Every year tons of brands rush to release their industry trend reports, and while I save most and read some, I do so with a mix of excitement and skepticism. Let’s face it, some feel completely out of touch. I literally sit there wondering who fills out these surveys. And then there are some who feel aspirational. Like yes, in some alternate universe with unlimited budget and resources that could possibly be a reality. And then there are the few that hit so painfully close to

I was recently scrolling through LinkedIn and came across a post encouraging CSMs to ask more questions. At first, I barely paused. It felt harmless enough. But the more I sat with it, the more it bothered me. Do we actually need more questions? Or do we need better questions? Because if we just pile on more basic, surface level questions, we are not doing real discovery. We are filling the air with noise and still walking away without the insight we need to drive impact. Qua

Coaching is one of the hardest parts of leadership and I learned that the hard way. When I first moved from being an individual contributor to a leader, I thought coaching meant carrying my team. I believed my job was to have every answer, jump in at every sign of trouble, solve every problem, and of course, do it all faster and better. At least that was the story I was telling myself. In reality, all I did was exhaust myself and unintentionally signal to my team that I did n

Every Customer Success leader wants to talk about churn, forecasting, onboarding, product adoption… but there’s a quiet little monster living in the background that most teams aren’t paying enough attention to: Feature ideas. Not the ideas themselves, those are gold. The way we manage them, that’s the problem. Most companies have figured out how to collect requests: forms, spreadsheets, portals, Slack messages, emails with subject lines like “Quick thought”… even the occasion

There is a moment every Customer Success leader knows well. A moment that feels like your stomach drops through the floor. A CSM resigns. And the first thought that hits you is the one none of us says out loud: How the hell am I going to redistribute these accounts? Because let’s be honest with ourselves. Your team is already at capacity. You are already at capacity. And while you are trying to stay composed and strategic, everyone on your team is quietly thinking the exact s

I’ve coached hundreds of Customer Success Managers over the years. Different companies, different products, different regions, different markets. Yet the same pattern appears over and over again. CSMs do not feel empowered. They are not empowered to say no. They are not empowered to drive change. They are not empowered to raise red flags. They are not empowered to make tough decisions. They are not empowered to prioritize for their customers. They are not empowered to deviate

Here is a hard truth we do not talk about enough in Customer Success. Some of the customers we write off the fastest are the ones sitting on the biggest opportunities. I know. I know. It feels easier to focus on the shiny, well-funded, “textbook” expansion accounts. They show up to calls. They read your emails. They know what they want. But not every customer is that obvious. And honestly, thank goodness, because the obvious ones are only half the fun. The real magic lives in

I love when data validates what many of us in Customer Success have been saying for years: customer-led growth is the engine of modern business performance. The latest Public Market Pulse Report from Certinia analyzed more than 4,000 public company earnings reports and the findings are a massive win for Customer Success. The data shows a clear pattern: companies that talk about Customer Success are creating more value, and the market is rewarding them for it. Let’s unpack wha

When I saw the 2025 SuccessCoaching Top 25 Customer Success Influencers list drop, I had to take a second to breathe it in ... six years in a row. Six. Years. That’s wild. And honestly, it’s not something I ever expected when I started sharing my thoughts on Customer Success all those years ago. I didn’t set out to be an “influencer.” I set out to make an impact, to share what I was learning, to help others avoid some of the same mistakes I made, and to build a community wher

Every week, I hear Customer Success leaders making the same case: “We need more headcount.” And sometimes, they’re absolutely right. The demands on Customer Success teams are higher than ever, more customers, more complexity, more responsibilities that bleed into Sales, Product, and Support. But before we make the case for more people, we have to ask an uncomfortable question: 👉 Do you actually know where your team’s time is going today? Most leaders don’t. They can tell you

One of the hardest parts of my job as a Customer Success leader is managing product ideas that come from customers. Every week, my team reviews dozens of requests, everything from new integrations to workflow enhancements to “nice-to-have” features that customers swear will change their lives. And while it’s incredible to have customers so engaged in shaping the product, managing these ideas strategically is one of the most complex parts of the job. Because every product requ

In Customer Success, we obsess over churn. We dissect it from every angle, analyzing root causes, building churn reports, hosting post-mortems, and spinning up initiatives to fix what went wrong. But for all the time we spend understanding why customers leave, we rarely take the same care to understand why they stay. And that’s a miss. A big one. Most teams treat renewal as the ultimate validation that a customer is satisfied and getting value. The renewal happens, the contra

If you’re not equipping your team to win, their underperformance is a reflection of your leadership, not their potential. That may sting...

Let’s clear something up: Showing up to weekly or bi-weekly calls with your customers does NOT make you proactive. And it definitely does...

Early in my Customer Success career, I made a huge mistake. I thought forecasting was just another way to “surprise and delight.” My...

The Retention Seekers hosts have spoken, here are 10 Customer Success thought leaders you must follow: 1. Anika Zubair - Founder & CEO at...

In Customer Success, we’re trained to track signals. We build health scores, monitor usage, analyze surveys, and flag risks when...

One of the biggest mistakes I made as a new CS leader? Trying to change everything at once. I walked into the role with a list a mile...

After 13+ years in Customer Success, there’s one lesson that has proven itself time and time again: People do what you pay them to do. If...

Everyone in SaaS loves to talk about breaking down silos between Sales and Customer Success. You’ve heard the calls to “align GTM” and...