The Top 25 Customer Success Mentors To Learn From And Work For - 2026
Overview
The knowledge we need to excel at our jobs is often locked in the minds of peers. At Sharebird, our mission is to make this knowledge accessible to everyone. Imagine succeeding with top mentors by your side.
The Customer Success Mentor List showcases the top 25 customer success mentors to learn from and work for to develop your career. Every one of these practitioners has contributed content that Sharebird users trust and value for their professional development.
Methodology
Sharebird's algorithm ranks customer success contributors based on how helpful our users perceive their content to be. We do not handpick people. To be considered for this list, mentors need to be current customer success practitioners and in a leadership role. We look at the following factors with Sharebird content: views, saves, and followers. We then apply a proprietary algorithm to calculate content credibility and helpfulness. Views show us content relevancy, saves show us content quality, and followers show us content credibility.
Sharebird does not accept payment to be included on this list, which allows us to maintain objectivity and independence. We update this list every year. For any questions about this list, please contact support@sharebird.com.
About Sharebird
Sharebird is where the top customer success leaders share their expertise. Discover actionable insights and advice to tackle your toughest work challenges and unlock your full career potential.
In Alphabetical Order by Company:
Career Path Tip: Impact in CS roles comes down to three C’s - Curiosity, Customer-centricity and Creativity. First, lead with a growth mindset and stay in discovery mode always. Second, be relentlessly customer-centric, listen first and add value in every interaction by solving customer problems, big or small. Third, the tangible value CSMs deliver is by driving organisation-wide behavior and habit change ,which demands resilience and creative thinking. Be creative as you empower organisations and never give up !
Career Path Tip: Own your own career and cultivate a growth mindset to continuously learn, develop, and improve. Be the architect of your own success as a Customer Success Manager. Embrace change with resilience and adaptability, as these qualities are essential in today’s dynamic environment. I believe in the power of networking; seek mentors and coaches, and remember to pay it forward by helping others along their journey
Career Path Tip: Embrace your role today with the confidence that you are capable of tackling even greater challenges. Whenever I feel overwhelmed by the next step in my career, I remind myself that I experienced the same feelings when I first entered the industry. If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn't have worried so much. I strive to project that sense of calmness into my daily routine.
Career Path Tip: Build your career the way you plan your life: intentionally, with room to explore and adapt. Optimize for skills, not just credentials or certificates, judgment, and genuine relationships that compound over time, instead of chasing titles or short-term wins. The most resilient careers are built by people with a growth mindset, who make thoughtful bets and design work to fit their life, not the other way around.
Career Path Tip: Details matter. Whether it’s preparing for a customer call, crafting a presentation, or even having a casual coffee with a new hire, the difference between doing something thoughtfully and doing it half-heartedly is profound. Prioritizing self-awareness and preparation will not only elevate your work but also accelerate your personal and professional growth.
Career Path Tip: Cultivate a genuine joy for continuous learning. Staying curious and maintaining a constant quest for understanding and analysis helps you adapt and grow in a fast-changing professional landscape. Rely on data, think logically, and draw conclusions—these skills are critical for identifying successful paths and driving sustainable growth. Learn with enthusiasm, and observe how other organizations adopt new practices and technologies. Broadening your perspective this way sharpens your thinking and strengthens your impact.
Career Path Tip: Collect skills and experiences, not job titles. Too often we're all focused on progression being a change in title or a step up the seniority level. But actually, progression is learning new skills and perfecting a skillset. Leaders will hire you for your collection of skills and experience, not just the titles you've held. Don't be afraid to take on new roles and responsibilities that build your experience, even if it feels like a step sideways or back with title!
Career Path Tip: Growth happens outside your comfort zone. In Customer Success, and in leadership, everyone is figuring it out as they go. Embrace the discomfort, stay curious, and trust your ability to adapt and learn along the way.
Career Path Tip: Take the time to understand what truly energizes you in your work and what you find more challenging, and commit to continuous learning. Stay curious by talking with peers, engaging your network, and keeping up with what’s happening in your industry.
Career Path Tip: Customer Success thrives when you deeply understand what success means for both your company and your customers. The real magic happens at the intersection of strategic priorities and customer goals—where business wins and customer wins align. Keep revisiting that alignment as priorities evolve, so you can adapt and amplify the value you deliver.
Career Path Tip: The role of CS is constantly evolving alongside other customer facing roles. Even if you have the ability to build a strategy at the start, the need to commit to regular check-ins on how CS strategically fits within the broader organizational goals remains present.
Career Path Tip: Be curious! Ask questions about the future of your organization, what your leaders are focused on, what needs your customers have, and how you can help move all of these folks forward!
Career Path Tip: Design for Scale, Not Reactive Execution! Great Customer Success is no longer about individual excellence. It’s about building systems and processes that consistently deliver value. Create clarity through strong operating rhythms, decision frameworks, and outcome-based accountability. Empower leaders, develop emerging leaders, and reduce dependencies. Consistent, scalable success enables both customers and teams to thrive.
Career Path Tip: As a CS leader your most critical role is developing the culture of your team. Startups are unpredictable, each day brings a new challenge, a new opportunity, and more than likely a frequent pivot. Your team will be more inclined to join you on that rollercoaster if you've invested in them, developed a sense of trust and community within your team, and shown that you live in the trenches right there with them.
Career Path Tip: Now more than ever, CSMs are under increasing pressure to drive revenue for the business. But this is our time to shine. Take the opportunity to deeply understand your customers, continuously sharpen your business acumen, and focus on delivering and showcasing tangible value at every touchpoint. At the same time, stay open to change and be intentional about adopting new ways of working, particularly by leveraging AI to scale insights, improve prioritization, and spend more time on high-impact customer interactions. If you focus on these principles, you will set yourself apart and make a lasting impact.
Career Path Tip: Do and ask for forgiveness later; I've taken this view throughout my career and it's something I love to see it in my teams. Whether it is doing something to help a customer or proposing and trying something new internally, doing generally leads to quicker results and innovation. The other thing I was once told and try to do is reflect. We work in high speed environments and sometimes its hard to take time to think about what we've achieved and what we would do differently in the future which can only help you to grow your career.
Career Path Tip: Consider every process and product from the standpoint of your customer. Lead with empathy, follow-up with compassion. Say “yes’ to every opportunity to you. Learn, learn, learn. Design customer-centric processes and constantly iterate and evolve them.
Career Path Tip: My best advice is to take the risk and reach out, but be sure to clearly communicate your purpose. Avoid coming across as a new sales rep merely trying to close a deal.
Career Path Tip: As a CSM, you are the ultimate connector at the center of your company. If you really want to own your career, leverage this unique vantage point to bridge internal strategy with external customer reality. Build your internal network to get things done, be super curious about how the customer operates, and ensure that you bring the trends and insights from the customer base to your internal teams - you'll be seens as a strategic thinker in no time.
Career Path Tip: It is absolutely crucial to always remain open minded, not only important to be open to changing your own views but that has got to be open and honest. I also think it's important to be open to changing your mind if you hear things that persuades you.
Career Path Tip: There is a popular ratio-based rule for resource allocation: Focus on Core (50%), Strategic Growth (40%), and Innovation/Experimentation (10%). In Customer Success, we can oftentimes end up with almost 100% in Focus on Core. And as customer expectations shift to more immediate, complete, and personalized content, and new tools shift our working styles, it's more important than ever that we are always thinking ahead. 50% is probably unrealistic for CS, but all CS roles should make an effort to allocate some of their time to clear strategic growth, and a bit of green field experimentation, to stay ahead of their career and customer needs.
Career Path Tip: As much as we can be predictive in this rapidly evolving space, Customer Success professionals need to not be customer success professionals, but strategy and product enthusiasts. They can layer the excitement and the why, as AI is largely going to replace the how.
Career Path Tip: Bring insights and a point of view, not just updates and asks. Consider: What are customers really struggling with? What value is your company delivering? What do customers expect from your company?
Career Path Tip: My advice is to focus on developing transferable skills and building a strong foundation of knowledge for any industry or company that you’d like to work for. Even if you don’t have direct experience, emphasize internships, academic projects, or extracurricular activities that demonstrate teamwork, empathy, and a customer-centric mindset.
Career Path Tip: Master the art of being a business strategist, not just a relationship manager. The best CSMs don't wait for customers to ask for help—they proactively analyze usage data, identify expansion opportunities, and connect product capabilities to business outcomes. Develop deep industry expertise so you can speak your customer's language and anticipate their challenges before they do. Learn to quantify your impact in revenue terms: retention rates, expansion ARR, and customer lifetime value. Finally, build cross-functional influence—your ability to advocate for customers internally and drive product improvements will set you apart and accelerate your career growth.