Who is typically accountable for developing and maintaining the Customer Success Plan?

The Customer Success Manager (CSM) is typically accountable for developing and maintaining the Customer Success Plan because their primary role revolves around ensuring that customers are satisfied and are deriving maximum value from the products or services provided. The CSM works closely with customers to understand their goals, issues, and engagement levels, which allows them to create tailored success plans that align with the customer’s objectives.

The CSM's responsibility includes regularly tracking the progress of these plans, making adjustments as needed, and proactively engaging with the customer to drive successful outcomes. They leverage customer feedback and metrics to enhance customer relationships and improve overall satisfaction. This central role in customer advocacy and success management is critical to both customer retention and growth.

Other roles, such as sales managers, technical support leads, and product managers, have important responsibilities, but they don't focus specifically on the ongoing customer relationship and strategy in the same way. While a sales manager might be involved initially to secure the customer, they generally shift their focus to new sales, leaving the ongoing relationship in the hands of the CSM. Meanwhile, the technical support lead would primarily focus on resolving immediate technical issues rather than strategic planning, and the product manager is more concerned with product development and improvements rather than directly managing customer success.