enable fast problem-solving for Leadfeeder clients. The business case for that human touchpoint is more direct than it might seem. Franciska Dethlefsen, Head of Growth Marketing at Amplitude, put it plainly after running an experiment at Dropbox:

"We wanted to see if a human in the loop - a call from a human or two - could help increase conversion. We actually worked with our support team first." - Franciska Dethlefsen

Fast problem-solving, in other words, isn't just a service metric - it's a revenue one.