A Customer Success Manager exists to ensure strong relationships with customers. They make sure customers get the most from what the company offers and manage the customer success team.
But what defines a good Customer Success Manager?
A good Customer Success Manager has to be "Customer-obsessed". This means — the CSM acts as a trusted advisor or friend ready to support their customer. At the same time, they ensure that this commitment extends to the whole customer support team. A good CSM's job would transcend beyond the usual spreadsheets or service tickets; you'll find them dedicated to developing personal relationships with customers and catering to each customer's needs in the scope of the company's offering.
A good Customer Success Manager focuses on keeping customers happy and wastes no time identifying upsell and cross-sell opportunities for the business. This leads to better customer retention and increased revenue growth. The customer success role has twofold responsibilities- To keep the customer satisfied and to keep the company growing because of it.
This blog post takes a deep dive into a Customer Success Manager's job, salary expectations, skills, and their overall impact on a SaaS business' growth.
What is a Customer Success Manager?
According to a Forrester Research survey, over 72% of businesses say improving customer success would be their top priority.
Customer success is not any other business team. It is a key frontier that establishes a direct connection between businesses and their customers. Selling and onboarding customers are not the end goal, but keeping customers satisfied and positive about the company is. It means moving from fixing problems to actively helping customers reach their goals. This help happens all along the customer journey. This relationship building is the role of the Customer Success Manager.
The CSMs' job is multi-fold—they educate, solve problems, and support their customers' needs. Their main goal is simple: to keep customers happy, improve the customer experience, and build loyalty. They register support requests, pass them on to the development team, ensure strict support timelines and quality, etc. This loyal customer base leads to steady business growth.
What does a Customer Success Manager do at a SaaS company?
For SaaS companies, customer retention is a crucial parameter to ensure business continuity, which makes the customer success function extremely important. Customer Success Managers (CSMs) step in right after a customer signs up. They make sure the onboarding process is easy, provide ongoing training and support, and show customer accounts how valuable the product is and how to use it to fit their own needs perfectly.
CSMs are skilled at finding chances for revenue growth. By understanding what their customers want to achieve, they can suggest upgrades or extra features that match the customers' goals. This helps make the customer experience better. It also increases the lifetime value of the customer for the SaaS company. They have to maintain proactive communication with the customers, and also be the interface with the customer for the company's needs.
The CSM, therefore, plays a key role in reducing churn and building lasting relationships that benefit both the customer and the company.
The role of a Customer Success Manager at a SaaS company can be broken down into these 3 aspects:
Product-Potential Matchmaking: A CSM ensures the union between customer goals and product potential. It's not about bombarding clients with technical jargon or feature lists. Instead, it's about sitting down (virtual or real) and drawing a clear map from where a client wants to go to how your product can get them there.
Predictive Performance Intelligence: They dig into adoption rates, usage patterns, industry knowledge, and customer feedback to uncover real insights. Before a customer even realizes they're hitting a roadblock, a good CSM is already drafting a game plan. It's about catching potential issues early and turning them into opportunities for growth. This can be the sale of new products, upselling existing accounts, etc.
Strategic Value Amplification: Customer Success Managers are the ultimate business partners. They're not satisfied with one-off interactions or surface-level support. Through regular check-ins, deep-dive sessions, and personalized guidance, they're constantly asking: "How can we make this product work harder for your specific business?" and then guiding the customer success team members in the right direction. It's like having a strategic advisor whose only job is to make sure you're crushing your goals.
The first thing in a Customer Success Manager's job description is to start with an easy onboarding process for new customers. This helps them learn about the product's features and feel comfortable using it.
In addition, customer success managers (CSMs) keep an eye on customer engagement. They watch how customers use the product and how frequently they log in. This helps them spot any issues or challenges quickly. They can solve problems before they get bigger and help customers feel satisfied with their investments.
Let’s delve deeper into what constitutes a Customer Success Manager job description.
Build long-lasting relationships: Client Success Managers focus on building genuine relationships with key stakeholders at client companies through regular one-on-one meetings, knowing their pain points, understanding their growth plans, and becoming their go-to advisor for product-related decisions. This is the best way of making the customers feel heard and thereby keeping them retained. At SaaS businesses, where barriers to exit are low, effective customer success becomes key.
Drive Business Expansion, Growth, and Continued Success: Customer Success Managers are adept at identifying and nurturing expansion opportunities within existing accounts by staying plugged into customers' evolving needs and helping them envision new ways to leverage the platform. Account expansion, or selling more to the same customers, is a key way through which CSMs increase revenue.
Onboarding and Educating Customers: The Customer Success Manager (CSM) is mission-critical in making customer onboarding a positive experience. When a customer signs up, CSMs work to learn about their needs, goals, and what they want to achieve with the product. This knowledge helps create a customized onboarding process. This could include product demos, training sessions, or being there to answer any questions and give help. By giving customers the right tools and knowledge from the beginning, CSMs are essential in relationship management with customers.
Minimize churn and maximize retention: CSMs keep a close eye on product usage patterns and customer health metrics to spot both red flags and opportunities — jumping in proactively before small issues become deal-breakers that could lead to churn. Upon identifying at-risk customers, CSMs work on understanding the customers’ challenges and offer targeted solutions with the goal of avoiding churn. This may mean giving extra training, fixing technical problems, or simply showing customers the product's value. CSMs also create customer loyalty programs, offer incentives for renewals, and always seek customer feedback. These efforts help build long-lasting relationships, thereby, improving customer lifetime value and helping the company grow over time.
Keep customers engaged: Customer Success Managers need to keep their customers consistently engaged and informed. To ensure this, CSMs lead quarterly business reviews that showcase concrete value delivered, gather feedback, and align on the next steps — making these sessions engaging rather than just another boring meeting. CSMs create and maintain detailed customer playbooks and success plans that go beyond generic templates to reflect real-world usage patterns and business goals.
Act as a bridge between customers and internal teams: Customer Success Managers work behind the scenes with internal teams such as Product & Sales to champion customer needs, whether that means pushing for specific product features, streamlining processes, or coordinating complex technical solutions.
Skills Every Customer Success Manager Should Have
A good Customer Success Manager is 100% customer-obsessed.
But, what does it mean to be customer-obsessed, and what skills should one watch out for while hiring a customer-obsessed Customer Success Manager?
A good Customer Success Manager has a mix of skills. Great knowledge of the product and the industry is important, but people and soft skills really make a difference in a Customer Success Management role.
Great communication & presentation skills: Rock-solid communication skills that go beyond buzzwords - we're talking about the ability to break down complex ideas, read between the lines in customer conversations, and craft messages that actually resonate with different audiences.
Being empathetic and building lasting relationships: Relationship-building prowess that makes customers feel like they're working with a trusted partner rather than just another vendor contact - mastering the art of being professional yet approachable is a key skill every CSM must acquire. Additionally, CSMs must be empathetic to customers. It's about being there through thick and thin — whether you're popping virtual champagne over a successful launch or rolling up your sleeves to tackle their biggest headaches. This genuine partnership mindset turns a simple business relationship into a trusted long-term alliance.
Identify trends in data and act quickly: Good CSMs have a knack for spotting patterns and connecting dots, whether it's in usage data, customer feedback, or market trends — being able to see what's coming around the corner before it hits. Successful Customer Success Managers always balance their gut instinct with customer data-driven insights, knowing when to dig into the numbers and when to trust their experience.
Project management & leadership skills: CSMs need to have solid project management chops that help juggle multiple customer priorities without dropping the ball while making it all look effortless to both internal teams and clients. Customer Success Managers also need to possess strong leadership skills that inspire confidence in both customers and colleagues — being able to take charge of situations, influence decisions, and rally teams around customer needs. Time management is also essential for handling multiple customer accounts at once.
Turn product knowledge into practical insights: Customer Success Managers need to have strong business acumen that translates technical features into real-world value — to understand how the product actually fits into customers' operations and impacts their bottom line. CSMs also need to be naturally curious so they continue learning about the product, industry, and customers' businesses, staying ahead of the curve rather than just keeping up.
Maintain composure at all times: CSMs need to have the ability to stay cool under pressure and handle tough conversations with grace — from dealing with frustrated users to navigating tricky renewal discussions. Frustrated customers, unfortunately, are bound to turn up at some point. Good CSMs know how to navigate such situations and turn them into opportunities.
With the above skills and qualifications, Customer Success Managers can set themselves up for success.
Customer Success Manager Salary
According to multiple sources, a Customer Success Manager (CSM) brings home roughly $120K on average across the country. Beyond base pay, Customer Success Managers also earn incentives based on their salary structures.
In SaaS, companies offer CSMs commission on renewals and expansions - usually 2-15% of net revenue, depending on deal size and complexity. Some places do quarterly bonuses tied to customer health scores and retention metrics as well.
Some companies also give RSUs or stock options, though the amount varies hugely based on company stage and size. Enterprise-focused companies tend to have more generous compensation overall compared to SMB-focused ones.
Customer Success Manager Salary Average Based on Experience (Source: salary.com)
While what we’ve quoted above are average estimates, several factors determine Customer Success Manager salaries.
Factors Influencing CSM Salary: Location, Experience, and Company Size
Location: Where one works can dramatically impact their earnings as a CSM. In places with a higher cost of living, salaries are higher than in other areas. Tech hubs such as San Francisco and New York, for instance, typically offer salaries that soar above the national average (by 25%), reflecting their higher costs of living and concentrated tech presence. Smaller cities like Austin, Denver, and Raleigh are emerging as strong contenders, offering competitive salaries while providing a lower cost of living. Remote work has also been financially rewarding, with some companies now offering location-adjusted salaries that blend the best of both worlds.
Years of Experience: Freshers often start their careers learning the ropes, typically commanding entry-level salaries that reflect their developing skill set. Entry-level CSMs are seeing offers around $118K, give or take. With 1-2 years of experience underway, CSMs might see their salary bump up close to $120K. The jump isn't huge year over year, but it shows how companies reward even those early stages of experience. Senior level Customer Success Managers with over 8 years of experience can expect an average of $130,987.
Company Size: While smaller startups might offer lower base salaries to CSMs, they tend to sweeten the deal with equity packages that could prove valuable down the line. Mid-sized companies often provide a balanced mix of stable base pay and performance bonuses. Large enterprises, on the other hand, typically offer the highest base salaries, comprehensive benefits packages, and structured advancement paths, though they might be more conservative with equity offerings.
How to Compensate Customer Success Managers
There are various models that companies employ to fairly compensate their Customer Success Managers based on their revenue goals and business type and size. Here are the three most popular models for compensating Customer Success Managers.
1. Base Only - Some companies, particularly larger enterprises, stick to a straightforward base-only model for their CSMs. They offer annual salaries ranging from $90-120K annually, depending on experience and location, with standard benefits and yearly merit increases of 3-5%. This model is not widely adopted because of certain drawbacks:
Zero financial incentive to push for account growth
No extra reward for saving at-risk accounts
Top performers earn the same as average ones
CSMs might focus on doing just enough since extra effort doesn't pay off
This can lead to higher turnover as ambitious CSMs seek better-structured packages
2. Base + Bonus (MBO) - CSMs earn extra through MBO (management by objectives) plans that measure both personal and team achievements. The smart companies tie these bonuses to hard numbers that matter - how well they keep customers around, whether accounts grow, what customers say about them (NPS scores), and even how many success stories they can share. While this mix of base and bonus sounds good on paper - and sure, it's better than just a flat salary, there are a few shortcomings. The Base + Bonus model doesn’t recognize CSM efforts on long-term customer relationships as these don’t show up in quarterly numbers. Additionally, a CSM may have spent weeks saving a huge account from leaving, but that specific win wasn't part of her original bonus targets, therefore, their earnings don’t reflect the effort made for the win.
3. Base + Variable: For most SaaS companies, a common split is 70/30 or 80/20 (Base/Variable). Variable pay is based on certain performance metrics tied to positive outcomes for the company. This model can be adjusted based on the complexity of the role and how directly the CSM can influence revenue or retention. Designing the variable component for your CSMs is tied to incentives that matter to your business, with examples like:
Net Revenue Retention (NRR): Incentivize revenue growth from existing customers, including upselling and cross-selling. For example, a CSM who successfully cross-sells a product gets 3% of the proceeds as their commission.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) or NPS Scores: Bonus payouts for achieving high satisfaction metrics. For example, a quarterly bonus of 5% of the account value above 90% scores.
Adoption and Engagement Metrics: For early-stage customers, bonuses can be linked to product usage milestones. For example, a 5 % bonus payout on more than 50% of the users maintaining an active login streak for a month.
Customer Retention Rate: Rewards based on renewal percentages. For example, if more than 50% of customers renew, then 5% of the contract value is awarded as a bonus to the CSM, or 8% above an 80% renewal rate.
Wrapping Up
As the SaaS industry continues to evolve, Customer Success Managers have emerged as pivotal players in driving sustainable growth and maintaining competitive advantage for SaaS businesses. Their unique position at the intersection of customer relationships, product expertise, and business strategy makes them invaluable assets in this subscription-based economy.
For SaaS companies looking to scale, investing in customer success isn't just an option—it's a necessity. As customer expectations continue to rise and product offerings become more sophisticated, the role of CSMs will only grow in importance. Companies that recognize this and build robust customer success teams, supported by appropriate compensation structures and skill development, will be better positioned to thrive in the competitive SaaS landscape.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a Customer Success Manager do?
A Customer Success Manager ensures customers achieve their desired outcomes while using a product/service. They handle onboarding, provide ongoing support, identify upsell opportunities, and work to retain customers. CSMs act as strategic advisors, monitoring customer health, addressing concerns proactively, and driving product adoption and satisfaction.
What is a good salary for a Customer Success Manager?
The average CSM salary ranges from $60,000 to $120,000 annually, depending on experience, location, and company size. Entry-level positions typically start around $50-60K, while senior CSMs can earn $100K+. Additional compensation often includes bonuses tied to customer retention and expansion revenue.
What are the skills required for a Customer Success Manager?
Key CSM skills include strong communication, relationship-building, problem-solving, and project management abilities. They need product expertise, data analysis capabilities, and strategic thinking. Empathy, a proactive mindset, and the ability to balance customer needs with business objectives are crucial.
Is CSM a technical role?
While CSMs need product knowledge and basic technical understanding, it's not primarily a technical role. The only technical knowledge they need is of their own product. The level of technical expertise required varies by industry and product complexity. CSMs focus more on relationship management, strategy, and business outcomes than technical troubleshooting.
What degree do you need to be a customer success manager?
Most CSM positions require a bachelor's degree, typically in business, communications, or related fields. However, relevant experience and demonstrated customer service skills often matter more than specific degrees. Some employers value industry experience and certifications over formal education.
Is it stressful to be a customer success manager?
CSM roles can be challenging due to managing multiple customer relationships, meeting retention targets, and balancing various stakeholder needs. While deadlines and performance metrics create pressure, many find the role rewarding through helping customers succeed and building long-term relationships.
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