How Big Is The Global Customer Success Community? And Where?

I’d always assumed that San Francisco and the Bay Area would be the stand-out home of Customer Success professionals in the world.

Well, it’s not anymore!

New York takes first place followed by London in third. The US takes four of the top five hot spots for Customer Success professionals with Boston and Chicago in the 4th and 5th spots. Those five locations account for 20% of the 110,000 strong Customer Success workforce.  

It will be interesting to see how the demographic shifts with so many companies moving towards a remote set-up on a full-time basis.

The global profession has grown by 14% from October 19 to September 20 which is less than half of the previous year, but it’s still growth if we’re looking for the positives : )

In the same period, nearly 49,000 CS professionals changed jobs by internal promotion or moving to a new post externally.

The median tenure is 1.5 years – the same as the wider tech market! People don’t tend to stick around too long these days.

So, what do Customer Success Managers value the most? What’s going to make them stick around beyond the 1.5 years?

LinkedIn has surveyed a small segment of professionals and the respondents provided the following insight.

Cash is king! Customer Success professionals want to be paid well but not work too hard by the looks of this ?? Just kidding!

Companies that combine competitive compensation and a good work-life balance and flexibility are in pole position when it comes to candidate appeal. It’s likely they will be a good quality employer that understands the drivers around creating a motivated workforce.

I speak with lots of companies in the SaaS world who overplay the importance of their proposition when it comes to attracting top-quality candidates.

Of course, a great product is important, particularly in Customer Success where you’ll be evangelising the benefits to users. It needs to work, and you’ll need to talk with passion about it. But there are lots of companies out there who can boast great tech, great clients, and impressive growth stats. If you want great people that stick around you need to reward them well and give them the trust and autonomy to get the job done.

This will become more apparent as the market recovers.

So, what is happening in the job market?

The US and UK markets are improving! There was a definite uptick in September if my LinkedIn feed is anything to go by.  I noticed lots of my connections securing or starting new roles after a tough six months for many. This was truly great to see.

I’m also seeing good roles being posted in the various CS communities.

It does appear there are more available roles in the market and we have seen an increase in client enquiries in the last few weeks.

It’s encouraging!

That said, it’s still a tough market with just over 1/3 of the available roles being advertised vs. January 2020 but it’s good to be optimistic about what the rest of 2020 holds for Customer Success. I for one will be pushing as hard as I can to help out. If you need some friendly advice or insight on the market or hiring challenge get in touch.

[email protected]

Thanks! ??

Alan