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Customer Success Specialist (CSS) — Strategic Adoption Advisor

Role Overview

The Customer Success Specialist (CSS) is a critical, high-impact role serving as a strategic advisor and technical expert within the Cisco Customer Experience (CX) organization, one of Cisco’s fastest-growing teams. The primary objective of the CSS is to engage with customers to accelerate their adoption of Cisco products and solutions, effectively transforming their business operations and driving measurable business outcomes.

As a CSS, you are not a delivery resource; you are a hands-on specialist for your aligned product or architecture focused on utilization. You possess the unique ability to combine deep technical knowledge with a solid grasp of business priorities to provide consultative solutions that help customers realize value from their software investments faster. Whether you are helping a customer navigate complex adoption challenges or leading architectural initiatives, your goal is to ensure every engagement results in successful product consumption.

What You’ll Do

The CSS leads the execution of targeted engagements intended to increase product awareness, share industry standard methodologies, and drive overall product adoption and business value. Your daily responsibilities involve a sophisticated mix of strategic planning and tactical execution:

• Targeted Technical Engagements: You will conduct high-impact workshops, Expert-Insight-Series (EIS) sessions, and Accelerators. These sessions are tailored to a diverse set of customer needs, ranging from foundational product awareness to advanced feature adoption, and you will proactively work to improve these offers by providing feedback to CX Product Management.
• Adoption and Value Realization: By applying successful frameworks and technical expertise, you will help customers bridge the gap between purchasing a solution and achieving their desired business value. This includes baselining customer environments and capturing "heatmaps" of products and tools to develop comprehensive onboarding and adoption journeys.
• Proactive Risk Management: You are responsible for identifying and leading adoption risks, such as low technical usage or barriers to integration. Managing customer expectations and resolving issues promptly is essential to ensuring a successful customer journey.
• Adoption Governance and Documentation: You will document conversations, communications, and site matrices to build detailed adoption plans. You will craft timelines to ensure the onboarding experience is adhered to and that cross-functional project team members are updated at all stages of the adoption roadmap.
• Strategic Advocacy and Planning: You will guide customers on tactical and strategic decisions to achieve their business outcomes, lead architectural initiatives, and incorporate validated designs from across Cisco to ensure successful utilization.
• The Feedback Loop: You act as the "voice of the customer" for Cisco Engineering and Product Management. By providing feedback on product challenges and feature opportunities, you directly influence the evolution of Cisco's solutions to better meet adoption needs.

Who You’ll Work With

Collaboration is at the heart of the CSS role. You will build close relationships with customers, CX counterparts, architects, and engineers. You will partner with Customer Success Managers to facilitate high-impact, technology-specific workshops targeted at all levels of an organization to accelerate a business initiative. You will work alongside Sales Engineering, Product Sales, and Professional Services to resolve usage barriers and drive growth. For Security-focused roles, you will also collaborate with Technical Support and Marketing teams throughout the customer lifecycle. Additionally, you will participate in the Global CSS Community, collaborating with peers to share success stories and adoption frameworks.

Who You Are

• Customer Obsessed: You proactively understand customer needs and align your architectural expertise to multi-functional teams to drive decisions that enhance customer value and satisfaction.
• Technical Expert: You possess deep domain knowledge and a passion for connecting technology solutions to specific customer use cases, continuously learning new technologies and best practices.
• Adoption Leader: You have the ability to form and lead teams, possessing outstanding team-building and time-management skills. You are skilled at issue management and managing customer expectations under pressure to ensure onboarding success.
• Cross-Team Collaborator & Influencer: You are skilled at working across internal and external teams of all levels to proactively inspire technical decisions that drive successful adoption.
• Effective Communicator: You deliver sophisticated information in a confident and convincing manner, appropriate to a diverse audience ranging from technical architects to C-level executives.
• Results Oriented: You have a proven track record of execution with relevant technologies, focusing on driving successful customer outcomes and retention.

Technology-Specific Requirements

To succeed in this role, you must demonstrate expert-level knowledge in one of the following specialized technical tracks, focusing on adoption challenges:

1. Networking (SDA / SDWAN)

This track focuses on Enterprise Networking, specifically Software Defined Access (SDA) and SDWAN.

• Protocols & Infrastructure: Deep technical knowledge of routing protocols such as OSPF, BGP, IS-IS, LISP, and VxLAN.
• Platform Mastery: Experience troubleshooting Catalyst Center (Automation and Assurance) or similar Network Management Systems to resolve adoption barriers.
• Automation: A strong understanding of network automation and assurance to simplify the adoption journey for customers.

2. Security

In the Security track, you are pivotal to the onboarding and driving ongoing utilization of Cisco’s flagship security products.

• Core Solutions: Expert knowledge of Cisco Secure Access, Umbrella, DUO, ISE, Next Generation Firewall, Secure Workload, and XDR/SNA.
• Lifecycle Success: You will verify customer requirements and engage post-onboarding to encourage the adoption of advanced security features.
• Ambassadorship: Acting as an ambassador during the adoption phase, you build the trust and confidence necessary to transition customers into long-term support.

3. Cloud & AI Infrastructure (CAI)

This track focuses on Cisco’s Data Center Solutions and the intersection of infrastructure with AI.

• Technical Stack: Hands-on experience integrating ACI, Hyperflex, UCS, Nexus switching, MDS, ND, NDFC, NDI, Nutanix, Intersight, and AI to drive software adoption.
• Hybrid Cloud Expertise: Expert understanding of public cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and GCP, as well as virtualization technologies.
• Orchestration: Expertise in using APIs and programmability to orchestrate workflows, integrating Cisco solutions into existing ecosystems to ensure seamless product consumption.

General Qualifications

• Experience: 5 to 10+ years in technical consulting, customer success, or direct customer-interfacing roles.
• Education: BA/BS degree in Engineering or Computer Science is required; a Master’s degree is preferred.
• Certifications: DevNet, CCNA, or CCNP are required. CCIE, CISM, or CISSP certifications are strongly preferred.
• Success Management: Completion of Cisco Certified Success Specialist certification is suggested.

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.