Customer Success Manager Salary Levels
Are you getting paid fairly for Customer Success Management?
What it takes to be a Customer Success Manager
To be a great CSM, you need a combination of knowledge, skills, and experience including:
- Customer domain knowledge (an understanding of your customers’ industries and how they work)
- Product knowledge (a good technical understanding of your company’s product range including what each product does and how it works)
- Analytical skills (the ability to analyze data and resolve technical issues)
- Business knowledge (an understanding of how businesses function and how value is created)
- Interpersonal skills (the ability to develop trust relationships with and communicate with customer stakeholders)
On top of this, of course, you also need to learn Customer Success Management best practices and how and when to apply them.
So, with all these skills in mind, how much should a Customer Success Manager be paid?
What is the expected salary range for Customer Success Managers?
Salaries for Customer Success Management roles can vary depending on experience level, industry, and company size, as well as on local pay and conditions geographically. As the field of Customer Success Management continues to grow and evolve, so do the salaries of Customer Success Managers. According to The State of Customer Success Compensation: 2022–2023 Report (a recent survey by Catalyst), the wages for Customer Success Managers are expected to be around $90k – $100k annually in the United States (a significant increase from previous years). However, the current average salary in the USA for a Customer Success Manager is $85,000 per year.
Salary levels will change from region to region and country to country, depending upon demand and on costs of living. You can use websites such as Glassdoor’s site to very easily research the numbers of jobs and types of salaries offered available in your own country or region right now.
Another important consideration alongside geographical location and experience level is qualifications. Possessing professional certifications or being able to demonstrate specialized knowledge and/or skills and/or experience in certain areas can help create better bargaining power in your salary negotiations. Furthermore, working in a specific industry or familiarity with Customer Success tools and platforms such as customer support systems and analytics software can also increase one’s value as a Customer Success Manager.
Are there any potential issues with the salary of CSMs?
As the role of Customer Success Managers continues to grow, many are frustrated with their current salaries and quitting at an alarming rate. This is according to The State of Customer Success Compensation: 2022–2023 Report by Catalyst, which found that almost half (47%) of Customer Success Managers have considered leaving their current positions due to salary issues. Why? Here are the two key points from this study:
1. A recent study has provided some evidence to indicate that a gender pay gap may exist within Customer Success Management. The study showed that women in entry-level positions had higher salaries than men by 12%. It also showed that male employees of higher seniority typically earn more than their female peers. Overall, the salary received by women was found to be 2.93% lower on average relative to males. This potentially indicates the possibility of an unequal balance between genders that might be worth follow up studies being undertaken to reveal more details that may help towards providing equal access to wages among both sexes in this profession.
2 .The second issue highlighted by the survey was pay transparency – that is, how much information companies give their employees about their salaries and what they are being paid relative to others in similar positions. According to the report, only 42.5% of respondents said they had access to complete pay transparency information from their employer – indicating that employers have a long way to go before becoming completely open about employee wages. This lack of transparency can lead to unfair compensation for Customer Success professionals due to gender-based wage discrepancies or an overall lack of understanding among employees about how much their peers make and how it compares with their salary levels.
The above analysis reveals that the landscape of Customer Success practitioners’ wages is complex and multi-faceted and therefore requires deeper exploration, particularly in areas like wage transparency and pay equity. As more companies prioritize investment into customer success management to ensure long-term relationships with their customers, organizations must consider offering competitive salaries for these key roles to attract top talents.
What’s in the future for Customer Success Management?
Customer Success Management is experiencing a surge in popularity as more and more organizations realize the importance of providing exceptional customer experiences. According to Gartner, Customer Success Management is now the primary driver of customer loyalty, and driving up to 80% of revenue growth. This trend is also supported by McKinsey & Company, which found that companies with strong customer service capabilities saw an average of 8-10% higher revenue growth than those without.
Due to this growing demand, Customer Success Managers (CSMs) are becoming increasingly important. As the primary point of contact for customers, CSMs ensure that their clients have a positive experience with the company’s products and services and feel valued in their interactions. This means they must understand their client’s needs and wants, help to design, implement, manage and measure customer success plans, provide helpful tips and advice to help customers overcome challenges along the way, create strategies to prevent churn and increase renewals, and ultimately ensure the best possible customer experience.
The demand for CSMs will continue to grow over the next few years as companies look for ways to increase customer retention rates and stay competitive in their markets. To do this, CSMs will need to have a deep understanding of customer behavior, identify key industry trends, and develop strategies to drive engagement. Additionally, they must possess strong communication and emotional intelligence to manage customer relationships effectively.
As technology advances, we can expect Customer Success Managers’ roles to expand into other areas, such as data analysis and automation. The ability to interpret data quickly will become even more essential as CSMs use this information to guide customer decisions. Automating processes such as marketing campaigns or product launches will allow them to focus on deeper customer engagement.
We can also expect to see new technological advancements such as artificial intelligence (AI) coming more to the fore to help automate more repetitive Customer Success-related tasks and to make CSMs themselves both more productive and more effective in their work.
Given the ever-evolving nature of the job market today, it’s clear that Customer Success Managers have an exciting future ahead of them – one where they can leverage new technologies and data insights to maximize customer experiences while helping organizations reach new heights in terms of success and growth. With the right training and experience under their belts, Customer Success Managers have the potential to be game-changers within any organization – creating value through close collaboration with customers as well as strategic problem-solving capabilities, which makes them invaluable additions within any team environment.
Next Steps
Get certified and trained by some of the most experienced professionals in the industry with our top-of-the-line certification and training program. Learn more here:
Learn more about The State of Customer Success Compensation: 2022–2023 Report by Catalyst here.
References:
Gartner (n.d.). Customer success is becoming the primary driver of customer loyalty. Retrieved from https://www.gartner.com/en/customer-experience/insights/customer-success.
McKinsey & Company (2020). The importance of customer service capabilities for driving growth and profitability. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-importance-of-customer-service#.
Catalyst (2022). The State of Customer Success Compensation 2022-2023 Report.pdf. Retrieved from https://catalyst.io/ebooks/2022-2023-customer-success-compensation-report.
