Director, Customer Success

Responsibilities

• Own retention, renewal execution, and commercial outcomes
• Own overall customer retention, renewal execution, and downsell mitigation for your portfolio, delivering against annual GRR, NRR, and gross attrition targets
• Establish and enforce consistent renewal cadences, forecasting processes, and escalation models — and ensure every renewal is proactively managed well in advance of contract expiration
• Coach CSMs to operate as true commercial owners alongside their AEs: build the value case, defend price, position multi-year renewals, and negotiate to durable outcomes
• Deliver a renewal forecast with clear commit, upside, and at-risk categorization that holds up under executive and customer scrutiny
• Partner with Sales on renewal strategy, attrition mitigation, upsell opportunities, multi-year positioning, and commercial alignment
• Serve as the escalation point for high-risk and strategic customer situations, engaging customer executives directly
• Operate our risk model so that attrition risk is flagged multiple quarters ahead of renewal not discovered during the renewal process
• Leverage data-driven health scoring across adoption, usage, engagement, and sentiment, and continuously improve the weighting and predictive accuracy of the model
• Diagnose risk by driver, and match the mitigation play to the driver rather than applying a generic save motion, ultimately turning these into playbooks that enable all CSMs
• Build joint CSM and AE mitigation plans with named executive sponsors, and hold the team to documented success plans
• Run the weekly and monthly at-risk pipeline and renewal governance cadences, keeping Sales, Finance, and Product aligned on exposure and actions
• Quantify realized value per customer and convert it into the renewal business case
• Operate and mature the tiered coverage model
• Execute and refine our tiered coverage model, high touch for Tier 1–2, medium touch for Tier 3, and a digital-first low-touch motion for Tier 4, so the right resources sit on the right customers
• Own segmentation, book balancing, and capacity planning across the team, and build the data-backed case for headcount and coverage changes
• Codify and automate success playbooks, including Product Adoption Acceleration, Customer Intelligence Activation, and Executive Alignment
• Set and enforce forecast hygiene, health scoring discipline, and QBR/EBR tracking standards in Planhat, partnering with CS Operations on centralized CSP administration
• Ensure a consistent QBR and EBR cadence with structured success planning across the portfolio
• Lead, coach, and develop the team
• Lead, coach, and develop a team of up to 10 CSMs as a hands-on player-coach, in the accounts, on the calls, and in the room for the hard conversations
• Recruit, hire, and onboard CSMs against a structured 60-day ramp plan that reaches full book ownership on a predictable timeline
• Run a consistent coaching cadence of 1:1s, call and QBR/EBR shadowing, and written development plans reviewed quarterly
• Manage to the variable comp plan, making NRR and multi-year renewal targets clear, visible, and coachable at the individual level
• Set clear performance expectations, address underperformance early and directly, and build career paths that develop your own successor
• Drive AI-enabled and Digital Customer Success
• Partner with CS Operations to evolve toward Digital Customer Success, automated campaigns executed on behalf of the CSM, auto-generated account briefs and QBR decks, and coverage that scales without added headcount
• Deploy predictive health scoring and AI-prescribed save plays, and hold the team accountable for acting on the signal
• Drive CSM productivity through AI-assisted workflows and building AI-agents that can autonomously assist daily CSM activities, automating forecast hygiene and note capture so CSMs spend more time in customer conversations
• Partner with Product and Enablement on Pendo-driven in-app education and awareness campaigns that lift adoption at scale
• Partner across the business
• Partner closely with the Director of Technical Account Management, CS Operations, and the Strategic Account Director to deliver one coherent customer experience across the CS organization
• Function as an elevated voice of the customer, translating field signal into prioritized, evidence-backed input to Product and Engineering
• Provide regular metrics and KPIs to the Chief Lending Officer on operating model execution, retention forecasting, team performance, and portfolio risk trends

Qualifications

• 8+ years in Customer Success, account management, or retention in B2B SaaS, including direct ownership of a retention or revenue number
• 3+ years in mortgage, banking, credit union, fintech, or adjacent financial services, at a lender or financial institution, or selling and delivering into one
• Proven track record of improving GRR and NRR and reducing controllable churn and downsell, with a credible account of the mechanisms that drove it
• Hands-on experience leveraging and maturing a Customer Success Platform (Planhat, Gainsight, or similar), including health score design and forecast governance
• Demonstrated ability to build a renewal forecast that holds, and to run a disciplined at-risk pipeline and renewal governance cadence
• Commercial fluency: co-owning renewals with Sales, building ROI and value-realization business cases, defending price, and positioning multi-year agreements
• Strong executive presence, presentation skills, and analytical mindset
• Ability to travel up to 25%