Customer nurturing is core to a successful businesses, driving ongoing revenue growth. To ensure customer satisfaction and retention, companies employ professionals who are responsible for managing these relationships. Among these key roles are Customer Success Manager (CSMs) and Account Managers (AMs). While the two titles may seem similar at first glance, they fulfill distinct functions within an organization. We will shed light on the difference between Customer Success Manager vs Account Manager, highlighting the unique contributions they bring to the table.
Customer Success Manager: Fostering Positive Customer Outcomes
Customer Success Managers are the advocates for customers within a company. Their primary focus is to drive customer success by ensuring clients achieve their desired goals and maximize the value they derive from the products or services provided. CSMs work closely with customers, engaging with them from the beginning of the customer journey, through onboarding, and throughout their entire lifecycle.
Customer Success Manager Responsibilites
- Onboarding and Adoption: CSMs help clients successfully integrate the product or service into their operations and ensure a smooth transition by providing training and guidance.
- Customer Engagement: They maintain regular communication with clients to understand their needs, address concerns, and identify opportunities for growth and improvement.
- Customer Health and Retention: CSMs closely monitor customer health metrics and proactively take action to prevent churn or attrition.
- Upselling and Cross-selling: While their primary focus is customer success, CSMs also identify opportunities to expand the relationship by suggesting relevant upsells or cross-sells to AMs.
- Advocacy and Feedback: Acting as a liaison between the customer and the internal teams, CSMs gather feedback and insights to help enhance the product or service.
- Videos & Insights: Creating knowledge based articles, videos and webinars to better support customers with the product or service they have purchased.
Customer Success Manager is a fairly new job role. However, 90% of businesses in stated they hired dedicated customer success manager, a huge increase from 50% and 70% in previous years. (Source: Tsia.com)
Searches for "Customer Success Manager" Google Trends
Account Manager: Client Relationships & Revenue Growth
Account Managers, on the other hand, focus on building and maintaining strong relationships with existing clients to drive revenue growth and ensure customer satisfaction. They serve as the primary point of contact for clients and act as their representatives within the company.
Account Manager Responsibilities
- Relationship Management: AMs build and nurture long-term relationships with clients by understanding their business needs, goals, and challenges.
- Sales and Revenue Growth: They identify and negotiate upselling and cross-selling products or services, aiming to increase the company’s revenue from existing clients.
- Contract Renewals: AMs ensure timely contract renewals and negotiate terms that align with both the client’s requirements and the company’s objectives.
- Issue Resolution: When issues or concerns arise, AMs address them promptly, collaborating with internal teams to find appropriate solutions.
- Customer Advocacy: They act as the voice of the customer within the organization, providing valuable insights to product development and improvement teams.
Conclusion
To sum it up, Customer Success Managers and Account Managers play crucial roles in a company’s success, but they have distinct functions and responsibilities. Customer Success Managers focus on driving customer success and satisfaction by supporting customers to achieve their desired goals. In contrast, Account Managers concentrate on building stong customer relationships in order to drive revenue growth, when handling account-related activities, such as upselling and renewals.
Often in startups, these roles are merged into one role. However, once a business is meeting $3m ARR, it’s important to review these roles, often having one Account Manager, to every 3 Customer Success Managers. This enable more focused role goals and therefore more successful outcomes for long-term business growth.