What does a customer success manager do?
A customer success manager (CSM) ensures customers achieve their desired outcomes through proactive engagement, adoption tracking, and ongoing relationship management driving retention and growth for the business.
What are the key skills to assess while looking for a customer success manager?
- Customer Relationship Building – Trust, empathy, communication, and stakeholder alignment.
- Analytical Thinking – Ability to interpret product usage data and health scores.
- Account Management – Renewal forecasting, cross-sell, and upsell strategy.
- Problem Solving – Proactive risk identification and creative issue resolution.
- Technical Fluency – Product understanding, integrations, and troubleshooting basics.
- Strategic Planning – Goal setting, success plans, and executive reporting.
- Collaboration – Strong coordination with Sales, Product, and Support teams.
What are the KPIs for a customer success manager?
Before evaluating performance, connect CSM skills with business outcomes—measuring relationship depth, product adoption, and revenue protection.
- Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
- Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)
- Churn Rate (Logo/Revenue)
- Customer Health Score
- Adoption & Engagement Metrics
- Renewal Rate / Upsell Rate
- Time-to-Value (TTV)
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Expansion ARR/MRR
- Executive/Decision-Maker Engagement Frequency
