This is a great question! As the first Customer Success hire, I would start by getting a lay of the land of the business -- what is the customer sentiment, how are renewal rates, how often do customers expand their usage with new products, etc. You don't want to immediately tie yourself to KPIs that are major problems because it's unlikely that you can, singlehandedly, change them in your first few months. Instead, find the areas where you can deliver a quick impact -- are cross-sells being left on the table? Are customers not having value-based QBRs? Go out and do those at the outset and then come back to some of the broader business metrics later.

It depends on the level, but the main ones for us are retention (making renewal a non-event), increased customer usage and adoption/engagement, connection to the company values, strong, multi-threaded relationships with customers, and upsells/account expansion which increases product stickiness.

This answer is entirely dependent on the what field/product the CSM works with, who their target persona is and what resources are available based on company maturity. For someone dealing in cybersecurity, working mostly with CISOs, technical skills are more important. For someone in general CRM, maybe not so much. My feeling is that process experts > product experts. I find the best CSMs have strong business acumen, can step into a customer relationship and understand where there is opportunity to either (1) inject their product into existing process to create efficiency or (2) suggest a new process built around their product that drives better outcomes. That is less about deep technical knowledge and more about an ability to understand what value means to your customers and how your product can deliver that. Assuming that you have resources available to you that allows you or the customer to solve a technical issue when they arise, your true value is driving results vs. troubleshooting.

In my experience, in order to retain good Customer Success talent, here are things that you must offer: * Clear career growth opportunities * Invest in ongoing training and development * Foster a positive, inclusive team culture where achievements are recognized and employees feel valued * Encourage work-life balance by offering flexibility and supporting initiatives * Provide competitive compensation and benefits to ensure employees feel financially supported, which I feel we do a great job of at Zendesk.

The future of Customer Success is evolving beyond traditional retention-focused roles into a strategic, revenue-driving function with deep technical expertise. Based on my experience leading CS teams and scaling operations, I see the future heading in these key directions: 1. CSMs as Technical & Strategic Advisors CSMs will bridge the gap between product and business, offering technical consultations, best practices, and optimisation strategies. Their expertise won’t just drive adoption but will also contribute directly to customer efficiency and profitability, impacting net margin, not just ARR. 2. Revenue Ownership & Expansion Focus Customer Success will increasingly take on measurable revenue responsibilities, not just renewals but expansion, cross-sell, and monetisation of value-added services. CSMs will play a key role in identifying consumption-based opportunities, AI-driven efficiencies, and premium consulting engagements. 3. Integrated Customer Lifecycle Management Customer Success will no longer operate in a silo, it will be deeply embedded with Sales, Product, and Finance to drive long-term customer growth. CS-led revenue forecasting, pricing model optimisations, and margin-conscious technical consultations will become a standard practice. My Thoughts..! As the industry shifts, CS leaders must redefine customer value beyond retention, leveraging technical expertise, revenue accountability, and AI-driven insights to drive not just customer success but business success as a whole.

This is one of the most critical components of customer success leadership both when establishing a CS function or joining a team with an already established CS org. If a CS team sits within the sales organization, there may be a natural alignment already anchoring the full team to joint business-based KPIs like churn reduction or retention/renewal outcomes. In this case, it's important to recognize how each team contributes to those shared outcomes - while the KPIs may be shared, the path to achieving the KPIs can (and likely should) differ by team. For example, CS may lean more into product adoption and customer value assurance in service to retention or renewal outcomes, whereas sales is responsible for growing the customer base or growing the renewal. If the sales and CS teams are managed separately within the organizational structure, it becomes even more key to have conversations around how CS incentivization and measurement models serve the broader organizational and business outcome goals. For example, showcasing how boosting customer product adoption through well-timed customer engagements leads to customer value and stronger renewal outcomes. One of the most effective ways to anchor teams on commonly shared KPIs is to be very specific about how the actions (inputs) lead to results (outcomes) - ensuring this narrative is reinforced consistently through the organization. It's also important to be transparent on each team (sales/CS) around how team members are measured if there are differences in accountability structures - this builds trust and confidence that while actions may differ, 'skin in the game' is present for all teams in service to business outcomes.

We have weekly business reviews with the entire executive team where we review certain metrics including several adoption metrics like WAU, a composite product adoption score, uptake of certain critical features and whitespace. In this meeting we're monitoring week-over-week trends and aligning on areas where we need to dig in further or focus some effort. We also have more focused monthly adoption meetings where we go deeper on adoption patterns by persona, by product, and feedback we're hearing. We'll use these meetings to align with the product managers, CS leaders and others on goals / challenges / initiatives. Of course, we do more comprehensive reviews of adoption patterns quarterly with the executive team and as part of board preparation. These often include a high-level review across all lenses, with a deep-dive into a particular product or persona.

I am a little biased here as the company I work for (Gainsight) is a customer success solution. In the product keynote here, we explain how we are integrating AI into our tool in order to solve for six large issues in your customer lifecycle. 1. Eliminate Blindspots 2. Remove Grunt Work to Make Room for What Matters 3. Turn Every Teammate into the Best Version of Themselves 4. Make Self-Service Not Suck 5. Transform Novices into Gurus 6. Help Customers Find Their Work Bestie The first three steps in the AI Playbook are all about how your team can leverage AI to improve the entire customer journey by giving your team back time to focus on what matters. The AI playbook focuses on making it easy for customers to access the information they need to be successful and share that knowledge with others in the community. In other words, Make Self-Serve Not Suck. In the past, trainings were all about watching a video and then answering a few questions. The experience wasn’t tailored to anyone’s specific needs or use cases. AI changes all of that. With AI, customers can get a completely custom onboarding and training experience without requiring extra hours from CS teams. Customers can access trainings that are all relevant to their job and goals. The result is more engaged learning, faster understanding, and companies that quickly Transform Novices into Gurus. And the power of Human-First AI doesn’t stop at self-serve. Successful companies also use it to Help Customers Find their Work Bestie. They connect customers with similar experiences so they can build a community together. Sharing information, updating best practices, working through use cases together only makes community better and customer loyalty stronger. Everyone wins when you put humans first! 

I've found two KPIs to be difficult to commit to: 1. Customer Health. If you have a robust algorithm to measure customer health (influenced by a number of inputs ), it can be hard commit to a certain outcome. To frame this another way, I've often observed customer health scores as being a bit of a black box where it's hard to tie the actions you take to specific outcomes when there could be a number of variables outside of your control that influence the ultimate score. I much prefer to commit to lead measures that are directly within the control of the team. KPIs related to customer engagement are a good example of things that are more directly within the team's control. 2. Upgrade rate. Many CSM teams are measured on Net Revenue Retention. As part of this, your CSMs may be responsible for identifying growth opportunities within the install base of customers. I find it's effective to measure the team on how many growth opportunities the team identifies but not the close rate or upgrade rate, especially if the Sales or Account Management team owns the closing motion. 

Some essential hard skills that are considered must-haves for a customer success leader include: (must have does not necessarily mean now - you can and should be trained on the job) • Analytical skills: the ability to analyze customer data and metrics to identify trends and opportunities for improvement, as well as a deep understanding of customer behavior and the ability to create actionable insights from that data. • Project management skills: managing customer projects and initiatives effectively to ensure timely delivery and customer satisfaction. • Technical skills: navigating technical tools and software used in customer support and engagement. • Product knowledge: a deep understanding of the product or service can help customer success leaders effectively troubleshoot and provide solutions to customer issues. • Problem-solving skills: the ability to quickly and effectively identify and resolve customer issues is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty. • Knowledge of Tools (soft and hard skills): CRM (Jira/SFDC/HubSpot/Zoho etc.), CSM (Gainsight, Einstein, Totango, ChurnZero), and Analytical Tools like (Tableau, SAS/ PowerBI, and Google Analytics). You should get some training as part of your onboarding; however, self-help is the best help. As for nice-to-haves skills: • Industry knowledge: the ability to stay current on industry developments and trends, as well as an understanding of best practices in customer success management. • Financial analysis skills: the ability to evaluate and analyze financial data, such as customer revenue, churn rate, and lifetime value, to identify opportunities for growth and improvement. • Business Acumen: the ability to understand the company's goals and align customer success strategies. • Leadership skills: the ability to inspire, motivate and lead a team of customer success managers and associates to achieve their goals. • Communication skills: the ability to clearly and effectively communicate and collaborate with customers and other stakeholders/inter-department and intra-department are essential for building and maintaining positive relationships.