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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Customer Success Manager

💰 $80,000 - $140,000

Customer SuccessSaaSAccount Management

🎯 Role Definition

The Customer Success Manager (CSM) is a proactive, data-driven partner to customers whose primary objective is to drive product adoption, reduce churn, and grow net revenue through renewals, upsells, and advocacy. The CSM owns the post-sales customer lifecycle for assigned accounts — from onboarding and implementation through renewal and expansion — and works cross-functionally with Sales, Product, Support, and Engineering to ensure customers realize measurable business outcomes from our SaaS solution. This role requires strong relationship-building, consultative strategy, and the ability to translate customer needs into internal initiatives that improve long-term customer health and revenue.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Implementation Specialist / Customer Onboarding Manager
  • Account Manager or Client Success Associate
  • Technical Support Engineer or Solutions Consultant

Advancement To:

  • Senior Customer Success Manager / Strategic Customer Success Manager
  • Customer Success Team Lead / Manager
  • Director of Customer Success → VP of Customer Success / Head of Customer Experience

Lateral Moves:

  • Account Executive / Enterprise Sales Representative
  • Product Manager (Customer-focused roles)
  • Customer Experience / Support Leadership

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Own end-to-end onboarding and implementation for assigned SaaS accounts, delivering project plans, milestones, stakeholder communication, and timelines to achieve production-ready adoption of the product within agreed SLAs.
  • Develop and maintain detailed Customer Success Plans (CSPs) and playbooks for each customer that define success criteria, business outcomes, adoption milestones, and ROI metrics tied to contractual goals and renewal targets.
  • Drive product adoption and feature usage through tailored enablement programs, training sessions, workshops, webinars, and in-product guidance that increase daily active usage, feature penetration, and time-to-value.
  • Manage the renewal process proactively — forecast renewal risk, build mitigation plans, negotiate terms, and collaborate with Sales/Legal to secure on-time contract renewals and minimize churn.
  • Identify and execute expansion opportunities (upsell and cross-sell) within existing accounts by mapping customer goals to product value, presenting ROI-driven proposals, and partnering with Account Executives to close new ARR.
  • Conduct Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) and monthly health reviews with executive and operational stakeholders to review adoption metrics, share insights, align on roadmap priorities, and set next-step actions that maximize customer lifetime value.
  • Monitor customer health using quantitative and qualitative signals (usage analytics, NPS/CSAT scores, support tickets, contract activity) to build health scoring models, early-warning alerts, and risk-based playbooks to prevent churn.
  • Serve as the primary escalation point for customer issues post-sales, coordinating cross-functional resources (Support, Engineering, Product) to ensure timely resolution and to reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR).
  • Design and maintain ongoing success metrics and dashboards (NPS, CSAT, renewal rate, expansion rate, ARR retention) and present executive-level reports that inform product strategy and leadership decisions.
  • Act as a customer advocate internally by capturing user feedback, feature requests, and trends, and translating them into prioritized product backlog items and go-to-market insights with Product Management.
  • Lead technical enablement for customers including API/integration guidance, configuration best practices, and collaboration with Professional Services to support custom integrations and complex deployments.
  • Build and grow strategic relationships with key stakeholders (executive sponsors, power users, IT/System Admins) to ensure alignment across stakeholders and continued executive sponsorship during renewals.
  • Implement and optimize scalable processes for account segmentation, onboarding templates, playbooks, and automation using a Customer Success Platform (e.g., Gainsight, ChurnZero) and CRM (e.g., Salesforce).
  • Conduct churn root-cause analysis and post-mortem reviews to identify process gaps, product friction, pricing misalignment, or onboarding failures and drive continuous improvement initiatives to reduce future churn.
  • Lead or contribute to a customer reference and advocacy program by identifying referenceable customers, coordinating case studies, referral incentives, and customer advisory boards that drive trust and new sales velocity.
  • Partner with Sales to develop account plans for named customers, provide handoff documentation at contract close, and craft joint strategies to accelerate expansion within strategic accounts.
  • Coordinate renewal and pricing strategies in partnership with Revenue Operations and Finance to optimize pricing structure, discounts, and packaging for long-term retention and upsell.
  • Train and mentor junior CSMs and Success Operations teammates, developing internal documentation, onboarding materials, and standardized success frameworks that scale across the organization.
  • Maintain best-in-class knowledge base content, self-service playbooks, tutorials, and training resources that empower customers to self-solve common issues and accelerate time-to-value.
  • Execute targeted campaigns (onboarding accelerators, feature adoption sprints, risk remediation campaigns) based on segmentation and propensity models to improve retention and product stickiness.
  • Translate customer business goals into measurable success outcomes and demonstrate clear ROI through tailored reports and business-case narratives that justify renewals and expansion investments.
  • Participate in product release planning by communicating customer impact, co-creating beta programs, and enabling customers on new features to increase adoption velocity post-launch.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc executive analysis, customer reporting requests, and exploratory usage analysis to answer business questions and guide account-level strategy.
  • Contribute to the organization's Customer Success strategy and roadmap by identifying scalable processes, automation opportunities, and tooling improvements.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional product, marketing, and sales teams to translate customer feedback into prioritized product requirements and go-to-market adjustments.
  • Assist Professional Services and Implementation teams with handoffs, resource planning, and timeline coordination for complex or custom customer deployments.
  • Help maintain renewal forecasting accuracy across the book of business; update CRM and CSM platforms consistently to reflect health, risk, and engagement status.
  • Lead or participate in customer advisory boards, beta programs, and user communities to surface strategic product insights and strengthen customer relationships.
  • Manage practical aspects of onboarding and offboarding, including access provisioning, security attestations, and compliance validations where required by enterprise accounts.
  • Champion NPS and CSAT programs: design survey cadence, synthesize feedback into actionable insights, and ensure closure of customer feedback loops.
  • Collaborate with Support to reduce ticket volume for common issues by identifying root causes and improving product documentation or in-product guidance.
  • Participate in sales enablement by creating playbooks, customer stories, and success metrics that sales teams can use to qualify expansion opportunities.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Proven experience with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems such as Salesforce for opportunity and renewal management.
  • Hands-on use of Customer Success platforms like Gainsight, ChurnZero, Totango, or Catalyst to manage health scores, playbooks, and automation.
  • Proficiency with analytics and reporting tools (Looker, Tableau, Power BI) and strong spreadsheet skills (advanced Excel / Google Sheets) to model retention and revenue impact.
  • Familiarity with SaaS metrics and KPIs: ARR/NRR, churn rate, retention rate, expansion ARR, LTV, CAC payback, adoption metrics, and usage frequency.
  • Basic SQL skills or ability to work with analytics teams to extract product usage data and build custom reports and dashboards.
  • Experience running customer onboarding projects and using project management tools (Jira, Asana, Trello) to manage tasks and milestones.
  • Practical knowledge of APIs, integrations, SSO, and technical troubleshooting to support technical stakeholders and integrations with third-party systems.
  • Contract and renewal negotiation experience, including understanding billing, invoicing, and commercial terms in SaaS agreements.
  • Skilled in creating and delivering product demos, training sessions, and enablement materials using tools like Zoom, Loom, and PowerPoint.
  • Familiarity with survey tools and customer feedback platforms (SurveyMonkey, Delighted, Qualtrics) to manage NPS and CSAT programs.

Soft Skills

  • Exceptional relationship-building and stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence executives and technical teams.
  • Strong communication skills — clear written and verbal presentation skills suitable for C-level Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs).
  • Analytical and outcome-driven mindset: comfort with numbers, interpretation of metrics, and making data-informed decisions.
  • Problem-solving orientation and resilience when managing escalation paths, competing priorities, and ambiguous situations.
  • Empathy, active listening, and consultative selling capability to align product value with customer business objectives.
  • Time management and organizational skills to manage a portfolio of accounts, recurring deliverables, and renewal schedules.
  • Collaborative team player who partners effectively with Sales, Support, Product, and Marketing to deliver a cohesive customer experience.
  • Coaching and mentorship ability to grow junior members of the Customer Success team and scale best practices.
  • Customer-centric orientation with a passion for enabling customers to achieve business outcomes and demonstrating measurable ROI.
  • Negotiation and conflict-resolution skills to navigate renewal discussions and complex contract term conversations.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree plus relevant certifications (Customer Success certifications, Project Management), or a Master’s degree in Business Administration / Management for senior roles.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Business Administration
  • Marketing or Communications
  • Computer Science / Information Systems
  • Engineering (for technical accounts)
  • Data Analytics / Statistics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–6 years in Customer Success, Account Management, Implementation, or related customer-facing roles within SaaS or technology companies.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years managing mid-market or enterprise SaaS accounts with a demonstrated track record of reducing churn, achieving renewal targets, and driving expansion ARR.
  • Experience with enterprise contract renewals, multi-stakeholder stakeholder management, and cross-functional program execution.
  • Experience mentoring or leading a small team and contributing to Customer Success strategy and operations.
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