customer success manager
also referred to as: csm · csms · customer success managers
15 statements across 13 episodes · 8 bullish · 4 bearish · 11 people on the record · first statement Aug 28, 2017 by Catherine Blackmore · across every show →
Everything said about customer success manager, oldest first
Aug 28, 2017 positive
Startups Must Retain Early Customers Before Paying Salespeople Commission
“Why on earth would you pay a salesperson commission before you know if you're going to retain your customers? So it's that first hundred customers, maybe first 10, 20 customers, depending on your business model, before you even think about commissioning a sale…”
Aug 28, 2017
Customer Success Managers Must Not Let Customer Sympathy Harm the Organization
“With a CSM, you don't want somebody who is over sympathetic to the customer that's working against the org. You want somebody who's, you know, some of you have, you're at minimum viable product. You're trying to do a specific thing. You want somebody who's goi…”
Mar 17, 2018 positive
Oct 5, 2021 positive
Nick Mehta: SaaS startups hitting 50 employees must hire dedicated CS operations
“Every single person, once you get to like 50, 75 employees,
You need a CS operations person.
Don't just hire CSMs.
CSMs are really important, but just like you have in sales, salespeople and sales operations people, you need customer success operations to unde…”
Feb 15, 2022
Asthana: PLG models require monitoring every customer regardless of account size
“In a product led model, it kind of flips over where no matter how small a customer is, you have to make sure that there is somebody who has eyes on it. And what CSMs can help you do is look at your target opportunity and expand the market because they are In t…”
Mar 18, 2022 positive
Colato: CAB members carry vendor advocacy across job changes
“CAB is a great way to build customer advocates. Our CSMs saw these kinds of changes in the relationships and conversations that we were having with folks, and if folks jump from company to company, they'll be able to bring those stories with them and bring you…”
Apr 26, 2023 positive
Mehta: SaaS companies must build digital CS infrastructure early, not just add CSMs
“If all you have is CSMs and like a kind of a people-driven approach, then it looks like everything requires a CSM. And so kind of what I would say here is just early on, get a lot of the basic stuff in place. Like, you know, people should be able to open a tic…”
Nov 8, 2023 negative
Feb 9, 2024 negative
Startups over-resource CSMs and under-invest in critical onboarding and implementation
“I see lots of resources in this category of CSM, which is like ongoing maintenance and servicing of customers and under resourcing in implementation. And I just think the initial experience that a customer has on a product or with a company has so much influen…”
Jun 13, 2024 positive
Sep 27, 2024 positive
Plank prefers hiring sales-oriented account managers over giving CSMs quotas
“If you have to choose between a CSM profile that's going to own revenue or an account manager profile that needs to be like customer success oriented, a hundred times out of a hundred, I'm picking the account manager that needs to be customer oriented because …”
Dec 27, 2024 neutral
Mar 14, 2025 negative
Mehta: Do not scale customer success simply by hiring more CSMs
“In fact, if I give you one piece of like advice from the beginning, it's don't just hire a bunch of CSMs, maybe one or two. It's heretical for me to say, by the way, but it's true. Go fix all your processes, your product, make it so you can scale without a cra…”
Sep 17, 2025 negative
Sep 17, 2025 bullish
Foster: AI Will Eventually Act Autonomously as Sales Reps and CSMs
“I think it takes a lot of work to get that last mile good enough where you would say, Hey, we're actually going to feel confident actually having the AI act as the sales rep or act as the CSM in these equations where it's going to get there. It's going to get …”