Observations
Top insights
Your salary is tied to the revenue you bring in.
Top earners tend to manage small, high-revenue portfolios of fewer than 30 clients.
Who you report to can change everything,
about how much you earn, how you spend your time, and how your success is measured.
Customer Success as a paid service is trending positively,
leading to higher retention and customer health.
We surveyed over 400 Customer Success professionals globally. They work across a broad range of industries: eCommerce, FinTech, EdTech, IT, MarTech, and more. Reflecting the real-world distribution of CSMs, most work in mid-sized companies (51-250 employees). Secondary but significant segments of our respondents work in smaller organizations (11-50 employees) and larger enterprises (up to 1,000 employees). Regardless of company size, most of them work within small teams of ~10-20 people.
More investment,
more growth.
Despite a tumultuous economic climate in tech, companies are ramping up their investments in Customer Success. One reason is that during a downturn, it's easier to grow revenue through your existing customers than to bring in new ones. Another is that some leaders view the more human, relationship-driven aspects of Customer Success as differentiators in an age of AI. Either way, this industry is growing.
Almost 60% of CSMs’ salaries increased over the last 12 months. Only 1.3% of salaries decreased.
However, top executives’ compensation is plateauing, perhaps because they have fewer advancement opportunities than their reports. Another possibility: Top executives’ growth is tied to broader corporate goals—and given the market, few tech companies have been knocking it out of the park lately.
As salaries increase, CSMs are advancing in their careers — and teams are scaling up. The majority of CS teams (46.9%) grew within the last year.
No surprise that you earn more as your experience grows. What's interesting is that how you earn also evolves. Junior employees tend to earn more in base salary and commission, whereas VPs and executives are more likely to earn a base salary and a bonus.
We did hear from some individual contributors who earn more in commission than their managers. This makes sense: If you’re at the stage of your career where you’re growing your portfolio, your compensation will be weighted toward commission — whereas your manager’s performance will be measured in other ways.
What's moving
compensation?
Beyond seniority and performance, we uncovered two lesser-known factors that may influence how much you make: who you report to, and the size of your portfolio.
First, some context: More CS teams today report to a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) than in the past. That tracks with the fact that CRO is a new, growing role in tech. A LinkedIn report last year named it the #1 fastest-growing job in the U.S.
Reporting to a CRO or Chief Customer Officer (CCO) is most common once a company grows past 50 employees. Typically, you’ll earn more if you report to a CRO. We imagine CROs, given their role, may be better at aligning the work of Customer Success with revenue generation.
One caveat: Those reporting to the CRO didn’t experience as much salary growth as those reporting to other executives. So, you may earn more, but you’re less likely to get a raise.
CS professionals reporting to the CRO tend to have lower commissions and higher base salaries compared to those reporting to other executives. This may indicate that CROs view Customer Success as a longer-term investment in the company’s health. Perhaps they’re interested in building teams that can establish stable relationships with customers, leading to higher client satisfaction over time.
Not surprisingly, the more revenue you manage, the more you'll earn. Salary and ARR are tightly correlated. More companies managed doesn't determine a higher compensation, and high earners are likely to manage slimmer portfolios of higher-value clients.
In smaller companies, CS teams tend to report directly to the CEO — and CSMs are more likely to manage larger portfolios. For larger companies, CS teams will probably report to a CCO, CRO, or COO — and CSMs are more likely to manage smaller portfolios.
Essentially, if you report to a more specialized executive than a CEO, you’re better positioned to manage a more focused client portfolio.
Nearly every team we heard from tracks Net Revenue Retention (NRR) and Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) as their primary KPIs. However, as you climb the ladder toward a VP or CXO role, more of your compensation is tied to qualitative metrics like sentiment (NPS) and customer health. As a CSM, your goals are mostly tied to the lagging indicators you control (i.e. revenue). When you become more senior and naturally grow more distant from the customer, your focus shifts toward leading indicators like customer health and product adoption. You’re always accountable for revenue, but your scope expands as you ladder up.
Most people we surveyed believe Customer Success should be a free service. But the data show that when Customer Success is paid, teams get better at increasing the value of existing clients — because their pay depends on it. Paid Customer Success teams earn higher commissions for upselling, cross-selling, and deepening customer satisfaction.
Yes, there are downsides to paid Customer Success — especially if you’re moving existing customers from free to paid. But the upside is clear: Teams are incentivized to deliver more focused outcomes and the perceived value of Customer Success changes.
Sales and marketing companies are on the vanguard of paid Customer Success —they’re over 2x more likely than other industries to believe in a paid CS model. Perhaps that’s because these companies are already deeply familiar with the dynamics of marketing paid services.
Top earners
As expected, the closer you can position yourself to revenue - whether managing higher-value clients or reporting to a CRO - the more you'll earn.
Focus on a high-revenue portfolio, not more accounts.
The more revenue your clients bring in, the more you’ll earn.
Report to a Chief Revenue Officer
who is able to clearly tie their day-to-day work with revenue. If they don’t report to a CRO, they likely report to a COO or CCO — not the CEO.
Earn a commission based on revenue KPIs
like Net Recurring Revenue (NRR), Gross Recurring Revenue (GRR).
Top earners are compensated differently based on their work:
“Solve customer problems first. A relationship should be the result of helping a customer get more value out of your product, not an end in itself.”
Chris Regester
Chief Commercial Officer, Planhat
We don’t observe major differences in Customer Success by region — though we do notice a few subtle distinctions.
Customer Success teams in the Americas tend to be slightly larger than their counterparts in Europe. Teams in the Americas are also growing more rapidly — probably because Customer Success (and SaaS overall) is a more mature industry there.
Performance-based pay — often in the form of a bonus — is slightly more common in the Americas. CSMs based in Europe tend to have more predictable rewards.
If you’re working in Europe, your commission will likely be tied to metrics that indicate a stable rate of growth and loyalty — like Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) and customer sentiment (NPS). In the Americas, incentives revolve around revenue growth.
Customer Success managers spend their time pretty similarly regardless of region, though in the Americas they tend to do more upselling.
team up for success
We envision a future where Customer Success Managers understand how their context influences their compensation. We also want to help executives make informed decisions as they grow and focus their teams. Here’s what we recommend.
For CS Teams
Benchmark your compensation against your peers based on who you report to, your role, and the size of your portfolio.
Advocate for a compensation structure that rewards you for driving metrics that matter. That may mean asking for performance-based pay tied to revenue growth, product enablement, or NPS.
If you’re in the market for a new job: Keep in mind that teams reporting to a CRO earn more. And the more ARR you manage, the higher your salary.
For Company Leaders
Align Customer Success compensation with the outcomes you want to see. The top KPIs among CS teams are Net Recurring Revenue (NRR) and Gross Recurring Revenue (GRR).
Customer Success as a paid service has been on the rise. When your customers are paying for support, they get more value from it. Shifting to paid Customer Success aligns incentives: Your team is incentivized to solve problems, not only simply to maintain relationships.
