What Does a Customer Success Manager Do? Your Guide

As a customer success manager, sometimes called a client success manager, customer services manager, or CSM, you’re tasked with building customer loyalty and fostering long-term customer relationships by ensuring customers have a positive experience. You’ll address customer concerns and provide customer support. 

While working in this managerial position, you may be responsible for ensuring a positive relationship with customers, managing customer satisfaction, and using customer service data to set and enforce customer service goals for the company. Important tasks might include:

• Managing interactions between customers and the company

• Acting as a sales guide for customer-facing employees

• Guiding new and existing customers through the sales funnel

• Fostering customer retention by ensuring a smooth customer journey

• Training employees on how to provide customer assistance

• Managing a sales or customer support team

• Collecting and analysing data to improve customer service health

Learn more about the everyday tasks of a CSM from industry leaders at Salesforce:

Customer success manager skills 

The most effective managers can employ certain technical and people skills every day. These critical skills can be helpful to anyone working in this role: 

Technical skills

• Project management 

• Onboarding 

• Data analysis 

• Customer service 

• Product or service support 

• Budget management 

• Record keeping 

• Customer service goal creation 

• Financial goal setting 

Workplace skills 

• Leadership 

• Patience  

• Teamwork 

• Communication 

• Problem-solving 

• Sound judgement 

• Confidence 

• Adaptability 

• Positivity 

Customer success manager salary

A customer success manager's salary varies by location, company, and years of experience. The average salary for a customer success manager in the United Kingdom is £50,846 a year, according to Glassdoor in May 2024 [1]. This aligns with the estimated salary range from the National Careers Service, which reports the salary range for customer service managers between £21,000 and £50,000 [2].

Customer service managers typically work between 38 to 40 hours a week, and hours may include evenings, weekends, and bank holidays.

How to become a customer success manager

You don’t necessarily need an undergraduate degree to become a customer success manager, so experience in leadership and management can give you a competitive edge. Because traditional career paths for customer success managers involve managing people, moving into a leadership position will provide you with that experience. 

Focus on the type of customer success manager job you’d like to have. Narrow down the industry and look for industry-specific requirements beyond customer service and management skills. Some companies prefer candidates who are proficient in their industry. For example, a tech company may seek out an individual with experience in product management or product training for a tech company similar to its own. 

Depending on the company, you may find yourself following a sales pathway. In other companies, you may follow a marketing pathway. 

Many customer success managers earn a foundational degree or higher national diploma in a relevant area such as business management, retail management, tourism and hospitality, or financial services. To enter a degree programme in this area, you are likely to need between 1 to 3 A levels. Earning a Level 3 or Level 4 Diploma in Customer Services through college courses is another great route to enter the customer success industry, typically requiring up to 5 GCSEs or 2 A levels to enter diploma programmes. 

Apprenticeships such as customer service specialist advanced apprenticeships or degree apprenticeships in marketing and retail also provide the training necessary to enter customer service industries. To enter these apprenticeships, applicants usually need up to 5 GCSEs. Becoming a customer success manager through work may involve these steps: 

1. Hold an entry-level position as a customer service adviser. 

2. Transition into a team leadership role overseeing a small group of employees. 

3. Move into a managerial role.

4. Work towards a specialisation, such as product development or maximising profit growth rate.  

5. Seek out a customer success manager position within your company or apply to similar companies if yours does not have openings. 

Customer success manager career path 

This position straddles several departments, which allows for a good amount of mobility. It’s an evolving and relatively new position. As a customer success manager, you may move into other management roles or change departments.

Most customer success managers follow the sales or marketing pathway within a company. This means that a customer success manager may step into the role of account executive/account manager, product sales/marketing manager, product manager, or enterprise customer success manager. 

You may find yourself on the pathway to positions like vice president of sales or chief customer officer (CCO) if you stay with a company for a while and gain success and experience in your roles. 

Get started with Coursera.

Take the next step towards a career as a customer success manager by building your customer service and leadership skills now. Gain job-ready skills in sales operations with the Salesforce Sales Operations Professional Certificate, or develop your management skills with the Leading People and Teams Specialisation from the University of Michigan, both offered on Coursera.