The rise of the technical Customer Success Manager

Customer success (CS) has always lived somewhere between relationship management and problem-solving. But as SaaS products grow more complex and customers demand faster, more informed interactions, a new kind of practitioner is emerging: the technical Customer Success Manager (CSM).

This role sits at the intersection of product fluency, customer empathy and strategic thinking, and CS leaders are still figuring out exactly where its boundaries should be.

To explore how the technical CSM role is evolving, we brought together insights from three CS leaders who spoke at Customer Success Collective events. 

Jeremiah Orlando, then Director of Success and Customer Support at AssetWorks, shared how he'd transformed support engineers into technical CSMs. Charlene Styers, Senior Director of Customer Success at BigID, challenged the idea that technical expertise alone makes a successful CSM. Avi Avital, VP of Customer Success at NimbleWay, shared how technical CSMs can evolve into strategic commercial partners as organizations mature.

Defining the CSM role: Where does support end and success begin?

Jeremiah is the most explicit about drawing the line between support and success, drawing on his experience leading both functions at AssetWorks.

His rule of thumb was simple: if a CSM could resolve an issue in a minute or two, such as adjusting a report or changing a button placement, they should do it. Anything more involved was handed over to support, with his team often creating the support ticket on the customer's behalf.

"We teach all of our CSMs exactly how to use the product, but not to a level where we expect them to go in and write SQL queries or do all the big brain stuff behind the scenes."

All three speakers agree that technical CSMs need enough product knowledge to be credible, but not so much that they become another support function. Jeremiah said he'd seen technically strong hires naturally drift back towards ticket resolution unless they were coached to focus on strategic customer conversations.

Charlene approaches the same challenge from a different angle. At BigID, she pushed back against the idea that building a highly technical customer success team was the answer to improving customer outcomes.

"You can have somebody know a product all day long and know it inside and out, but if you don't have a team of people that can tie it back to use case, there's no bridge for the customer."

For Charlene, technical expertise only creates value when it's paired with an understanding of the customer's goals. A successful technical CSM explains why it matters to the customer's business.

How technical is technical enough?

The answer depends on the product, the customer and the stage of the business.

At the time of Jeremiah's presentation, AssetWorks sold highly customized software where every implementation looked different. He explained that traditional CSM frameworks weren't enough, prompting him to rebrand the role as "technical CSM" and recruit directly from his support team's top performers based on their customer rapport and CSAT scores.

What mattered most was finding someone who combined customer instinct with genuine technical curiosity. Sure, a technical hire is going to seem impressive to a non-technical existing team, but marrying both so-called "hard" and "soft" skills is another kettle of fish:

"You want to find that person who's had a lot of customer experience, who's kind of that at-home 'I like to tinker and do techie stuff on my own' type."

For Charlene, technical expertise should complement – not replace – business understanding. She expects CSMs to know the product well enough to guide conversations and ask the right questions, but believes their greatest value comes from understanding the customer's environment and helping them achieve their goals.

"If you can't sit at the table and talk to your customer about where your product fits using jargon that they understand, you're going to miss the boat a hundred times."

She also sees technical CSMs as translators, helping technical and business stakeholders communicate more effectively by connecting product capabilities with business priorities.

The data backs this up. According to the State of Customer Success 2026 Report, retention is still the top CS responsibility, but value realization, product adoption, and strategic customer engagement now sit within 20 percentage points of it, a gap that's narrowed sharply year on year. The modern CS job is an everything job, and technical knowledge alone doesn't cover it.

Avi's perspective reflects the realities of an early-stage startup. At NimbleWay, his first CSM hires needed deep technical expertise because there wasn't a dedicated support team to rely on. Candidates even completed a Python exercise using the company's API during the interview process.

As the company matured and built out a support function, those hiring priorities evolved. Technical capability remained important, but Avi increasingly looked for commercial skills, illustrating how the technical CSM role naturally shifts from reactive problem-solving towards strategic relationship management as an organization grows.

Building the pipeline: Where do technical CSMs come from?

Both Jeremiah and Avi have built technical CSM teams by recruiting from support and engineering backgrounds, but they differ in how they develop those hires.

For Jeremiah, coaching is essential. He joined calls with new technical CSMs before debriefing afterwards, helping them shift from solving problems immediately to listening first.

"Somebody who's highly technical is going to listen to a customer vent about an issue, but they like to cut them off because they already know where they're going," he observed.

His focus was on helping technically-minded people develop the patience and empathy needed to build trust before jumping into solutions.

Jeremiah also took an online certification to better understand how engineering teams worked. That knowledge helped him translate customer feedback into actionable insights for product teams, strengthening collaboration between customer success and engineering.

That kind of structured coaching is rarer than it should be. Latest research has found that 66.8% of CS teams have no dedicated enablement role – which means most technically-minded hires are left to figure out the shift from problem-solver to strategic partner on their own.

Avi took a similarly hands-on approach. His first technical CSM hire came from a solutions engineering background with no previous customer success experience, reinforcing his belief that commercial skills can be developed through coaching.

"You have all the basics. Now it's all about situation handling. I cannot teach you how to avoid someone who's cutting you off in traffic. We need to practice."

For Avi, the challenge isn't finding technically capable people. You want to find professionals who combine technical expertise, commercial instinct and the adaptability needed to thrive in a fast-growing business.

The cross-functional dimension

A consistent theme across all three speakers is that technical CSMs need to work just as effectively across internal teams as they do with customers.

Jeremiah described meeting regularly with development teams to help prioritize bug fixes using customer impact data. His technical background allowed him to communicate directly with engineers, while involving his CSMs in sprint demos gave them early visibility into upcoming releases.

Rather than reacting to customer confusion after a release, Jeremiah's team could proactively explain new features, offer training and prepare customers for change, turning potential support issues into engagement opportunities.

Charlene believes customer success also plays a vital role in shaping the product roadmap. At BigID, CSMs are often best placed to identify trends in customer feedback, but she emphasises the importance of sharing that insight through structured conversations with product rather than individual feature requests.

Avi has approached cross-functional alignment from an organizational perspective. By leading both pre-sales and post-sales teams, he eliminated the friction he'd experienced at previous companies, where Account Executives and CSMs often blamed one another for misaligned customer expectations. For Avi, shared ownership creates better customer outcomes than functional silos.

Why technical depth drives retention and expansion

All three speakers connect technical capability with better business outcomes, although they measure success differently.

Jeremiah shared striking results from his time at AssetWorks. When he joined the company, churn across three products stood at 15%, 8% and 9%. After introducing technical CSMs and strengthening collaboration between customer success and customer support, those figures dropped to 0.7%, 2% and 3%, while average resolution times fell from seven days to just a day and a half.

For Charlene, the biggest impact of technical credibility is the trust it builds with customers. When CSMs understand a customer's environment and challenges, they're invited into broader strategic conversations that naturally uncover new opportunities for growth.

Avi measures success through net revenue retention (NRR) and expansion revenue. NimbleWay finished 2025 with 115% NRR and is targeting 125% for 2026. Today, his CSMs carry expansion quotas and earn commission on the opportunities they identify – a sure reflection of how the role has evolved from reactive support into a strategic commercial function.

Avi measures success through a different lens. NRR is now the most commonly tracked KPI across the profession – 60.9% of CS teams are measured on it, according to our 2026 research – and the pressure to own expansion revenue is growing. 38% of CS teams now own all expansion, up from a fraction of that five years ago.

Across all three perspectives, the message is consistent: technical expertise isn't valuable for its own sake. It's valuable because it enables CSMs to solve problems faster, build greater credibility and create stronger long-term customer relationships.

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The common thread

Although Jeremiah, Charlene and Avi approached the technical CSM role from different angles, they arrived at a remarkably similar conclusion: technical expertise alone isn't enough.

The most effective technical CSMs combine product knowledge with customer empathy, using their technical understanding to build credibility, translate complexity into business value and strengthen relationships across both customer and internal teams.

For organizations looking to build or refine a technical CSM function, their advice is clear. Hire for curiosity as much as technical ability, invest in coaching and cross-functional collaboration, and recognize that the role should evolve alongside the business.

As companies mature, technical CSMs become less focused on solving every problem themselves and more focused on helping customers achieve long-term success.

The technical CSM may still be a relatively new role, but these leaders' experiences suggest it's becoming an increasingly important one as software – and customer expectations – continue to grow in complexity.

Editor's note: This article brings together insights from multiple Customer Success Collective presentations. While the speakers did not specifically set out to discuss the technical Customer Success Manager role, their experiences and perspectives contribute meaningfully to the conversation. Job titles and company affiliations were accurate at the time of their presentations at Customer Success Collective summits.

• Jeremiah Orlando shared his perspective during the panel discussion “Technical expertise and customer success: Balancing skills and mindset” at Customer Success Summit Las Vegas 2023. 
• Charlene Styers presented “Success criteria: Driving & tracking quantifiable metrics” at Customer Success Summit Denver 2025 
• Avi Avital spoke at Chief Customer Officer Summit Silicon Valley 2025 with his session “The evolution of customer success: From reactive support to strategic revenue drivers.”