About 820-605 Exam
The Cisco 820-605 CSM or the Cisco Customer Success Manager Specialist exam helps one to gain the corresponding certification. The exam confirms one's proficiency and knowledge to integrate and develop solutions, find adoption hindrances, provide new techniques, and offer solutions from customers' usage information. The 820-605 test delivers a compact framework and a robust set of methods to help candidates instantly value their relations with clients through delivery, analysis, evaluation, enablement and benchmarking, and application.
Target Audience
Exam 820-605 is intended for those who have experience working with clients to determine, amount, and provide correct business outcomes using new technology. At the same time, it should be undertaken by candidates who wish to advance their careers or long to have the Cisco Customer Success Manager Specialist certificate.
About 820-605 Exam
The Cisco 820-605 exam costs $250 and is delivered via the Pearson VUE platform. The test can be taken remotely online or book for a sit-in exam at one of the authorized test centers. The total duration of the exam is one hour and a half.
As for the skills tested in this exam, a candidate should have experience working in a client-based field. One should be constantly engaged in communicating with customers and sales promotion roles to understand the requirements that need to be met when preparing for the certification, as the Success Manager Specialist is a comprehensive problem-solving role that encompasses developing and providing solutions to the barriers to cultivate more sales and customers.
Domains Tested in 820-605 Exam
The Cisco 820-605 exam contains the following five topics that are tested during the exam:
- Customer Success Industry
According to the exam blueprint, this topic covers 15% of all questions. So, in this knowledge area, there are various key elements that a candidate seeking to attain the Cisco Customer Success Manager Specialist certification must grasp. One is required to define the expected and unexpected value of the client success, know the key drivers as well as provide information regarding the customer lifecycle.
Understanding the customers is the initial step into becoming a certified Cisco holder. Besides, a candidate should explain value proposition, the difference between consumption and purchasing models, the financial implication of the definite metrics, and customer engagement models. To add more, the test-takers should possess skills to recognized the key metrics for customer success and be able to cover the objectives of the CSM (Customer Success Manager).
- Creation of the Success Plan
This part of the 820-605 accreditation exam covers the stakeholder management information, critical factors of success, as well as analysis of the solution or product purchased. Furthermore, a candidate should be able to analyze the account to find the gaps, inspect a customer health score, offer a description of the common elements of a customer success plan, be knowledgeable of what a RACI is, and be able to use KPI, metrics, and outcomes as well as how they effect on the customer value achievement. As a result, a candidate should expect about 25% of questions from this topic in the 820-605 test.
- Barrier Management
To successfully break and manage the barrier experienced with clients, the 820-605 test-takers must have grasped sufficient knowledge of identifying the types of customer barriers, describing various sources for customer barrier identification, and finding out the actions that affect the value and time for frequent customer barriers. Furthermore, this question category includes business barriers, technical barriers, the people involved, observation skills, data, and many more areas offering solutions to the obstacles. As, this topic covers 25% of exam questions, and candidates need to have all the critical knowledge regarding barriers management to pass the test.
- Customer Success Management
After successful removal of barriers, a candidate should demonstrate techniques and skills on how best s/he can handle the situation and promote customer success. The candidate must expect 20% of the question in the exam from this topic. Some of the main subtopics involve the knowledge of how to choose the elements customer onboarding, explain the need for communication between stakeholders and the holding the essential customer management activities. In addition, candidates should be able to provide a description of the Quarterly Success Review procedure, identify the outcomes and opportunities from it.
- Expand Opportunities and Renewal
Finally, this last test part is all about maintaining customer success and expanding opportunities for that. Therefore, candidates looking to pass the 820-605 exam should possess skills to describe the different ways they can expand the opportunities including new use cases and solutions, additional user groups, change of management services, and some more. They also should look for paths to accommodate expansion, create an adoption campaign, renew the success plan of the customers and create mitigation plans to manage the risk factors. So, remember that this tested area covers 15% of the exam questions and is necessary to demonstrate your skills in expanding customer success.
Career Opportunities
Career opportunities in the Customer Success Management field are constantly on the rise. Thus, there’s always demand for skilled professionals with the Cisco Customer Success Manager Specialist certification. However, to attain this validation, a candidate must pass the certification exam to be Cisco qualified. Many businesses have realized the need of having a savvy Customer Success Manager on their staff. Concerning the benefits for the Cisco certified specialist, s/he can hold a position under Customer Success Manager, Customer Success Director, Customer Success Assistant, and many more career options.
It is important to note that those with the Customer Success Manager accreditation have an average pay per year of $69,263 according to the PayScale.com website. Nevertheless, the final figure depends only on your experience and skills.
