The revenue trap: Has customer success lost sight of actual success?
How we lost the customer's trust and how to win It back
Customer success - we have a problem.
Let’s take a recent post from SaaS godfather
:1I now dread calls and Zooms with Customer Success — and I’m not alone.
Just a few of the recent emails and calls we’ve gotten:
A random person in CS emailed us they are increasing our pricing more than 10x. Thank you much.
A VP of CS sending us an NPS survey for a flawed product, getting a low grade, and only sending an automated response days later.
A Director of CS we’ve never heard before telling us they’d shut off access to our product early if we didn’t agree to a 20% higher renewal price.
How many CS execs in that same time period reached out, for real, to see if they could help us?
None. Nonce. Zero.
How did we get to a place where customers don’t want to talk to us?
also recently tweeted that Salesforce turned him off for a billing issue even after they paid! This is nuts!
The problem that Jason is finding is backed up by the recent Bain Customer Success Practitioner Survey that demonstrated the disconnect between what customers want and where CS is focused. CS guru Jay Nathan did a great job visualizing the issue from this report:
A stark disconnect emerges between software buyers and practitioners regarding what they’re looking for from customer success. While buyers unanimously rank deployment assistance as their top priority for customer success, CS practitioners place this critical need in a mere sixth position. Despite the clear demand, many vendors offer only superficial support, effectively outsourcing the nuanced and complex technical implementation work to systems integration partners and to technology. Buyers also indicated that customers prefer a more technical CSM as their primary contact for customer success
Only two-thirds of customers believe their needs are only moderately being met, or worse. TWO-THIRDs. That’s horrible.
And for all of this emphasis we see today on CS focusing on net-dollar retention, what’s the result been? Well, according to the same Bain Survey, Net revenue retention has fallen for about 75% of software companies.
How can we fix this? Because if we don’t fix this it’s not just customer success that is screwed, your business will be as well.
Fixing Customer Success: Beyond Short-Term Revenue Goals
In the relentless pursuit of quarterly targets, we've lost sight of what truly matters in customer relationships. Traditional customer success models have become a numbers game—a short-sighted dance of quick conversions and immediate revenue that leaves both customers and companies feeling empty and unfulfilled.
Imagine a different approach. What if we reimagined customer success not as a sales function, but as a strategic partnership? The transformation begins with how we view and compensate our customer success teams. The current model rewards quick wins, but true success is about nurturing relationships that grow and evolve.
Compensation structures need a radical rethink. Instead of pushing teams to chase every potential upsell, we should create incentives that value long-term customer health. It's okay to leave some revenue on the table this quarter if it means keeping a customer for years to come. This isn't about being altruistic—it's about smart business.
The role of the Customer Success Manager (CSM) must evolve. They're not just account managers or sales representatives—they're strategic advisors, problem solvers, and, most importantly, trusted guides. Think about the last amazing travel experience you had—likely, it was that tour guide who made it memorable by sharing an unexpected insight that changed your entire perspective. We’ve lost this perspective in customer success. I’ve recently written about the need to teach customers something they didn’t know about themselves.
Training becomes critical. CSMs need to learn the art of strategic conversation—how to ask probing questions that uncover real customer needs, not just potential sales opportunities. The goal isn't to check boxes or hit a quota, but to create genuine value. It's about moving the needle, even if that means working creatively around obstacles. See the “PS” for what I’m doing to help here.
CS (and Sales) can’t be solely tied to customer revenue. For instance, product and engineering should also be tied into generating customer revenue. CS and product can have joint adoption metrics that tie to revenue as an example. Product and engineering could be measured by the revenue that was potentially lost from missed deadlines and revenue gained from new products and features. Engineering can be tied to churn that was related to product stability as well as gross margin improvements by reducing infrastructure costs. Finance can ensure payments are received on time. Sales should get commission clawbacks for clients that don’t renew after year 1 if the churn reason is “wrong fit”. Previously, CS asked all functions to be responsible for retention. My new ask is that all functions be measured on customer revenue
This isn't about creating more complexity—it's about creating more meaningful connections. By specializing roles, clarifying responsibilities, and creating cross-functional accountability, we can reduce friction and create a more transparent, value-driven approach to customer relationships.
Revenue is critical - don’t misinterpret my words. But the future of customer success shouldn’t be just about how much revenue we can attain in that quarter. It also needs to be about becoming true partners in our customers' success, understanding their deepest challenges, and providing solutions that genuinely transform their businesses. And by the way, I’m not saying this needs to be done by a CSM - technology and especially AI will play a major factor here. But we’ve turned the CSM in many organizations into a coin-operated paper chaser. We’ve gone too far - the signals are clear.
The companies that embrace this approach will not just retain customers—they'll create advocates, partners, and long-term growth engines that far exceed the value of any single quarterly sale.
PS: The title of my upcoming book has been finalized. It will be called “The Strategic Customer Success Manager: A Blueprint for Elevating Your Impact and Advancing Your Career”. If you are interested in joining my launch team, just DM here or on LinkedIn.
https://www.saastr.com/customer-success-has-gone-from-the-customers-ally-to-its-nemesis/
Some good observations here, Chad. With an increasing drive and urgency for CS to be more commercial and driving upsells and expansions, perhaps we have lost some of the original reasons why CS came to be in the first place. CS tends to be susceptible to trends and fads, as we continue to shape what CS means and the value it brings to organisations. And that's fine, but there's nothing wrong with also taking a step back and wondering if we don't need to go back to some previous path and take another route.