> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What does a fractional VP of customer success actually do? - URL: https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/fractional-vp-of-customer-success/ - Published: 2026-10-15T21:48:49.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-15T21:48:49.000Z - Description: More and more companies are changing tactics when it comes to hiring senior leaders. But what does a fractional VP of customer success do? - Author: Grace Gupta - Tags: CS careers, Leadership, Articles More and more companies are changing tactics when it comes to hiring senior leaders. Rather than committing to a permanent executive, they’re bringing in a fractional one: an experienced [customer success](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/what-is-customer-success/) leader on a fixed-term contract, hired to do a specific job and then move on. There's no questioning the appeal. You get [executive-level thinking](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/lessons-from-customer-success-leadership/) without the long-term commitment, from someone who has already solved the problems you’re dealing with. It’s a fast-growing model. According to Lightcast, at least 34,000 US workers had “fractional” in their job title in 2025, [up 265% since 2019](https://lightcast.io/blog/rise-of-fractional-leadership). The term gets used in different ways, and some use it to mean part-time. Here, we mean a contracted, temporary leadership role. And because the role is temporary by design, the brief is somewhat different from a permanent VP’s. A fractional VP of CS is usually brought in for a specific purpose, whether that’s [building the function from scratch](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/building-customer-success-from-scratch/), resetting a team that’s lost its way or getting the business ready for a permanent hire. Then they step away. That means knowing what to build, in what order, and how to make sure it still works after they leave. To understand what “good” looks like, we’ve gone straight to the horse’s mouth. We’ve drawn on [Chief Customer Officer Summit](https://events.customersuccesscollective.com/) talks from three practitioners who’ve each spent years shaping CS leadership at scale: - **Rob Zambito,** a three-time CS leader who specializes in building teams from scratch and designing expansion motions. - **Anne Marie Costigan,** VP of Customer Success at HubSpot, overseeing a global organization serving hundreds of thousands of customers. - **Lorenzo Serva,** who runs customer success across APAC for Dynatrace, one of the most operationally complex regions in the business. In the interest of transparency, none of them were speaking specifically about fractional roles. But their advice speaks directly to the decisions a fractional VP has to make. ## How to set the scope of a fractional CS role Before any of that work starts, there’s a risk that has nothing to do with [customer success](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/state-of-customer-success-report/): the shape of the job itself. There’s a real danger that fractional VPs can drift into becoming order-takers who are treated like employees. After the first few weeks, the requests start arriving, and the role turns into a full-time job with an all-too-concrete end goal in sight. The company’s wish list keeps growing while the hours stay fixed. If the fractional leader isn’t working through all of it, the business starts to feel it isn’t getting value. The way to avoid this is to agree on the scope up front, especially where leading ends and doing begins. For a fractional VP of CS, that means deciding on day one whether you’re there to build the function, manage a book of accounts, or both. If that isn’t agreed, the next escalation will decide it for them. The same discipline applies throughout your contract. It’s tempting for an experienced leader to step in and do the work themselves, because they can and because it gets quick results. But a *fractional* VP who spends their time closing deals and fixing accounts themselves isn’t changing how the team works. When they leave, so do the results. [![Free resources worth paying for: Templates, reports and expert content – no card required – with a Customer Success Collective Insider membership.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6f/66/6f66cab9-7939-4355-91c0-409dddffd4d9/content/images/2026/06/Free-resources-worth-paying-for-Templates--reports-and-expert-content-----no-card-required.--2-.jpg)](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/insider-membership-plan/) ## How to prove the value of customer success in your first 30 days With the scope settled, the next job of a fractional VP of customer success is to win over the business. A fractional VP rarely joins a company where everyone has agreed that [CS deserves a seat at the table.](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-customer-success-can-get-a-seat-at-the-table/) Nine times out of ten, the function is newer than sales, product and marketing. Unfortunately, this all-too often means your [C-suite](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/speaking-the-language-of-the-c-suite/) wonders whether CS truly earns its keep. A permanent hire might have a year to answer that question; a fractional one doesn’t. Rob Zambito’s advice is blunt: [know your numbers](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/get-your-ceos-attention/). CS leaders need to speak fluently about sales efficiency, conversion rates, payback periods and LTV ratios, because that fluency earns a voice in the room where decisions get made. He also recommends doing the work yourself before asking anyone else to. *“There’s no job that I’m too good for,”* he says. He describes getting on the phone with customers and selling himself, sometimes before he had formal permission, because it built trust and set realistic expectations for the team. Lorenzo Serva takes the business case a step further: revenue alone doesn’t justify the function; margin does: *“You might’ve had $100 in revenue, and you spent $101 to get there. It’s pointless.”* He frames CS around the loyalty loop, where the cost of generating revenue from an existing customer falls over time while the value extracted rises. For a fractional VP, that case matters even more – because it has to keep the function funded after the person who made it has gone. [![AI Across the Customer Journey ebook](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6f/66/6f66cab9-7939-4355-91c0-409dddffd4d9/content/images/2026/09/CSC_AI_for_Customer_Support_Leaders_Report_Assets_Article--3---1-.jpg)](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/ai-across-the-customer-journey-ebook/) ## Which customer success metrics to set up (and leave behind) Once your mandate is secure, the harder work begins. A permanent VP of customer success can refine their operating model gradually. But a fractional one has to set their direction at lightning speed and with enough clarity so their eventual successor can easily pick it up. Anne Marie Costigan’s warning is that **usage no longer proves value**. Healthy, [high-usage customers](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/product-usage-metrics/) now churn anyway, she says, because the CFO is in the room asking for [proof of return](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/roi-framework-to-prove-value/), switching costs have collapsed, and AI tools may deliver outcomes without anyone logging in. Her value pyramid moves from product experience to outcomes, then ROI, then partnership. It gives a fractional leader a clear direction to set: measure whether customers are getting the return they bought the product for, not just whether they’re logging in. Lorenzo adds the discipline. He warns against [metrics](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/cs-metrics-your-board-actually-wants-to-see/) overload and separates the numbers everyone tracks but he can’t influence from the ones he can actually move, mapping metrics to use cases and industries in a simple matrix. It’s exactly the kind of document a fractional leader can build in a few weeks and leave behind. [![Ready for your next promotiom? Customer Success Leadership: Certified](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6f/66/6f66cab9-7939-4355-91c0-409dddffd4d9/content/images/2026/03/CSC_Education_In-Article_Banner_--1-.jpg)](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/learning/on-demand/customer-success-certified-leadership/) ## The question of expansion ownership No topic divides CS teams more than who owns [expansion revenue](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/who-owns-customer-renewals/), and a fractional VP will almost certainly be asked to settle it. In some ways they’re well placed to. An outsider with an end date can make a structural call that an internal leader, who has to live with the politics afterwards, might keep putting off. How they make that call matters too. A decision handed down by someone on a temporary contract can quietly unravel once they’ve left. A better approach is to narrow the field to two workable options, lay out the trade-offs, and let leadership make the final decision, so it has an owner after the fractional VP has gone. Rob and Lorenzo give you those two options. Rob’s is a commercial customer success function: a sales capability that reports into CS, with hires on something closer to a [50% base, 50% commission structure](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-commission-for-expansion-revenue/). Expansion stays with the team that owns the relationship, and the risk of overselling drops. Lorenzo’s is to keep expansion with CSMs but reward the activity linked to revenue rather than the dollar amount, so his team develops selling instincts [without becoming pure salespeople](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/driving-revenue-without-feeling-like-sales/). [Does customer success get a commission for expansion revenue?Are customer success teams – who are bringing in revenue growth via account expansion for upselling, cross-selling and renewals – being compensated with a commission on these sales?![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6f/66/6f66cab9-7939-4355-91c0-409dddffd4d9/content/images/icon/android-chrome-192x192-5980c6a5-607d-4b73-803a-34a0f77a0697.png)Customer Success CollectiveGrace Gupta![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6f/66/6f66cab9-7939-4355-91c0-409dddffd4d9/content/images/thumbnail/Do-Customer-Success-Managers-get-a-commission-for-expansion-revenue--57f94ccb-82c5-4fa8-b042-9706eedc26d6.png)](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-commission-for-expansion-revenue/) ## How to align CS with product and sales in a fractional role CS can’t deliver any of this alone, and much of a fractional VP’s value lies in forcing [alignment across the organization](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-to-perfect-customer-success-and-sales-alignment/). Good relationships with the in-house team help, and a fractional leader who raises ideas as questions rather than instructions gives people room to own them. The catch is that alignment built on one person’s relationships leaves when they do. What lasts is [shared accountability](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/driving-roi-and-customer-accountability-for-success/) and documented process. Anne Marie’s experience at HubSpot shows the difference. Their Head of Product carries gross revenue retention (GRR) as a core metric, the same [KPI](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/measuring-customer-success/) she carries. She’s candid that a year of everyone simply collaborating failed. What changed things was *“skin in the game”* on both sides, and she earned it with evidence: recorded [customer interviews](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-exit-interview-questions-framework/) showing product leadership which features customers did and didn’t value. Lorenzo’s version is operational. His region spans eight time zones and 15 languages, with three-quarters of engagements running through partners, so he relies on documented processes and internal SLAs between teams. His rule that *“good news goes out fast, but bad news goes out even faster”* is the kind of norm a fractional leader can set in week one and expect to survive their exit. ## How to hand over a fractional CS role to a permanent hire Every fractional engagement ends, and the strongest ones are planned around that from the start. A common pattern looks a lot like an interim role. The leader comes in for a defined period, sets up the processes, systems and priorities, fixes the reporting and sets the [strategy](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-startups-develop-a-customer-success-strategy/). Then they hand day-to-day management to someone else, often by helping the company hire a permanent leader. After that, they step back into a lighter advisory role with regular check-ins. Without an exit plan, fractional work tends to stall and turn into a full-time job done on part-time hours. A good handover covers more than processes. It also defines the role the permanent hire will step into: what they own, which metrics they’re judged on, and which decisions have already been made. ## Checklist: what a fractional VP of CS should leave behind The test of a fractional VP has nothing to do with time spent in the role. If you want to succeed in a fractional role, your focus should be on your legacy: whether the company you’re temporarily at can keep running the operating model you put in place once you’ve gone. In practice, that means leaving behind: - An agreed scope that kept the role strategic - A business case framed in margin, not just revenue - A small set of value-based metrics - A settled answer on expansion that leadership owns - KPIs shared with other teams - A clear brief for whoever comes next