"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." - Voltaire. [Click to share on Linkedin]

A powerful question is open-ended and starts with either "what" or "how".

When you ask an open-ended question like this, it's impossible to answer with a yes or no response. A pattern cannot respond to this question because there's no canned response to call on. These questions work incredibly well with both customers and Customer Success Managers because they allow you to dig into what's going on.

When you're in a one-on-one with a Customer Success Manager, a standard question to ask is "How is everything going?" which virtually guarantees the response of "Good". That's not an insightful question or a useful answer, so take it a level deeper. Then ask, "What's going on that makes things good?" This simple tweak will start an actual conversation.

Here are ten more questions to ask your Customer Success Managers:

• What is it about your job that you enjoy most?
• What are your strengths?
• How do use your strengths, day to day?
• What's your relationship like with other departments within our organization?
• What do you think is the most important thing we need to focus on with this customer?
• What customers are causing you problems?
• What would be different if you were to solve this?
• What's the impact of this to you outside of work?
• If you could wave a magic wand and grant yourself one wish, what would it be?
• If fear wasn't an option and you knew that no matter what choice you chose you were 100% correct, and there would be zero reprimands for your actions, what would you do?

Have fun with these questions - you'll be surprised how far they will take you.