Manager of Customer Success

The Manager of Customer Success leads a team of Customer Success Managers responsible for driving adoption, value realization, retention, and expansion across a defined portfolio of customers. This role owns the operating rhythm for the team, including renewal readiness, CSQL pipeline generation, customer health management, and playbook execution. The Manager is accountable for team-level revenue outcomes (revenue retention, renewal rates, and expansion pipeline) and for developing CSMs into high-performing customer advocates. This role partners cross-functionally with Sales, Product, Marketing, and Professional Services to ensure customers realize measurable value from the platform.

Team Leadership & Development

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Customer Success Managers across varying experience levels.
• Own the full people management lifecycle: hiring, onboarding, performance reviews, development plans, and performance management.
• Establish and run a consistent team operating rhythm, including account health reviews, forecast calls, account planning sessions, and strategy discussions.
• Set clear expectations for CSM activity, output quality, and customer outcomes; hold the team accountable to those standards.
• Build team capabilities through structured coaching on executive engagement, business review delivery, value realization storytelling, and expansion identification.
• Manage team capacity and workload distribution to ensure balanced account coverage.

Revenue Ownership & Customer Outcomes

• Own team-level targets for revenue retention, and CSQL-generated expansion pipeline.
• Hold the team accountable for documenting customer outcomes and value realization, ensuring success stories and measurable results are captured and shared.
• Drive CSM execution against renewal timelines, ensuring early risk identification and proactive intervention.
• Oversee CSQL pipeline generation and qualification, ensuring the team identifies and advances expansion opportunities through the defined approval and staging process.
• Monitor customer health scores, adoption metrics, and risk indicators at the portfolio level; take action when trends signal churn or contraction risk.
• Ensure consistent execution of scheduled customer check-ins, success plans, and periodic business reviews across the team's portfolio.

Customer Engagement & Escalation Management

• Serve as the escalation point for at-risk accounts, engaging directly with customer executives when needed to resolve issues and protect revenue.
• Join strategic customer meetings, executive business reviews, and renewal conversations to reinforce commitment and value.
• Coach CSMs on building and maintaining multi-threaded relationships with customer stakeholders, including economic buyers and operational sponsors.
• Ensure timely identification, documentation, and resolution of customer concerns across the team.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Represent the voice of the customer in cross-functional forums with Sales, Product, Marketing, and Professional Services.
• Partner with Sales leadership on account strategy alignment, handoff processes, and joint renewal/expansion planning.
• Provide structured product feedback to Product teams based on aggregated customer input and adoption data.
• Coordinate with Professional Services and Support to ensure delivery expectations align with customer goals.

Process Ownership & Operational Excellence

• Own playbook execution and iteration for the team, ensuring CSMs follow established engagement models, success planning frameworks, and escalation protocols.
• Utilize CS platform tools and dashboards (e.g., Totango) to track customer health, adoption trends, and team performance.
• Identify process gaps and drive continuous improvement in workflows, templates, and reporting to increase team efficiency and consistency.
• Deliver accurate renewal and expansion forecasts to leadership on a regular cadence.