The Customer Success Manager role has never been easy to define. Depending on the organization, a CSM might spend most of their time managing renewals, running QBRs, handling escalations, coordinating between product and support, onboarding new clients, or some combination of all of the above. The role has always been broad. In 2026, it’s starting […]
Client Success
AI Will Not eliminate CSMs. But It Will Eliminate Teams That Don’t Use It.
The question of whether AI will eliminate Customer Success Managers has been circulating for the past two years. It’s the wrong question. The more useful one — and the one with a clear answer in the data — is what separates the CS teams that are using AI effectively from the ones that aren’t, and […]
The Four Tools That Actually Correlate With Better Client Retention
There’s no shortage of CS software on the market. Health score dashboards, engagement platforms, workflow automation tools, AI copilots — the category has expanded faster than most teams can evaluate it. With that much noise, it’s useful when research cuts through and identifies the specific tools that actually move the needle on retention. The ChurnZero […]
Scaling Client Success Without Burning Out Your Team
There’s a version of CS scale that looks like success from the outside and feels like burnout from the inside. More accounts per CSM. Faster response expectations. Bigger books of business with the same headcount. If the only lever being pulled is individual effort, that model has a ceiling — and it tends to hit […]
What Is CS Ops — And Why More Teams Are Adding It
Every high-performing customer success team has something working behind the scenes. Not more CSMs. Not a bigger budget. A function that makes sure the right client gets the right attention at the right time, backed by the right data. That function is Customer Success Operations — CS Ops — and in 2026, more organizations are […]