Expert Customer Success Manager

Responsibilities

• Manage high-value or complex customer accounts, creating tailored success plans aligned to business goals.
• Drive strategic engagements, renewal planning, and account expansion.
• Lead collaboration across Sales, Marketing, Product, Professional Services, and Support for high-impact accounts.
• Contribute to cross-functional planning for product adoption, account strategy, and customer communications.
• Proactively manage customer health and retention by identifying emerging risks, influencing renewal strategy, and driving corrective action.
• Serve as a strong customer advocate and trusted advisor, translating customer needs into clear internal priorities while guiding customers toward measurable value realization.
• Leverage customer data and health indicators to proactively manage engagement and retention, translating insights into actionable improvements to customer success processes.
• Plan and execute strategic engagement cadences across assigned accounts, adjusting frequency and format based on customer lifecycle stage and health signals.
• Engages independently with internal and external parties to support customer needs, coordinates multi-party communication, and ensures clear understanding of customer's requirements, aligning with internal teams and external stakeholders.
• Manages complex interactions with minimal guidance and resolves routine cross-organizational blockers to maintain smooth customer execution.
• Maintain solid working knowledge of customer industry trends, typical use cases, and product capabilities relevant to assigned accounts.
• Applies this understanding to support day-to-day customer interactions, identify basic risks/opportunities, and contextualize customer questions or requirements.
• Leverage Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Power BI, Clari, and AI tools to enhance customer account management, including synthesizing account, usage, and engagement data into actionable insights; improving the quality and efficiency of customer communications; and informing meeting preparation and renewal planning.
• Proven experience managing escalations for complex customer accounts and leads internal coordination across Support, Product, and Engineering. Demonstrated ability to proactively identify when emerging technical issues may become production-impacting, initiate the appropriate escalation process, and maintain clear, confident communication with customer stakeholders throughout the incident lifecycle.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Proficiency in analyzing customer data and making data-driven decisions. Comfortable navigating data across various mediums and tools: retrieving information from multiple sources, interpreting trends, extracting actionable insights, and building structured action plans from those insights. Uses data to proactively identify risk, uncover opportunity, and substantiate strategic recommendations to both customers and internal stakeholders.
• Advanced communication skills with a proven ability to manage complex customer expectations and deliver difficult feedback with clarity, empathy, and confidence. Demonstrated experience handling challenging customer situations including misaligned expectations, dissatisfaction, and escalated concerns and can articulate specific examples of driving those interactions to constructive resolution while preserving the customer relationship.

Qualifications

• Typically requires 6+ years of experience in customer success or account management OR 6+ years experience in roles in management consulting, technical account management or enterprise software sales.
• Experience in the software or financial services industries preferred.
• Detail-oriented with strong time-management and multi-tasking skills.
• Proven track record of achieving targets and goals, preferably in a Customer Success, Account Management, Client Services, or Sales setting.
• Ability to create and deliver presentations with compelling messages to technology and business audiences; you are a natural, credible technology evangelist with experience in translating that passion into business impact for customers.
• Has solid familiarity with enterprise software and/or hands-on experience with software development or delivery processes. OR Demonstrates strong understanding of the life insurance, annuity, or financial services industry and how customers operate within it. Uses this technical and industry expertise to guide customer discussions, anticipate implementation considerations, and ensure product alignment with customer business models.
• Strong proven work ethic (this is not a 9–5 job).