A Modern Look at Customer Success
Customer Success is an ecosystem that aims to make customers happy.
For many years, customers simply were not getting what they needed. Sales teams were finding large gaps in the customer journey where the process was leaving customers unattended, causing risk, unpredictability, and churn.
As a business methodology that hopes to combat this, Customer Success includes a team of people keenly trained in an integrated system of AI, automation, and other tools. Their focus is to ensure that customers achieve desired outcomes using a company's products or services.
Goals:
A well-organized Customer Success ecosystem in your company can offer:
- Proactive value delivery: Customer Success works to ensure customers receive value from their investment by helping them understand and integrate the offering into their business. This goes beyond tech support, which is only effective after a customer has already experienced a problem. CS gives a proactive approach of anticipating customer needs and issues through experience and education.
- Goal-oriented approach: It is focused on the customer's "why"—the specific goals they hope to achieve—and aligns the company's solution with those outcomes.
- Relationship building: Customer success is fundamentally about building and maintaining strong, long-lasting relationships with clients.
- Driving business results: By successfully guiding customers to their goals, customer success teams reduce customer churn, improve renewal rates, and create opportunities for growth through upsells and cross-sells.
- Fulfilling a promise: In a subscription-based model, customer success is responsible for delivering on the promise made during the sale by helping the customer achieve the expected solution outcomes.
Customer Success is a three-legged stool:
- A responsible business methodology...
- Run by a team of proactive minds...
- Following a creed that bonds customer and company with a set of expectations.
The team (usually within the Sales org) that ties Sales and Support together. Its people and tools work directly with your customers to discover their best possible state of usage, then helps them get there.
CS in 2026: Corporate Structure?
Question: If a company is just getting into Customer Success today, what is the best vertical it should report into?
Answer: The Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)
This person owns Net Revenue Retention end-to-end.
Example structure in many companies today:
CEO
↳ CRO (optimizing system stability)
↳ Sales (optimizing velocity)
↳ Customer Success (optimizing value realization over time)
↳ Revenue Operations (optimizing coherence)
↳ Sometimes Partnerships / Alliances (optimizing external leverage)
In 2026, CS should NOT report into the Customer Team, nor into the Sales Team.
Why? Because that signals misalignment. However, when CS reports directly to the CRO, equally and alongside Sales, that signals the company understands that customer outcomes from all teams are a growth lever, not a cost center.
A real CRO owns the entire revenue lifecycle, not just one channel:
- Pipeline creation & conversion
- Pricing & packaging (with Product + Finance)
- Forecasting accuracy
- Adoption & Enablement
- GRR & NRR
- Expansion strategy
- Renewal health
- Revenue tooling & process
Putting CS under a CRO aligns incentives around:
- Retention and expansion
- Clear ownership of NRR
- Tight coordination with Sales on handoffs, account strategy, and forecasts
- Fewer political fights over “who owns the number”
I've seen the benefits personally. When it's great, it's great. I've also seen the opposite. In some orgs, CS simply cannot get off the ground. They're regarded as part of the support process, or worse, as assistants to specific parts of the sales process. This is usually the case when they exist in the Customer Team.
Summary: If you’re building CS from scratch in 2026, then put it under a CRO, with explicit guardrails:
- Create a clear customer advocacy charter
- No hard close quotas for CSMs
- Clean handoff rules back-and-forth with Sales
- Shared accountability for churn causes
That combo gives you growth without turning CS into “Sales Lite.”
LAER is a Customer Success profit lever
Retention is your cheapest form of growth. LAER is the infinity loop to success, maintaining strong relationships and loyalty.
CS needs constant metrics and nurturing in order to show its value. Done right, it proves its strength as a profit lever, even for companies tracking their earnings through EBITDA.
CS also represents the Customer Journey stages where a company interacts with its customers and/or users.
LAER - a traditional model: how to engage customers
"L" = Land
(blue = a sea of customers)
Focuses on landing the customer into the company's client list. This can be through all paid tiers, but also trial and freeware.
Stage 1: Awareness
Stage 2: Consideration
Stage 3: Acquisition
"A" = Adopt
(orange = warming up to us)
Ensures customers successfully adopt and utilize the product, realizing its value, and achieve desired outcomes.
Stage 4: Initial Onboarding
Stage 5: Guided Onboarding
Stage 6: Survey Capture
"E" = Expand
(gold = golden opportunities)
Right-setting the customer's usage of the product. This can be upselling or down-selling. The goal is to help customers get to the exact usage/scale they need.
Stage 7: Roadmap this term
Stage 8: The P.O.W.S. Method
"R" = Retain (or Renew)
(green = the almighty dollar)
Retain the relationship with the customer. Renewals are part of this, but not the only part.
Stage 9: Loyalty consideration
Stage 10: Roadmap next term
Stage 11: Final expansions
Stage 12: Renew >> infinity loop
Maturity of your CSM Organization
Operating modes come and go, and that includes how your CSMs manage each customer. Older systems followed the model of handing CSMs a Book of Business, and then having them own the entire customer journey for every customer in that book.
Since 2024, the CSM world has begun to change this, due to some serious realizations. That's right... Value Realization can look inwardly as well.
More and more companies are taking a new philosophy out for a spin: having their CSMs follow the LAER stages and own lifecycle stages within, rather than the entire journey for each customer. Here are some examples:
1. CSMs for Onboarding | Adoption | Learning
- Focus: Engage with customers entering the ecosystem.
- Metrics: time-to-value, activation success, and product usage in the first 30 days.
- Success looks like: A checklist that tracks outcomes. Identify gaps or stalls. Escalate issues to support. Survey at day 30+1 and follow-up by 30+4.
2. CSMs for Expansion
- Focus: Growth from within; more products; more money. There can also be negative growth, as long as it is justified by keeping the customer.
- Metrics: Outcomes get aligned. Use the POWS method to track.
- Success looks like: Once new purchases get made, the Expansion Team owns that area of NRR.
3. CSMs for Retention
- Focus: ARR, NRR, and any other XRR you can think of.
- Metrics: Gross retention. Renewal rates.
- Success looks like: Risk reduced and churn mitigated. Essentially, think of risk cases as tech support cases. They all need to be closed, and the higher percentage of favorable CSAT and NPS, the better.
4. CSMs for Strategy | Outcomes | Alignment
- Focus: Mediate the sales contract, the expectations, specific implementations of systems and how they align with customer goals, agnostic of actual usage.
- Metrics: Account outcomes, retention milestones, risk mitigation.
- Success looks like: OKRs getting checked off. Your Chief of Staff has creating Business Cases, and needs you to align with the ideals they created.
5. CSMs for Digital | Scaled SMB & Mid-Market | D2C Lifecycle
- Focus: Low-touch or "tech touch" one-to-many engagements, with "reply-to" as the trigger for medium or high-touch. Great for when B2B involves users or students.
- Metrics: Campaign-specific reporting.
- Success looks like: Tracking click-through. Scaled measurements.
6. Bonus: Services Team Advisors
- Focus: Subject Matter Experts from your Services Team are assigned CM-like tasks of assisting customers to learn or grow in specific siloes or verticals.
- Metrics: This one is tricky because usually value is already realized, so data is usually feels more like adoption & expansion metrics.
- Success looks like: Handoffs between CSMs are showing increased health scores.
Bottom line: The traditional model still works for many small-to-medium-sized companies. However once your needs outgrow your current resources, consider making incremental changes towards this modern model.
Further reading: CS definitions...
History:
As an industry, CS is relatively new. In the early 2000's, software and technology companies were realizing a need for a change. They had been relying on the old fashioned model of separate siloes for Sales and Support. They needed something smarter that could bridge the divide and eliminate lacks. The whole business model was changing around them. At that time, sales happened in large, upfront purchases. Software was obtained through perpetual licensing. It worked fine until outside changes happened. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) happened. It was getting harder for software companies to pay their product teams and staff with a better model for routine income.
That's when we started seeing a fast adoption of subscriptions and SaaS business models. Revenue needed to become recurring. Renewals would become what mattered because they show predictability and stability.
Enter the CSM. Salesforce is credited with coining the phrase "Customer Success" which eventually pioneered the idea of the CSM - the Customer Success Manager. CSMs possess a driven, proactive nature. They aim to help customers effectively adopt and onboard workflows to solve their specific needs, driving the customer journey towards successful retention. They inject themselves into. the customer journey, and often even help orchestrate it.
Today, CSMs drive value, improve retention, and create upsell opportunities. They help both parties achieve their expectations to learn, adopt, connect with peers and supportive AI, and overall... succeed.
Today isn't Yesterday
The world of Customer Success is changing rapidly. Much of what was considered industry standard - even three years ago - has flown out the window. So, if you are hiring for open positions in your Customer Success team, and are looking for that ideal candidate who has "10+ years of experience", make sure they prove having learned and applied recent philosophies. To get your immediate programs off-the-ground, you might actually find a stronger candidate with less experience, if that experience is recent.
In this way, it's always fun to see a job posting that's demanding someone with 15+ years of experience in it. There are also nuances that are only being realized within the last few years. For example, while most CS teams live inside of a company's Sales organization, some CS teams live in the Customer Team. There are plusses and minuses to this, and being purposeful in knowing where YOUR company should place it is essential.
So, if you're looking to expand your company into the realm of Customer Success, Following are some examples of how the industry's thought leadership is defining the direction...
Gainsight
Customer Success (CS) is a business method that uses your product or service to help customers achieve their objectives. It’s relationship-focused client management that aligns your customer with your company’s goals—igniting beneficial outcomes for everyone involved. Ultimately, effective Customer Success strategies reduce customer churn, lower acquisition costs, and create more upsell opportunities.
As competition increases and more and more companies rely on recurring revenue models, Customer Success has become a massive growth engine. According to the Customer Success Index 2023, 92% of companies are maintaining or increasing their investment in CS, despite difficult economic conditions.
TSIA
Customer success is the strategic practice of ensuring customers achieve their desired business outcomes by using a company's products or services. It is a proactive function focused on building long-term relationships by making sure customers realize the full value of their investment, which in turn leads to benefits like improved retention, reduced churn, and opportunities for upsell and expansion.
Zendesk
Customer success is the motion that should result in your customers loving your solution so much that they want to continue purchasing your products or services in the long term. It’s all about building strong relationships and understanding customers’ goals. Customer success is where each customer interaction offers opportunities for deeper and more meaningful engagement.
To achieve customer success, your customer success managers and their teams should proactively connect with your customers throughout their lifecycle with your company.
Why it is important:
To put it simply: Customer success helps companies unlock the value from their solutions and achieve a compelling ROI as a result. When customer success teams help buyers accomplish their goals, it’s clear that the product or service provides value for users. As a result, it:
- Strengthens the relationship
- Builds trust
- Leads to higher satisfaction
Customer success interactions also allow companies to collect valuable customer insights that could benefit the entire organization: product, marketing, sales, and more. The more teams learn about their clients and their needs, the better they’re able to deliver quality experiences and create a healthier customer lifecycle.
Your business success is tied to your customers—through sales, revenue, and retention. Happy, loyal buyers often become brand advocates and rave about your company through product reviews, social media posts, and word-of-mouth recommendations.
Salesforce
Customer success ensures customers get the most out of a product or service through ongoing support, education, and engagement. The main goals are to drive retention by demonstrating value, reduce churn by proactively addressing issues, and increase sales by highlighting additional offerings. By following this formula, customer success can foster long-term customer satisfaction and sustainable business growth.
Customer success is more than just a business function; it is a strategic initiative to ensure customers achieve their desired outcomes while using a product or service. In today’s competitive small and midsize business (SMB) environment, prioritizing customer success helps build loyalty, reduce churn, and eventually achieve top revenue growth.
Unlike customer support, which reacts to issues as they arise, customer success takes a proactive approach. Businesses can create long-term, mutually beneficial relationships by anticipating customer needs and guiding them toward success. In this article, we’ll explore the key principles of customer success, why it matters, and how to implement an effective strategy.
Why Customer Success Matters:
Businesses that prioritize customer success gain significant advantages. Higher retention rates stem from customers consistently experiencing value, leading to continued product usage. Additionally, increased customer lifetime value (CLTV) means satisfied customers spend more and are less likely to switch to competitors. Stronger brand loyalty develops as successful customers become advocates, driving organic growth through word-of-mouth marketing.
Customer success also directly impacts reputation. For businesses of any size actively investing in customer relationships establishes trust, reliability, and customer satisfaction. By integrating small business marketing software strategies and leveraging market research, SMBs can strengthen loyalty and build long-term revenue growth.
and just for fun... Wikipedia
Customer success is defined as the business methodology that ensures customers achieve their desired outcomes while using a company's products or services. The approach is built on several core principles:
Proactive engagement: Customer success teams identify potential issues and opportunities before they impact the customer relationship. This contrasts with reactive customer service models that address problems after they occur.
Outcome-focused approach: Rather than focusing solely on product usage, customer success emphasizes helping customers achieve their business objectives. This alignment creates stronger customer relationships and increases the likelihood of contract renewals and expansions.
Data-driven decision making: Customer success relies heavily on customer data, usage analytics, and health scoring to identify at-risk accounts and expansion opportunities. This quantitative approach enables scalable customer management across large customer bases.