# Customer Success Collective > We're driving excellence in the customer success field. You're in the right place if you want to learn, develop, and scale with customer advocates worldwide. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. Use `/llms-full.txt` for consolidated page and post context. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages - [About us](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/about.md) - Our mission is to provide an unrivalled resource to help those within SaaS organizations drive innovation and growth. We want to provide you with the tools you need to help drive your business forward. - [Access All Areas: Customer Success Festival, June 2021](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/access-all-areas-customer-success-festival-june-2021.md) - [Activate](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/activate.md) - Thanks for joining Customer Success Collective 🎊 You'll receive an email shortly with an activation link. Please click on the link to activate your account. If you need anything in the meantime, click the chat-box in the bottom-right corner and our friendly support team will be straight back 👋 - [Canceled](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/canceled.md) - Ooops, the payment for your membership was not successful. Try again right here: Membership plans | Future of SaaSUnlock our library of members-only, heavyweight SaaS content. Including templates, frameworks, video content, and expert talks. What are you waiting for?Customer Success CollectiveRicha… - [Contact us](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/contact.md) - Looking to join the Customer Success Collective or have a question? Contact us today, we want to hear from you. - [Create and contribute](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/create-contribute.md) - Want to pop your content in front of 1,000s of your incredible customer success peers? Start building your personal brand? Prime yourself as an industry authority? Even just do your good deed for the day by imparting your wisdom with others? - [Customer Marketing Summit, April 2021](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-marketing-summit-ondemand.md) - Get exclusive, first-hand insights on how the likes of Calendly, Adobe, Asana, Dropbox, Zendesk, and more are nailing their customer marketing strategies. - [Future of SaaS Festival, May 2021](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/future-of-saas-festival-may-2021.md) - [Image](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/image.md) - [Meet the Customer Success Collective team](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/meet-the-team.md) - Meet the people behind the Customer Success Collective. Wanna find out more? Find us in the community - always. We're a friendly bunch and would love to chat. - [What's new in the CSC membership plan?](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/membership-plans-whats-new.md) - Thinking about bagging yourself a customer success membership plan? Want to see how much bang you'll be getting for your buck first? We get that. Here's a month-by-month breakdown of what our existing members have been privy to. - [Membership](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/membership.md) - coming soon.... - [Partner with us](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/partner-with-us.md) - Want to put your product in front of 1,000s of uber enthusiastic customer success folks all over the world? Who wouldn't. Come on in to check out your options. - [Privacy Policy](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/privacy-policy.md) - This Application collects some Personal Data from its Users. This document contains a section dedicated to consumers and their privacy rights. - [sales](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/sales.md) - [signup](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/signup.md) - Unlock our library of members-only, heavyweight customer success content. Including templates, frameworks, video content, and expert talks. What are you waiting for? - [teams](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/teams.md) - [Team success](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/teamssuccess.md) - Success! 🎉 You have subscribed to your team, now all we need are the details of your team members. Please send their full name & email to the Customer Success Collective team on Slack OR via email: hello@customersuccesscollective.com. - [Welcome to Pro membership 🎉](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/welcomemember.md) - Welcome to your CSC membership plan! 🎉 Now you’re a fully-fledged Customer Success Collective member you have so many benefits to look forward to. Here’s how to get the most out of your plan. Templates and frameworks You now have access to a whole host of templates and frameworks providing you wit… - [You have limited access](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/you-have-limited-access.md) - Road test your customer success membership plan with a freemium spin. Templates, frameworks, presentations, and exclusive content. All yours. All free. ## Posts - [Retention fire drill worksheet](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/retention-fire-drill-worksheet-template-framework.md) - A single-account planning tool that helps you spot churn risk early and close the gaps before renewal. - [What does a fractional VP of customer success actually do?](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/fractional-vp-of-customer-success.md) - More and more companies are changing tactics when it comes to hiring senior leaders. But what does a fractional VP of customer success do? - [Beyond the bot: How human-led CS thrives in the age of AI](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/beyond-the-bot-how-human-led-cs-thrives-in-the-age-of-ai.md) - CSCnow is your chance to stream exclusive talks and presentations from our previous events, hosted by customer success experts and industry leaders. It's a unique opportunity to watch the most sought-after customer success content – ordinarily reserved for CSC Pro members. Each stream delves deep i… - [How much ARR should one CSM manage?](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/annual-recurring-revenue-per-customer-success-manager.md) - We hate to break it to you, but there's no single right answer to how much ARR one CSM should manage. Ask a room of customer success leaders and you'll hear anything from $8M+ per CSM to "we don't use a ratio at all." The gap usually tells you more about the company than about the method. - [Reset your customer support KPIs for AI](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/reset-customer-support-kpis-ai-template-framework.md) - A structured planning tool that helps support leaders decide where AI should go first and how to measure whether it's working. - [How to build a strong renewal case... before your customer builds one against you](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/build-a-strong-renewal-case.md) - Green health scores won't save a renewal if you can't show what the customer got for their money. Here's why signals aren't proof, and three things the best CS teams do to build the value case early. - [The 3-pillar framework for turning CS data into renewals](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/framework-for-turning-cs-data-into-renewals.md) - A simple framework for focusing your data on what drives renewal. - [How to plan your next 5 years in customer success](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/plan-your-customer-success-career.md) - Two career paths dominate CS in 2026. Which one you're building – and whether you know it – will determine how far your skills travel. - [Customer Success Summit San Francisco | September 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-summit-san-francisco-september-2026.md) - Catch up on all main stage sessions from our flagship Customer Success Summit San Francisco 2026. - [AI Across the Customer Journey Ebook](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/ai-across-the-customer-journey-ebook.md) - Your guide to fixing broken handoff failures that kill NRR – loaded with practical frameworks and genuine strategies for building an AI foundation that works. - [The major challenges in customer success in 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/challenges-facing-customer-success.md) - CSMs find themselves caught in the crossfire of internal and external challenges, circumventing obstacles that too often mirror their clients’ struggles – preventing them from doing their roles. But what are the most common internal and external challenges or barriers to customer success in 2026? - [Positioning the CCO as a GTM power player](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/positioning-the-cco-as-a-gtm-power-player.md) - Why the CCO is becoming the most commercially important seat in the business, and five plays to prove it. - [Why do leadership and management keep misaligning (according to CCOs)](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/leadership-and-management-misalignment.md) - In all businesses, leadership sets the direction. Sure, metrics come and go, often redefined depending on business priorities. But there can often be a disconnect. The C-suite sets a vision, and somewhere between the executive floor and the frontline, the message gets thin, stalls out, or stops. - [CS-to-sales expansion handoff template](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/cs-to-sales-expansion-handoff-template-framework.md) - A working template for deciding who owns each stage of an expansion opportunity when the deal moves from your success team to your sales team. - [What happens when AI starts working before your team does](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/agentic-support-vs-ai-assisted-support.md) - Here's what changed once we stopped asking AI to draft and started asking it to work. - [Rewriting the customer support playbook: From anecdotal to actionable](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/rewriting-customer-support-playbook-anecdotal-to-actionable.md) - How Elsevier turned 300 agents' conversations into data, closed the customer effort gap, and earned a seat at the product table. - [Scaling Customer Success: How AI is reshaping the CS maturity journey](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/scaling-customer-success-how-ai-is-reshaping-the-cs-maturity-journey.md) - CSCnow is your chance to stream exclusive talks and presentations from our previous events, hosted by customer success experts and industry leaders. It's a unique opportunity to watch the most sought-after customer success content – ordinarily reserved for CSC Pro members. Each stream delves deep i… - [How RevOps and CS Ops can work together](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/revops-and-cs-ops.md) - When both revenue and customer business functions collaborate, they’re able to break down silos, improve data quality, align on shared goals, and drive retention, expansion, and customer lifetime value. And the best way to get this off the ground? It's through your operations teams. - [Why your knowledge base decides whether AI works in customer support](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/ai-knowledge-base-customer-support.md) - AI can only retrieve, reason with and communicate the information it's given. That sounds obvious written down. It's somewhat less obvious when a vendor demo promises a chatbot that resolves 80% of tickets, and considerably less obvious once the budget's already been signed off. - [I've been asking CSMs to do the wrong job. So have you](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/asking-csms-to-do-the-wrong-job-so-have-you.md) - A veteran CS leader explains why the CSM role has been wrong for years, and the shifts needed to fix it. - [What is gamification? How to use it to drive customer engagement](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/gamification-customer-engagement.md) - Let's talk about what gamification actually looks like in practice, why it works, and how you can use it to drive engagement, learning, and long-term customer outcomes. - [The Customer Success Hiring Playbook](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/the-customer-success-hiring-playbook.md) - A practical playbook for hiring and keeping great CS talent, built from 40+ years of real hiring experience. Free for CSC Insiders. - [How to build an AI-first customer success organization](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/ai-first-customer-success-organization.md) - Why CS is shifting from CSM efficiency to customer autonomy, and the four-step system that makes it work. - [The $4.2 million reason customer support isn't a cost center](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/why-customer-support-isnt-a-cost-center-video.md) - NetApp's VP of Customer Support Delivery on why human support, not automation, is becoming the growth engine that protects lifetime value. - [The real reason your product team keeps missing customer feedback](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/product-decisions-customer-feedback-video.md) - Customer success and product leaders explain how to turn customer feedback into real product decisions, using a signal-vs-noise framework and real examples. - [The 4 CS metrics your board actually wants to see](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/cs-metrics-your-board-actually-wants-to-see.md) - Stop drowning your board in dashboards. Here are the four CS metrics that connect daily work to real financial outcomes. - [Why great work isn't enough to get promoted](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/why-great-work-isnt-enough-to-get-promoted.md) - Working hard isn't enough to get promoted. A 20-year CS veteran explains why visibility is a skill you have to learn and how to start. - [Why most AI projects in customer success fail (and how to avoid it)](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/prevent-customer-success-ai-failure.md) - AI customer success tools are nice and shiny things. Here's the uncomfortable truth behind all of that: buying the tool is maybe 10% of the work. And it's the 10% everyone spends their budget on and their energy on. - [Chief Customer Officer Summit | Boston 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/chief-customer-officer-summit-boston-2026.md) - Catch up on all the insights from our first Chief Customer Officer Summit in Boston with presentations from Mastercard, Vimeo, PTC and more. - [In-app user engagement worksheet](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/in-app-user-engagement-worksheet-template-framework.md) - A five-step worksheet for planning, launching, and pitching an in-app guidance program. - [The customer value playbook for the age of AI agents](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-value-playbook-for-the-age-of-ai-agents.md) - Why customer value and human connection still win, even as AI agents reshape the customer journey. A practical framework for CS teams. - [Do customer success teams  share KPIs with sales?](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/shared-kpis-with-sales.md) - More than a third of customer success teams share no KPI with sales. Here's what that costs them. - [How Cleo reduced its customer support contact rate while scaling to 1 million users](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-cleo-reduced-customer-support-contact-rate-while-scaling.md) - How Cleo scaled support from 14 to 90 agents by cutting contact rate and gamifying agent performance with a points-per-hour system. - [AI for Customer Support Leaders Report 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/ai-for-customer-support-leaders.md) - The first study into how customer support leaders are actually using AI in 2026 – not the hype, the reality. - [Turning customer data into executive decisions with AI](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/turning-customer-data-into-executive-decisions-with-ai.md) - CSCnow is your chance to stream exclusive talks and presentations from our previous events, hosted by customer success experts and industry leaders. It's a unique opportunity to watch the most sought-after customer success content – ordinarily reserved for CSC Pro members. Each stream delves deep i… - [Customer Expansion Summit | Virtual, August 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-expansion-summit-virtual-august-2026.md) - Stop leaving expansion revenue on the table. Learn how leading Customer Success teams spot expansion opportunities earlier, convert renewals into growth, and build repeatable systems that grow NRR. - [Customer success team maturity roadmap](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-team-maturity-roadmap-template-framework.md) - A diagnostic to pinpoint exactly where your CS org sits between reactive and strategic, and what needs to change to move forward. - [How Chief Customer Officers can prevent burnout](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-ccos-can-prevent-burnout.md) - The conversation about burnout should start in a place executives understand: the business case. Burnout is measurable. It’s expensive. And it directly impacts revenue. - [LastPass's playbook for scaling customer success with AI](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/lastpass-playbook-for-scaling-cs-with-ai.md) - How LastPass is running CS at 7.5% of revenue with AI, recovering $1M this quarter in billing alone, without layoffs. - [Empowering CSMs to make better decisions with data](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/better-decisions-with-data.md) - Your health score says green. Your customer is already gone. Here's how to build a CS data strategy that actually predicts churn before it happens. - [5 hard lessons from Trustpilot's two-year CRM modernization](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/lessons-from-trustpilots-crm-modernization.md) - Trustpilot's CCO on the CRM modernization mistakes, adoption lessons, and AI wins from a two-year unified CRM rollout. - [How one support team turned a cost center into a revenue line](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-one-support-team-turned-cost-center-revenue-line.md) - How Pigment scaled support from zero to 1,000 tickets a month with a data-driven funnel built for self-service. - [The real reason your customer success coverage model isn't working](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/coverage-models-segmentation.md) - Most CS teams have a coverage model. Far fewer have the logic behind it figured out. Data from the State of Customer Success 2026 Report on why segmentation, capacity planning, and commercial ownership are where the real work is. - [How agentic AI drives product adoption. Stop repeating the same onboarding call.](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-agentic-ai-drives-product-adoption.md) - Learn how agentic AI is changing customer education with less repetitive training and faster time-to-value. - [Customer renewal risk scorecard](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-renewal-risk-scorecard-template-framework.md) - A scoring tool that turns the early warning signs of churn into a number you can act on. - [10 ways to get a higher customer success salary in 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-to-increase-your-customer-success-salary.md) - Your salary isn’t fixed. It moves based on what you choose to learn, where you choose to work, and how you position yourself. And the data makes it very clear which levers matter most. Here are the 10 most powerful ways to increase your CS salary in 2026, using real, data-backed insights. - [The 5-stage path from reactive customer support to revenue driver](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/5-stage-path-from-reactive-customer-support-to-revenue-driver.md) - How one CS leader built a five-stage maturity model that took their team from reactive support to owning quota and beating sales on revenue. - [The AI governance gap in customer success](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/ai-governance-in-customer-success.md) - 41% of customer teams have no AI governance in place in 2026 – even as plans to invest in AI soar. Find out where the gap is and how to close it. - [Customer Success Festival New York | July 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-festival-new-york-july-2026.md) - Designed for CS leaders who think bigger. This interactive festival connects you with the broader GTM ecosystem through workshops and brainstorming sessions so you can build practical growth frameworks and drive retention. - [How Meltwater trained CSMs to sound like strategic advisors, not vendors](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/meltwater-trained-csms-strategic-advisors-not-vendors.md) - How Meltwater's CS team moved from vendor to strategic partner by anchoring every customer conversation to business outcomes, not features. - [How to become a Chief Customer Officer: Lessons from someone who did it](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/lessons-from-a-chief-customer-officer.md) - One CCO's honest account of building customer success from zero – covering career path, hiring mistakes, AI implementation and what the role actually involves day-to-day. - [What it's like to work in customer success in California](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-in-california.md) - Everything from salary and responsibilities to revenue ownership, AI adoption, and career ambitions – based on real data from California-based customer success professionals. - [Why so many startups get customer success wrong](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/why-startups-suck-at-customer-success.md) - It used to be you sold someone a product, handed them a wordy and confusing manual, and then walked away. You can’t do that anymore. - [Running customer success as a product: Why, how, and the benefits](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/running-cs-product-why-how-and-the-benefits.md) - [Customer support-to-strategic-collaborator playbook](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/support-to-strategic-collaborator-playbook-template-framework.md) - A practical framework to help support and service leaders reposition their team from a reactive cost center to a driver of retention and revenue. - [12 ways to get promoted in customer success](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/ways-to-get-promoted-in-customer-success.md) - Career growth isn't a title; it's a habit. Here are 12 practical steps to stop waiting for a promotion and start building momentum today. - [The customer success job market in 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/the-customer-success-job-market.md) - Experienced CS talent is moving on – and most companies are misdiagnosing why. What the State of Customer Success 2026 report reveals about retention. - [What 25 years in customer success taught me about metrics](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/what-25-years-cs-taught-me-about-metrics.md) - Service Genie's CCO on why most SaaS businesses measure everything but understand little, and what it means for NRR, churn, and renewals. - [How to build trust within your customer success team](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-to-build-trust-within-your-team.md) - Stop blaming your CS team for not collaborating. After $500M in portfolios, Ray Otero explains why the system is the problem – and how to fix it. - [Chief Customer Officer Summit Austin | June 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/chief-customer-officer-summit-austin-june-2026.md) - Catch up on all sessions from our first ever CCO Summit Austin, with speakers from companies like Billtrust, LastPass, Salesforce, Meltwater and more. - [AI for Customer Success Certified](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/learning/on-demand/ai-for-customer-success-certified.md) - [How customer success and product can reduce churn together](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-and-product-churn.md) - Lessons from Airlock Digital on how CS can work with product to stamp out churn. - [How to scale customer success: A framework](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-to-scale-customer-success-template-framework.md) - [Stay connected: Lessons from 26 years on the customer success front line](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/lessons-from-years-on-customer-success-front-line.md) - A 26-year customer success leader on why advocacy, not authority, gets you the tools, budget, and buy-in your team actually needs. - [How we scaled enterprise support at Runway](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-we-scaled-enterprise-support-at-runway.md) - How one support leader scaled enterprise support at Runway: the hard lessons, the systems, and what actually made the difference. - [Customer Support Summit | New York 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-support-summit-new-york-2026-video.md) - Catch up on all the sessions from our community of support leaders leveraging AI and implementing proactive processes to prove the strategic value of customer support. - [How to build learning, insights, and CS Ops into your customer success team](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-to-build-learning-insights-and-cs-ops-into-cs-team.md) - Learn why scaling CS teams need dedicated learning, insights, and CS ops functions built early, before growth creates operational chaos. - [The rise of the technical Customer Success Manager](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/technical-customer-success-manager.md) - As SaaS products grow more complex and customers demand faster, more informed interactions, a new kind of practitioner is emerging: the technical CSM. - [State of Customer Success 2026 Report](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/state-of-customer-success-report.md) - Download the 2026 State of Customer Success Report. Data from hundreds of CS professionals on revenue ownership, AI adoption, team capacity, and career trends. - [5 shifts that got Salesforce’s VP of CS a seat in the boardroom](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/shifts-salesforces-vp-cs-seat-in-boardroom.md) - [Chief Customer Officer Summit | New York 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/chief-customer-officer-summit-new-york-2026-video.md) - Catch up on the senior CS leadership insights from the likes of Gainsight, CDK Global, Hook, and more. - [Scaling customer success without scaling headcount](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/scaling-customer-success-without-scaling-headcount.md) - Scaling CS without scaling headcount? It's a systems problem. Here's how to build a CS operation that grows without burning out your team. - [The handoff quietly killing your NRR (that doesn't happen in customer success)](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/the-handoff-quietly-killing-your-nrr.md) - There’s one function that rarely comes up in that retention conversation, even though it sits at one of the most consequential moments in the entire SaaS customer relationship: professional services. - [Protect NRR by aligning marketing and customer success](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-and-marketing-alignment-nrr.md) - Marketing sells the destination. Customer success manages the gravity of the journey. - [Customer Success Festival | London 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-festival-london-2026.md) - Catch-up on the entire Alliance festival, from product marketing to GTM and, of course, customer success. Don't miss sessions from Adobe, Cisco, Sitecore, Salesforce and more. - [Customer Success Summit Seattle | June 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-summit-seattle-june-2026.md) - Catch up on all sessions from our first time Customer Success Summit Seattle, from the likes of Verizon, Vanta, Planview, Microsoft, SAP and Qualtrics. - [Prevention-first support playbook](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/prevention-first-support-playbook-template-framework.md) - A practical framework that helps support teams shift from reactive ticket handling to systematic issue prevention. - [You don't have a growth problem. You have a customer loyalty problem](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/dont-have-growth-problem-customer-loyalty-problem.md) - How customer loyalty becomes leverage and why most B2B growth strategies are getting this wrong, with insights from CDK Global. - [The experience gap in customer success: What it is and how to fix it](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/the-experience-gap-in-customer-success.md) - Your metrics are green. Your customers are unhappy. James Fette from GitHub on why the experience gap exists and how to close it. - [Onboarding & Retention Summit | Virtual, May 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/onboarding-retention-summit-virtual-may-2026.md) - Catch up on all sessions from the likes of Google, Salesforce, Cisco, Udemy and more. - [What environmental consulting taught me about customer success](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/environmental-consulting-customer-success.md) - From field notes to customer notes. These are the transferable skills most CSMs overlook – and why your industry background is your biggest asset. - [Your complete guide to customer success operations](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-operations.md) - Customer success operations, otherwise known as CS Ops, is a new type of role we’re beginning to see crop up within customer success. Like any ordinary operations role, CS Ops functions within customer success to help it run smoothly. - [What Microsoft learned scaling AI across 45,000 contact center agents](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/what-microsoft-learned-scaling-ai-center-agents.md) - The hard-won lessons from scaling AI across hundreds of millions of customer cases, and the five foundations you can't skip. - [Is having a high customer support ticket volume ever a good thing?](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/high-customer-support-ticket-volume.md) - Volume tells you something happened. It can't tell you what to do about it until you know why. The same number can mean a critical bug or a fast-growing customer base. - [Customer Success Summit | Amsterdam 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-summit-amsterdam-2026.md) - Catch up on all the sessions from the likes of Oracle, Cisco, SoSafe & more. - [Help define what's happening with AI in customer support](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/ai-customer-support-leaders-survey.md) - We're building the 2026 AI for Customer Support Leaders Report – the first industry report to capture what's actually happening inside support teams as AI rewrites the playbook. But we need your help to create it. - [Agent design planner template](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/agent-design-planner-template-framework.md) - A strategic framework that helps teams design AI-powered customer success agents before any implementation work begins. - [Customer Success Labs | October 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-labs-october-2026.md) - [Scaling CS with AI and automation | Customer Success Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/scaling-cs-with-ai-and-automation-customer-success-labs.md) - [Leveraging AI for predictive analytics in CS | Customer Success Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/leveraging-ai-for-predictive-analytics-in-cs-customer-success-labs.md) - [CS in a Sales-led world | Customer Success Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/cs-in-a-sales-led-world-customer-success-labs.md) - [Customer Success Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-labs.md) - [How customer success can define, achieve, and prove value](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/the-tug-of-war-between-sales-and-cs.md) - Why outcome-based business models fail without human strategy, and how to combine human and AI motions to deliver on customer outcomes. - [What your personal trainer and your CSM have in common](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/personal-training-and-customer-success.md) - You signed up to the gym. You bought the shoes. You told yourself this time would be different. Customer success has the same problem – and the same solution. - [November | GTM Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/november-gtm-labs.md) - [Orchestrating cross-functional GTM: Breaking down silos for unified growth| GTM Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/october-gtm-labs.md) - [December | GTM Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/december-gtm-labs.md) - [The career gap nobody in customer success is talking about](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/the-career-gap-nobody-in-cs-is-talking-about.md) - Take control of your CS career with a product mindset — own your roadmap, speak your goals, and build lasting growth. - [AI in customer support: How to build trust before it breaks](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/trusting-ai-in-customer-support.md) - AI will fail. The question is whether you're ready for it. A guide to responsible AI deployment for customer support leaders. - [Meet the Success Engineer: Building for the role evolution happening right now](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/meet-the-success-engineer.md) - The Success Engineer: How CS teams are rethinking the role - [Customer success enablement readiness template](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-enablement-readiness-template.md) - A strategic planning workbook designed to help organizations assess, design, and scale customer success enablement programs. - [Assistant vs. Delegate: How autonomous agents and AI loops are changing Product Marketing | GTM Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/assistant-vs-delegate-how-autonomous-agents-and-ai-loops-are-changing-product-marketing-gtm-labs.md) - [Taking GTM metrics beyond the dashboard | GTM Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/taking-gtm-metrics-beyond-the-dashboard-gtm-labs.md) - [Lifecycle metrics that drive retention & advocacy | GTM Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/lifecycle-metrics-that-drive-retention-advocacy-gtm-labs.md) - [Avoid vanity metrics: evaluating true GTM impact | GTM Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/avoid-vanity-metrics-evaluating-true-gtm-impact-gtm-labs.md) - [GTM on a budget: do more with less | GTM Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/gtm-on-a-budget-do-more-with-less-gtm-labs.md) - [Lead with impact: conversations that shape GTM success | GTM Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/lead-with-impact-conversations-that-shape-gtm-success-gtm-labs.md) - [Winning the narrative when markets move fast | GTM Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/winning-the-narrative-when-markets-move-fast-gtm-labs.md) - [Turning launches into repeatable revenue moments | GTM Labs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/turning-launches-into-repeatable-revenue-moments-gtm-labs.md) - [Go-to-Market Labs Workshops](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/go-to-market-labs.md) - [9 ways to scale customer success when one CSM manages hundreds of accounts](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/scale-customer-success-with-a-high-csm-ratio.md) - The traditional 1:15 CSM ratio doesn't survive a 500-account portfolio. Here's how to build the infrastructure that makes customer success inevitable at scale. - [What is the average salary of a Customer Success Manager in 2026?](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/what-is-the-average-salary-of-a-customer-success-manager.md) - Interested in a career in customer success? You should be. Customer success is quickly becoming one of the top career paths around the world. In 2024, before you consider tax and without including bonuses and stock, the global median baseline salary for a CSM is $75,000. - [How to handle CSM underperformance](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/underperformance-in-customer-success-teams.md) - Underperforming is an issue that keeps a lot of customer success leaders up at night. How do you handle this without tanking the morale of the employee in question – and for its ripple to be felt across your entire team? - [The BIGGEST mistake customer success teams made in 2025](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/mistakes-customer-success-teams-make-video.md) - In this video, we break down the signals that actually move the needle on retention – the ones great CS teams use to stop churn months before it happens. - [How HSBC redesigned customer support for vulnerable customers](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-hsbc-redesigned-customer-support-for-vulnerable-customers.md) - How HSBC redesigned support for vulnerable customers using AI coaching, empathy-led training, and smarter customer journeys. - [The slow death of CSAT and NPS in the AI era of customer support](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/the-death-of-csat-and-nps-in-the-ai-era.md) - For the better part of two decades, CSAT and NPS have been the twin pillars for measuring customer support. But across three recent keynotes at major events, a consistent theme emerged: these metrics are eroding in relevance and AI is accelerating their decline. - [Why customers churn despite green health scores (and the 5 fixes)](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-churn-communication.md) - If there’s one gaping misconception about customer success, it’s that it’s about being agreeable. Trust me, it isn’t. Customer success is about relationship capital, and the way you communicate is perhaps the most important deposit or withdrawal you can make. - [Customer adoption enablement plan](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-adoption-enablement-plan-template-framework.md) - A structured framework designed to help teams build scalable strategies that drive product adoption, retention, and expansion. - [The challenges with aligning stakeholders when handling enterprise accounts (and the fix)](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/align-enterprise-client-stakeholders.md) - Most enterprise account failures aren’t product failures, but are the result of failing to treat account health like a high-stakes intelligence briefing. - [A customer success mentorship ecosystem that actually works](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-mentorship-ecosystem.md) - A lot of times, that perfect 1:1 mentorship program sounds amazing, but in reality? It’s not always so perfect for anyone involved. Too much pressure, too many expectations, not enough clarity and alignment. - [The handoff problem Your NRR is bleeding before onboarding ends](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/closing-the-context-gap-in-customer-onboarding.md) - How to close the context gap between sales, services, and success - before it costs you the renewal. - [Chief Customer Officer Summit | Silicon Valley 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/chief-customer-officer-summit-silicon-valley-2026.md) - Catch up on the senior CS insights from top West Coast leaders at GitLab, Avid, LinkedIn & more. - [Why customer success “hero culture” is a churn red flag](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/why-customer-success-hero-culture-is-a-churn-red-flag.md) - Too often, we mistake heroic acts of account management for a customer-centric culture. We shouldn't. Requiring a hero to save an account is only proof that your system has already failed. - [Silent signals playbook: Turn support signals into revenue](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/silent-signals-playbook.md) - Download the free Silent Signals Playbook and learn how TeamSupport turned support ticket data into $300K in expansion ARR by identifying churn risk, upsell signals, and customer growth opportunities. - [AI Customer Success Summit | Virtual, April 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/ai-customer-success-summit-virtual-april-2026-2.md) - Unlock AI-driven strategies to automate workflows, build smarter health scores, drive expansion, reduce churn, and future-proof your role. - [Why CSC Pro+ membership is one of the best career investments I've made](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/why-csc-membership-best-investment-in-my-career.md) - Learn how Ania Kierczynska uses CSC Pro+ to connect with global CS leaders, access practical frameworks and grow her confidence. - [How HubSpot rethought its customer success operations in the age of AI](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-hubspot-rethought-cs-operations-ai.md) - Shift from "tour guide" to strategic partner with 5 keys to future-proof customer success, from ROI pyramids to the human layer in an AI world. - [Lifecycle-driven advocacy template](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/lifecycle-driven-advocacy-template-framework.md) - A strategic framework that helps you generate customer advocacy by aligning your asks with the right moments in the customer journey. - [What high-performing teams actually get right about customer success enablement](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-enablement-high-performing-teams.md) - Most customer success enablement programs are built around a flawed assumption. Hire good people, run them through onboarding, hand them a playbook and a platform login, and track activity metrics until something improves. - [Customer Success Summit Denver 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-summit-denver-2026-2.md) - Catch up on all sessions from our Denver event and get insights from the likes of Okta, Lyft, First Advantage & Ericsson. - [Customer Success Summit Denver 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-summit-denver-2026.md) - Catch up on all sessions from our Denver event and get insights from the likes of Okta, Lyft, First Advantage & Ericsson. - [Customer expansion readiness & account growth plan](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-expansion-readiness-account-growth-plan-template-framework.md) - A structured framework that helps teams identify, validate, and plan expansion opportunities within existing customer accounts. - [The end of the customer success platform era](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/the-end-of-the-customer-success-platform-era.md) - How AI is closing the gap between risk and action. - [The real problem with data architecture in customer success](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-data-architecture.md) - When CS teams talk about data, the conversation often gravitates toward dashboards, health scores, and the latest AI tooling. That focus is understandable, but it misses the point. The structure underneath the data matters more than most CS orgs realize. - [How to drive genuine customer value after onboarding](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-to-drive-genuine-customer-value-after-onboarding-2.md) - Stop treating launch as the finish line. Learn how to bridge the success gap, identify risky "champions," and drive real customer outcomes. - [Turning data into smarter customer success decisions](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/cs-operations-leveraging-data-for-smarter-decision-making.md) - The phrase “data is the new oil” becomes truer every day. Data is the lubricant that greases the wheels of the fourth industrial revolution we’re living through. In short, your company will be creating a hell of a lot of data points - if they’re not already. - [Which are the best customer success conferences to attend in 2026?](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/top-customer-success-events-to-attend.md) - Explore the top customer success events of 2025 in vibrant cities like Austin, New York, and Amsterdam. Gain insights from industry leaders, network with peers, and discover strategies to elevate your CS game. - [The growing responsibilities of customer success teams](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-responsibilities.md) - Have you noticed how the role of customer success keeps expanding… but rarely sheds anything along the way? Ask almost any CSM what they’re responsible for, and the answer starts to sound less like a job description and more like a system diagram - [Customer Success Powerhour Bi-weekly virtual meetups](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/cs-powerhour.md) - Customer Success Powerhour is our bi-weekly virtual drop-in for Pro, Pro+ and Exec members where you'll have the chance to discuss a range of topics with your fellow CSMs. - [4 ways CSMs can drive revenue](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/scale-customer-success-and-revenue-with-ai.md) - Without the right principles in place, even the most thoughtful lifecycle designs will fall short – and fail to deliver the growth your business needs – if they’re not clear, accountable, and operationalized. - [Why we need a new approach to customer retention KPIs](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-retention-kpis.md) - I’ve been at Indeed for over 10 years, working in customer success (CS) and revenue, and I’ve learned a lot about how quickly things can change – especially when it comes to retention and the KPIs we use to measure it. - [The good, the bad, and the ugly: Lessons from customer success leadership](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/lessons-from-customer-success-leadership.md) - Discover how to turn customer success into a revenue driver with lessons on avoiding churn, scaling digital models, and escaping firefighter mode. - [A customer-centric approach to segmentation](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/a-customer-centric-approach-to-customer-segmentation.md) - Customer segmentation is more than just categorizing clients into who’s paying the most per annum; it's about their diverse needs, aligning services accordingly, and crafting personalized success pathways. - [Customer success hiring & onboarding scorecard](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/cs-hiring-onboarding-scorecard-template-framework.md) - A structured framework that helps teams hire the right people and set them up for success from day one. - [The role of community managers in modern customer support](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/community-managers-in-customer-support.md) - Customer support is changing. Traditionally, when customers encountered a problem, they opened a support ticket and waited for a response from a customer support manager. But today, many of the most helpful support conversations happen somewhere else entirely: inside customer communities. - [Customer Success Summit New York | March 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-summit-new-york-march-2026.md) - Catch up on all sessions from our flagship New York event and get insights from the likes of Slack, Mastercard, PTC, Qualtrics and more. - [Agentic AI CX Frontline Report](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/agentic-ai-cx-frontline-report.md) - Download The Agentic AI CX Frontline Report to learn how leading enterprises are using agentic AI to cut support costs, improve CSAT and automate up to 80% of tier-1 customer interactions. - [How Cisco uses NPS and CSAT metrics to predict churn at renewal](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-cisco-uses-nps-csat-metrics-to-predict-churn.md) - Stop churn by layering CSAT, NPS, and telemetry. Learn how to identify renewal risk and turn negative sentiment into long-term customer loyalty. - [How to transition from an individual contributor to management](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/a-customer-success-managers-transition-from-an-individual-contributor-to-a-management-role.md) - The transition from individual contributor to management isn’t exactly the simplest one; there are some fundamental shifts that you need to make when you go from dreaming about this career move to making it a reality. - [The rise of sales-first cultures (and what this means for customer success in 2026)](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/the-rise-of-sales-first-cultures.md) - Data shows a 13% increase in sales-led environments and a double-digit drop in customer-first orgs in 2025. That juxtaposition matters because it suggests that while CS is being positioned as a revenue engine, the broader cultural environment is shifting in ways that may complicate that mandate. - [Proactive support playbook template](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/proactive-support-playbook-template-framework.md) - A playbook to help support teams move from reactive problem-solving to preventing issues before customers experience them. - [Customer Churn Certified Masters Join the waitlist for $100 off](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-churn-certified-masters.md) - Learn how to anticipate at-risk customers before it’s too late, and reduce your churn rate by taking this program created by experts. Unearth the skills you need to dramatically influence your customers’ lifetime value. Customer churn doesn’t have to be the boogeyman of SaaS. Let’s demystify it and… - [Customer Success Summit Austin | February 2026](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-summit-austin-february-2026.md) - Catch up on all sessions from our expert speakers, coming from companies like Microsoft, Salesforce, Blackbaud, Cisco and more. - [How to Build a Customer Academy For Every Stage of Your Customer Journey](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/how-to-build-a-customer-academy-ebook.md) - A strategic playbook for CX leaders showing exactly how top companies use customer education to accelerate onboarding, reduce churn and turn customers into advocates. - [Zero to CS Hero: Building Customer Success from Scratch in an Early-Stage Startup](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/zero-to-cs-hero-building-customer-success-from-scratch-in-an-early-stage-startup.md) - CSCnow is your chance to stream exclusive talks and presentations from our previous events, hosted by customer success experts and industry leaders. It's a unique opportunity to watch the most sought-after customer success content – ordinarily reserved for CSC Pro members. Each stream delves deep i… - [25 Customer Success Manager interview questions (2026 cheat sheet)](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/customer-success-manager-job-interview-questions.md) - If you're preparing for a Customer Success Manager (CSM) interview – whether you're an applicant or a hiring manager – this comprehensive guide will provide valuable insights into the key questions you might encounter or should ask. ## Optional - [RSS Feed](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/rss/) - [Sitemap](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/sitemap.xml) - [Full content of pages and posts](https://www.customersuccesscollective.com/llms-full.txt)