Customer Success vs Customer Experience: The Battle for Tech's Hottest Hires and Buyers Beware.

We continue to see an increase in the 'Chief Customer' role, although in addition to a Chief Customer Officer, you may also now see a Chief Customer Experience Officer, Chief Experience Officer and Chief Client Officer, as well as something we are seeing more of The Chief Customer Success Officer.

The variations in title should also come with a "Buyer Beware" tag, especially in the Technology and SAAS markets.

If it was not difficult enough for CEOs, COOs and CPOs, to identify the right 'customer experience' and expert for their strategic or cricial customer appointment, the landscape has certainly become less clear with these additional Chief titles and the success vs experience skill base.

The technology sector continues to lead the drive with the majority of senior customer appointments as published in both our annual Customer Director Report as well as our quarterly Customer Moves Insight, 36% of appointments had come from the Technology sector, followed by the Service sector with 19.5% of hires.

What this means and we are experiencing this across sectors, is the rise of individuals with customer success experience applying for customer experience roles and vice versa, however "Customer Experience" and "Customer Success are rarely interchangeable.

In our Impact Room Podcast we have recently had the pleasure of featuring two global, award winning leaders in Customer Success; Marco Carrubba and Lara Barnes . Their perspectives offer essential distinctions and trends in customer success focussed leadership. I'll connect some of their wisdom to the rising prominence of customer success but also the difference you need to be aware of based on what we see in the market.

In my conversation with Lara, watch the full episode here. we talked about how Customer Success is often mistakenly seen as interchangeable with Customer Experience, but it's a different ballgame. Lara's rich experience leading global customer success teams revealed that it's more about ensuring the client achieves the intended value from your product or service, rather than just offering a great experience along the way. It requires a more technical understanding of your product's lifecycle and the tangible outcomes your customer seeks.

Lara not only distinguishes between Customer Success (CS) and Customer Experience (CX), but emphasised each unique role, while acknowledging their potential for synergy. She explains how Customer Success is closely tied to sales and commercial outcomes; revenue generation, customer retention, and helping customers adopt and maximise the value of a product. On the other hand, Customer Experience focuses more on the overall customer journey, ensuring a smooth onboarding process, ease of adoption, and fostering long-term loyalty, lifetime value and customer satisfaction metrics.

"With Customer Success, we are very much there to help our customers with onboarding, implementation, and getting to adoption, but overlaying that, we're looking at data analysis and working closely with sales to drive additional opportunities. Customer Experience is about lifetime value and customer journey, but Customer Success is the commercial custodian of revenue." Lara.

During my discussion with Marco, we consider an additional layer of complexity given the differences in the size, maturity and culture for varying SAAS and Technology organisations, (full episode here) Marco spoke about the distinct differences in leadership and customer success strategies between corporate and startup worlds. He pointed out that while corporations often prioritise stability, long-term sustainability, and maintaining shareholder value, startups focus on rapid growth, innovation, and agility.

This shift in priorities also impacts leadership styles, with corporate environments tending to be more hierarchical, whereas startups require leaders to be more disruptive and adaptive, often wearing multiple hats, sounds straighforward and not dissimilar to other industries but Marco also highlighted the significant difference in customer success strategies between these environments. In corporate settings, customer success often focuses on maintaining an established customer base, while in startups, the emphasis is on acquisition, opening new doors, and rapid expansion is prevelant.

"Customer success helps customers find the value of what they buy and provides a way for customers to have a voice in product development. It’s pivotal to the success of both the customer and the company, and should be integrated from the start." Marco

Key Differences: Customer Experience vs. Customer Success

From my discussions with Marco and Lara, the appointments we are working and the trends we’re seeing in our movers reports, here are three things to consider when hiring for these roles:

1. Customer Experience is Holistic, Customer Success is Tactical Customer Experience (CX) covers the entire journey—from the first time a customer interacts with your brand to post-purchase support. It’s about building relationships and ensuring that customers feel valued at every touchpoint. On the other hand, Customer Success (CS) is about tactical execution—making sure customers achieve their desired outcomes and see measurable success with your product.

2. CX Drives Loyalty, CS Drives Results While both CX and CS aim to enhance satisfaction, CX focuses on building loyalty through positive emotional connections, and CS is focused on achieving specific, practical goals—ensuring that customers receive the value they were promised.

3. CX Requires a Customer-Focused Culture, CS Requires a Product-Focused Approach CX leaders need to influence culture throughout the organisation. They are advocates for the customer, and their success relies on fostering a customer-first mindset across departments. CS leaders, however, must possess a deep understanding of the product and its potential to drive customer success. They tend to work more closely with product and engineering teams to ensure that the customer is realising measurable value.

If you are considering a Chief Customer role, or Director appointment across Customer Success, or Customer Experience, it is essential to align the role with the company's needs and ensure they have the right focus—whether that’s on driving customer loyalty, achieving commercial or product outcomes, or both.

Once again thank you to Marco and Lara for sharing their experience and wisdom.

If you have any thoughts, or if I can help, please do get in touch or of course post in comments.

I help CEOs, COOs, HRDs and business leaders improve the diversity, success and retention of their new leadership hires across Customer, CX, Operations, Transformation, AI, Insight and Planning, providing recruitment consultancy and Executive Search services. Helping you deliver a much improved performance and ROI. If you would like to talk more about your unique challenges and to see if I might be a future resource for you, Book a call today.