Customer Success Manager

Entry point into the customer success organisation. Works a queue of lower-complexity accounts assigned by a manager.

Owns a book outright — a rung people can stay at rather than pass through. Account complexity, not volume, is what distinguishes performance here.

Handles materially more complex accounts, and is expected to meet that complexity with repeatable method rather than more hours.

Owns the company's most complex and highest-value customer relationships. A destination role rather than a step toward another one.

Supports renewals owned by others. Surfaces the signals that inform a renewal conversation rather than carrying the outcome.

Carries renewal responsibility for the book and is expected to quantify outcomes rather than describe them.

Carries renewal and expansion outcomes on high-value accounts where a single loss is material to the segment.

Accountable for commercial outcomes across the segment's most valuable relationships, and for the approach other CSMs use to protect them.

Executes onboarding steps within an established plan and escalates when a customer stalls.

Owns time-to-first-value for the book, and reworks an onboarding plan when the standard one is not landing.

Rebuilds onboarding for high-complexity accounts so a support-led deployment reaches value without a longer runway.

Sets what good onboarding means for the segment, and the bar other CSMs are held to.

Learns the full product suite beyond the immediately assigned area. Incomplete suite knowledge is the most common thing holding this rung back.

Applies working knowledge across the suite to advise on configuration and workflow, not only the module the customer bought.

Advises on complex multi-product deployments and is the reference point peers consult.

Shapes product roadmap direction by aggregating patterns seen across the segment's most demanding customers.

Builds proactive relationships rather than staying reactive, flags at-risk accounts independently, and develops the consultative skills that differentiate a CSM from a support agent.

Holds difficult conversations about adoption gaps rather than avoiding them, and leans on data rather than relationship warmth.

Builds executive relationships on both the customer's side and the company's, and consults on outcomes rather than usage.

Holds executive relationships that give the company visibility into the customer's own strategy.

Works through established channels to get customer issues resolved.

Builds working relationships across functions so account issues move without a manager escalating them.

Leads cross-functional work on behalf of accounts, and influences how other teams prioritise them.

Influences the product roadmap and the segment's direction, with contributions visible to company leadership.

Pursues growth projects beyond the assigned queue.

Contributes to team knowledge by sharing playbooks and running enablement rather than keeping what works private.

Mentors junior CSMs, influences how the wider CSM org works rather than only an own book, and scales through method rather than absorbing complexity through personal effort.

Sets how success is practised across the segment, and raises the ceiling of the CSMs around them.