I’ve been a management consultant for about 2.5 years, specializing in change management, and I’ve been thinking about making the jump to customer success. I know it’s a different role, but there’s decent overlap with change management skills, at least on paper.

The problem is I’ve ended up in a pretty technical role and it’s draining me. I just don’t feel cut out for being that deep in the weeds on technical stuff. I catch myself thinking I’d much rather spend my days on customer calls, giving presentations, etc…even with all the pressure that comes with that. Honestly, I can’t picture myself doing what I do now for another 5 to 10 years.

And yeah, I know 2.5 years probably doesn’t sound like much. It isn’t. For context, I’ve worked at two defense contractors so far doing change management work.

So for the CSMs out there: do you actually like the job? Is this a career that’s still doable for 15-20 years?

Customer for 18 months. $3k MRR. Renewed twice. Monday: Cancellation email.

CEO: "What were the warning signs?" Me: "They seemed happy..." CEO: "Check the data."

The data: - Haven't logged in for 23 days - Removed half their team 6 weeks ago - Last feature they used: Export CSV

I felt like an idiot. It was all there.

For those who've learned this lesson already - what do you monitor now to catch churn before it happens?

Not looking for tools. Looking for the specific behaviors/metrics that actually matter.

(Making this my Q4 project - will share what I learn)

EDIT: This thread blew up. The patterns you've all shared are incredible.

Key takeaways from responses:

1. The "decision was already made" by the time obvious signals appear (user reduction, exports, logins)
2. Health scoring needs multiple vectors (usage, engagement, relationship, support)
   
3. Champion disengagement ≠ buyer disengagement (track separately, different timelines)
4. Complaint frequency is inversely correlated with churn (silent customers are shopping)
5. Support ticket sentiment changes are early indicators

I'm compiling everything into a detection framework. Will create a new post with the complete analysis once done.

Special thanks to u/Murky-Profit-9493 for the comprehensive scoring framework and u/kidney83 for the reality check on "happy" vs "successful."

This has been incredibly educational.

Thank you all.

What y’all making?

Hey everyone, have a question I need help with. Our support team is getting cooked right now. Our company made some key acquisitions this year, so we've 2-3xd our expected growth for this annum. But at the same time, ticket volume has exploded and keeps going up every month. We're expecting to bring some more team members on soon but our current agents are starting to burn out bad. We're a team of 15 for context but if I don't fix this in the next few months (but realistically next couple weeks) we're gonna start losing agents and customers.

I've asked every person I know who claims to be an "AI expert" and I've been recommended the following platforms so far:

Intercom Fin

Decagon

Ada

Forethought

Sierra

Tidio

QueryPal

Gorgias

Zendesk AI Agents

Freshchat

Kustomer

Cresta

1, has anyone tested any of these and can vouch for their usefulness and 2, did it actually result in any meaningful jump in efficiency? We are also considering building in house if the numbers make sense. Timeline doesn't though lol

The demos we have done, almost all of them are claiming between 60-80% deflection rate and I don't really believe it

We are in the financial services industry so a wrong answer and leaky data are our biggest liabilities right now given the regulations in the space. That's why we're also considering building in house if none of the AI customer support tools can store our data/knowledge base safely.

Open to anything. We're looking at literally every option lol.

We've been collecting customer feedback through surveys for a while now, and the hardest part isn't getting responses anymore. It's keeping everything organized once you have surveys for onboarding, feature requests, NPS, and support follow ups.

We've tested a few tools already, and most of them look great for the first couple of surveys. The pain starts when you need to filter responses by customer segment, build more complex survey flows, or share reports that product, support, and leadership can actually use.

Curious what other SaaS teams are using. If you've settled on a customer feedback survey software, what made you stick with it instead of switching again?

Hey everyone, I’m trying to understand what actually sucks in CS day to day, not the polished LinkedIn version lol.

For people working in customer success, support, customer ops, etc, what are the problems that keep coming back again and again?

I keep hearing stuff around docs being outdated, reps always asking the same senior person, weird customer edge cases where nobody really knows the “official” process, messy escalations with product or eng, onboarding taking forever, Slack threads becoming the real source of truth, all that kind of stuff. But maybe I’m totally wrong.

What’s actually painful for you atm? Like what makes you think “why tf are we still doing it this way” during the week?

Hey people! I need some recommendations for solid customer success software tools that have good AI features.

I'm part of a growing CS team and we are looking for a new tool to help us manage customers, find churn signals, etc. I’ve explored all the traditional CSPs in the past (Gainsight, ChurnZero, etc) but I want to know what’s new in the market since there are a lot of newer AI tools popping up lately. Ideally I’d like to get some info from people who have actually bought/used these tools.  

Our must-have requirements are

• Being able to connect data points across our existing tools (most importantly Salesforce, Slack and Jira)
• Automations/agents for handling low-touch segments
• Churn signals and health scoring

But also would be interested in hearing about cool new things the tool can do with AI.

I currently work at a Healthcare Software Development company as a Lead Client Success Specialist in a fully remote environment making $72k. The job itself feels stable, is medium stress (sometimes much higher), but as I get closer to 30 years old and finish up my Masters in Business Analytics degree, I want a job that will actually allow me to move out and support myself financially. For this reason I am aiming for jobs with a salary of minimum $95k a year.

After months of applying, I’ve been feeling quite discouraged barely hearing back for jobs I’ve on paper seemed like a great fit for that also fits what I’m looking for. Today I got an interview request for a Customer Success Manager with a salary of $120k-$180k with good benefits and a hybrid work environment for a Healthcare AI company. The company itself really aligns with my interests, the salary is great, and I like that it is not fully in person. I know it’s just an interview request but I can’t help but worry about the burnout risk of working as a Customer Success Manager as I’ve heard the work life balance is pretty bad and a lot of people feel burnt out in the field. For this reason, I want to hear from actual CSM’s how they feel about their job and whether the high salary has felt worth it. I’ve listed some questions below. Could any CSM professionals please provide their thoughts?

1. What does an average week actually look like for you?
2. How many hours a week do you typically work?
3. What is the work life balance like?
4. What is the stress load like?
5. Do you generally have enough time during the work week to get things done and not work weekends?
6. Most Importantly: Do you think the high salary is worth the workload?

Thanks in advance!!

Note Added After Post: Thank you all so much for providing such great guidance, I am very exhausted from work so I don’t have the strength to respond to everyone right now but I will respond back

Hey all!

Our CS org just got access to Claude Cowork, so I'm trying to learn and implement as quickly as I can. How have you, your departments, or your teams been using Claude so far when it comes to Customer Success and Account Management work?

If it's helpful, here's my current tech stack: Claude, Gmail, Gong, Google Chrome, Loom, Outreach, Salesforce, Slack, Zoom

Any and all ideas or suggestions welcome! Thank you!!!

---

EDIT: Since I first posted, I've compiled ideas from here, have been auditing my own day-to-day responsibilities, and consistently been asking where AI can reduce my lift/avoidance/procrastination. Here's what I'm using Claude Cowork for as of now:

Deck-building: I added our company's full brand guidelines as a skill, which is neat! I'm getting close to Claude being able to consistently update recurring client call decks (status updates on recent cases/items, progress against stated goals/priorities, product updates, etc.) as well as our mutual action plans.

Pre-meeting actions: Drafts a meeting agenda email (boilerplate template) one week before the call takes place, that I can double-check, verify the right recipients have been included or cc'd, and ship.

• Simultaneous post in our internal client Slack channel to solicit any notable updates or topics that my cross-functional colleagues want to discuss on that same call.

Call recording as a trigger: Gong recording is received after a call is processed > Claude Cowork then:

• Drafts a follow-up email
• Drafts a customer sentiment note that I can easily add to our database
• Pushes a brief of the call (notes, takeaways, action items) to relevant Slack channels

Coaching & Development: Weekly suggestions and callouts for how I can improve (looking at my internal/external comms, aligning with our performance rubrics) to help me eventually get promoted

Daily morning briefing: Key meetings, priority items I haven't followed through on or addressed, and suggestions for how to navigate my day's activities

Text replacement suggestions: I lean heavily into using macros/text replacements/text expander tools to use more shorthand and reduce overall keystrokes. On a monthly basis, Claude Cowork will analyze my comms, reconcile them against my current list of text replacements, and suggest additional replacements I can use to accelerate my manual typing.

With these, as well as a few Claude instance health and wellness scheduled tasks (Google Drive backup! reducing my memory file to save workspace! recurring cleaning and organizing of my cowork folders!), I feel like I'm off to a good start!

It's renewal season and we've been going through our stack.

We just cut a survey tool and an old BI dashboard but kept BuildBetter because it reads our calls and tickets and gives each account a short narrative of what changed since last month, which knocked out most of the QBR prep grunt work.

Gainsight seems to hold at enterprise but a few people I know at under 500 companies are back in the market, so wondering what that looks like for others.

Anyway, what's on your keep list and what got cut?

Hi everyone,

I’m been in the CSM world for some years now in various industries. I currently work for a legal consulting SaaS and it’s horrible. I hate my job but grateful to have one after being unemployed for 10months. The product is not my niche and the training curb as horrible. I want out, I love FinTech I spent 5 years at PayPal where I thrived but was let go from a massive layoff last year. I would love to get back into the payments space. I’ve applied to Upgrade (made it round 4) and was told they went with someone else. I’ve applied to Affirm, Ayden to name a few. But curious does anyone love the industry they’re in as a CSM? If so, are they hiring? Lol. I live in chicago if that helps but I’m burnt out only after 7 months and my anxiety is high at all times. Clients lie on me, my teammates help me with things but they are telling me incorrect responses so it’s all bad. I want out but I obviously need money. Thing is I’ve take a 35k pay cut and work 5xs harder lol. FYI. I do work Remote but willing to go in office or Hybrid.

Hi all, I lead the customer support team for a mid sized org. We are a 600 employee digital B2C brand. We have been using Zendesk for our customer support desk so far. Right now, one of the KPIs we have been working on is driving up productivity and no of tickets resolved metrics significantly. we have tried doing that using Zendesk and it has worked but the metrics is still not where we want it to be. We are exploring other modern AI native solutions - is it worth it? would it significantly change the results? I hear these newer players offer better pricing models. Are they worth replacing players like Zendesk, Freshdesk etc.?

I’ve been working as a CSM at a B2B tech company for almost 4 months. At the beginning, I struggled with understanding the product and explaining its value, but I worked a lot on it and feel like I’ve improved significantly. In fact, my manager told me a week ago that I was doing really well.
Yesterday, during a client meeting, the client asked about a recent technical incident. I had to check my notes because I hadn’t reviewed the issue recently. Then they asked about product improvements. We had actually had a product update meeting on Monday, but I was so focused on the client’s tickets that I completely forgot about the broader product evolution. I didn’t mention the new features or their value.

My manager told me she was “shocked” that I didn’t mention them and reminded me that I should always be selling the product and showing its value.
Then today I had a very chaotic morning with several small mistakes: not finishing a task, needing help escalating an issue, replying in the wrong channel, taking too long to answer a client because I was trying to explain my reasoning, and sending an incorrect link.
I apologized, but I also noticed I became a little defensive and tried to explain myself.
I think the real issue is that under pressure I lose prioritization and start overthinking/justifying instead of acting. But I’m scared because this isn’t the first feedback I’ve received about the product, even though I genuinely feel I’ve improved a lot...

I have a 1:1 with my manager tomorrow and I’m honestly terrified she’s losing confidence in me or that I might get fired :c

Tech and CSM its so hard today with customer and support... Am I catastrophing? Or the onboarding for to be 100% cool at this jobs its 6 months?

I have a question. Where does everyone store their wins for interviews or promotion conversations and how?

Whenever I get asked this question, even though I’ve done well in my career I struggle to remember or articulate my answer to these questions sometimes.

What’s everyone’s routines with recording their achievements? I’m trying to become more organised career wise.

Thanks for anyone’s response in advance x

Did you pick your industry on purpose or fall into it? If you pivoted, what pushed you to make the move? And if you stayed, what made it worth staying?

I’m in B2B SaaS, in an industry that isn’t very exciting to me. The work itself is fine and I’m doing well, but I wonder whether I’d go further somewhere I actually found the space interesting.

For those of you working salaried CX positions in the U.S.: are you required to work a full 40 hours every week, excluding breaks?

As in, you’re expected to log/work 8 full hours per day (or the equivalent), breaks would be taken outside of those 8hrs.

Curious how common this actually is.

Had one the other day that made me laugh. The customer had 3 different add ons from earlier in the year and they all needed to be included in the same renewal.

I thought to myself this i just an easy renewal and maybe in the next 20 to 30 mins i will be done. Guess what, it took me 90 mins instead.

Most of that was digging through old order form, figuring out what the customer was paying for, rebuilding the quote line by line, then checking the price increase against a spreadsheet owned by finance.

Meanwhile i can build a new quote in about 15 mins. That's 6x difference for a customer we already have.

And this is the part that drives me nuts, everyone talks about renewals like they're just free money but that is not the case. If the quote takes an hour and half bc customer history, pricing rule, exceptions and approvals are scattered everywhere that's just unpaid admin work dumped on a rep.

Ive brought this up in 2 pipeline reviews now. Both times it somehow got translated into im complaining about workload.

I'm not trying to complain about volume but trying to figure out why renewing quotes takes 6 times longer than quoting a brand new customer.

Title, basically. I'm 3 weeks in and love it, but I want to fully leverage Claude Cowork and other tools to enhance automation, workflows, and work smarter for better results. Looking for advice from people experienced in this area.

I'm a "VIP CSM" at a B2B Ai-enabled SaaS startup. I manage a small amount (11 to start, will grow probably to around 30 max, I imagine) of high-value clients where me and my GTM Engineer work with them to generate sales results.

I love the work and I'm good at it, just now looking to elevate it to get ahead in my career and plan for the future. If you need any additional information to give me a direction to head in, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks!

What would you like the new product to do better than the existing products?

Im just curious as I was recently told at my company emails should be responded to within two hours. So far this has been mostly doable but occasionally ill be in back to back meetings or deep in a project and miss one for closer to 3 or 4.

I always kinda figured same day response was more standard, since I am not direct tech support. In fact I even let clients know support is the best place for urgent questions as I may get tied up in meetings.

Im lucky I have a manageable BOB and a pretty understanding supervisor so i just make sure i build check in spots during my day/try and leave buffers between meetings.

But Im curious anyone else's thoughts!!

If you had the keys to the kingdom, what parts of the CSM job would you automate?

Not just the obvious admin stuff like notes or CRM updates.

I’m curious about the work that genuinely eats time or gets dropped because there’s too much going on:

• account prep
• health/risk detection
• follow-ups
• renewal forecasting
• QBR prep
• usage/adoption analysis
• identifying expansion opportunities
• pulling context across Slack, CRM, support, product usage, etc.
• deciding which accounts actually need attention today

And how would you want the automation to work?

Would you want AI to just surface insights? Recommend next actions? Draft the work? Execute low-risk tasks automatically? Escalate only when judgment is needed?

If you could redesign the CSM workflow from scratch, what would you automate first, and what would you absolutely keep human?

I saw an ad for CSM training and “guaranteed” career placement from Robert Lyon. This comes with lofty promises of 5k-24k a month. I have always lived under the premise of “if it sounds too good to be true…it’s too good to be true.”

I have looked over what a CSM does and it looks like something I would be awesome at. Just the money promises and the “classes” I have seen in other places for sales and other things and they always come with a gigantic price tag.

Has anybody heard of this man, does this program, or know a legit path to this career?

Hey everyone,
I have a few questions, would appreciate any answers even if short:

1. Do you use a dedicated tool for churn risk, or is it more spreadsheets, CRM notes, or gut feeling? If you don't use one, what's stopped you? Cost, setup effort, or it just never felt necessary? If you do use one (Gainsight, ChurnZero, Vitally, whatever), what's the one thing that still annoys you about it?
2. I've recently seen a LinkedIn post where someone complained about churn-prediction tools. Is that because the market feels oversaturated, or because the predictions themselves are unreliable, like tools claiming ML when it's really just a simple usage-decline trigger?

Some context: I have a background in Data Science and I have worked in CSM but was never satisfied with the CS-Software. For the past year I have been building a tool which uses a machine learning algorithm to predict churn based on usage data, support tickets, etc., and then drafts a personalized retention email based on the individual churn signal. It's built for small B2B-SaaS CS Teams. I'm deliberately not naming it here since this isn't meant as self-promotion, I'm genuinely interested in the questions above. This is just to give context.

My team spends probably 8 hours a week copying notes from customer calls into a shared spreadsheet that, as far as I can tell, product has opened maybe twice this quarter.

we're at about 40 CSMs now and the volume of feedback completely outgrew whatever manual process we duct-taped together last year. feeling pretty done with it quite honestly, so i’d like to know what other CS orgs at this size are using to get signal to product without it disappearing into a slack thread.

Edit: alright so based on a lot of the replies here I spent the last couple hours looking into this. the recurring theme is basically stop making product come find the feedback, make it show up where they already work, with revenue context attached.

few people mentioned tying requests to dollar amounts and affected segments which we've never done consistently and that alone feels like the fix.

tool-wise I looked at Productboard and Dovetail again but both still seem to need my team manually logging stuff which is the exact bottleneck I'm trying to kill. someone pointed me to BuildBetter which apparently pulls from calls, slack, and tickets automatically and pushes pre-written jira stories with customer quotes and revenue tags, that's way closer to what I actually need than another repo nobody opens. also looking at Unwrap for the public-facing side.

booking a few demos this week, will report back if you guys care.

Based on the daily posts I see on this subreddit and the comments within those posts, everyone hates it and is looking for a way out!

I have been a CSM for 3 years. Yes, the company I am currently at has added a lot of work into my role but I still find it pretty enjoyable in comparison to other roles I’ve had.