This isn’t a 2025 CS Predictions Post
Erica Ayotte Favorito
Customer Success & Customer Experience Leader | Lifecycle Marketing Operations | Builds Scaled CS Functions | Drives Revenue Growth | Optimizes People, Process, & Technology
This is a call to action.?
Many companies are in SKO (sales kickoff) mode right now. Sometimes the customer success and other post-sales teams are “invited.” Sometimes not, as I’ve heard from multiple people this year. Sometimes CS teams get a designated sliver of time to go through a few case studies or get to listen in on new business sales training. And if it’s not zero, there’s usually precious little in the way of development, strategic discussion, or knowledge sharing for post-sales teams other than CS or account management.
And if you are lucky to be at a company that does have an inclusive, well thought-out kickoff that’s designed for customer-facing teams other than sales, then congrats because you’re probably in the 1%. I’m not surprised this is still the norm in 2025 (even though we are years into the post-ZIRP era), but I am disappointed.?
If you’re not deliberately operationalizing and resourcing your post-sales teams as the revenue engines they are—you’re self-sabotaging, full stop. And the ripple effects touch everything: your capacity to raise capital, your appeal to top talent, and your ability to sustain growth for even the medium, if not the short-term.
How you monetize and deliver both value and experiences to customers is the foundation of building durable revenue streams. It’s what drives loyalty, fuels expansion, and ensures your company’s survival in an unforgiving market.
Here’s the thing: (lowercase) customer success doesn’t just happen. There is no CS fairy that will magically solve all your customer problems—not even if you call that fairy “AI.”
You cannot low-key ignore half of the company (not to mention your customers) and expect dramatic improvements or even positive change. It requires deliberate action, sustained attention, and collective agreement that the exchange of value with customers, not just valuation, is a critical component of long-term success and resilience.?
If you are wondering what to turn that deliberate action and sustained attention to, I suggest the following three for their impact.
Stop Treating Customers With Contempt
This is the essential organizational mindset shift that unlocks everything else.?
Seems weird that this is an issue, right? Especially when most companies love to tout their customer-centric bona fides. But in practice, many companies treat their customers like an inconvenient necessity in the way of valuation instead of a partner in a value exchange.
This contempt manifests in prioritizing internal metrics over value delivery; overpromising outcomes or obfuscating technical capabilities; opaque pricing models and punishing contracts; and failing to adequately support customers to ensure the promises that were made are indeed fulfilled. And then hoping that none of these things catch up with them by “fixing it in post” (AKA summoning the CS fairy).?
Contempt for customers is also glaringly apparent in the boardroom. CS leaders are frequently excluded from critical discussions or their input is relegated to an afterthought, if it’s solicited at all.
C-levels and boards often fixate on acquisition metrics and topline growth, treating post-sales as a tactical issue rather than a strategic lever for long-term growth even though those teams often own much more revenue than new business teams.?
2025 needs to usher in a major mental realignment to avoid repeating the sins of the past. It means aligning every department—from marketing to product to finance—around the idea that happy, successful customers are the most reliable engine for growth.
Post-Sales Roles Get Sharper, Smarter, and More Specialized
The era of the “jack-of-all-trades” CSM needs to end, especially for any company that’s post-Series A (and some before, depending on the model). Expecting a single person to manage onboarding, implementation, adoption, renewals, expansions, escalations, strategy, and more (not to mention the often unrecognized and substantial internal tasks) is an exercise in futility that leaves customers underserved and 86% of CSMs wanting to quit.?
Instead, it’s time to embrace an operating model where post-sales roles are as differentiated and specialized as those in sales or product or engineering or marketing. By creating clear differentiation, companies will not only deliver more value to customers but also become much more optimized. And that’s not to say you have to increase headcount. It’s much, much more efficient to have a streamlined workflow across a narrower band of responsibilities vs task switching across multiple domains every few minutes or more.?
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It’s time we stop asking CSMs to do it all and set people up to do what they do best. A few ideas for role specialization:
Onboarding: ensures new customers achieve quick wins and rapid time-to-value. They are often focused on product training and adoption as well as launch project management.
Implementation: ensures technical integrations and configurations are seamless, customers experience a smooth transition from contract to value delivery.
Technical Account Manager: provides deep technical expertise to customers with complex solutions. They are differentiated from Support professionals in that they have intimate knowledge of the customers’ systems and requirements and will often design custom solutions that bridge the company’s capabilities.?
Account Manager: focuses on the commercial aspects of retaining and expanding customers, especially in situations with complex or lengthy sales processes. Sometimes they work relatively independently and sometimes they are in a “pod” supporting several CSMs.?
Strategist: has deep domain and product expertise. They work on high-level initiatives, identifying ways to drive business outcomes and ensuring that customers see measurable ROI. This role could be fulfilled by a CSM or could be part of a professional services package. Former customers make great recruits for this kind of roles.?
CS Enablement Manager: creates communication templates and workflows for CSMs and other team members. They are often responsible for training the team on new products and features as well as keeping documentation updated.?
Customer Enablement Manager: responsible for customer-facing self-serve product and domain education and documentation such as knowledgebase content, courses, videos, and tutorials.?
This list is by no means exhaustive of all post-sales roles and some of them may or may not apply to your company depending on scale and complexity.?
We Enter Our Scaled CS Era
The case for scaled customer success isn’t new (hell, I’ve been at it since 2019), but it’s more urgent than ever. Companies refocusing on unit economics and dollar efficiency, the appetite for scaled success has grown across the board. Scaled CS reduces reliance on expensive headcount to solve every problem, allowing teams to allocate human resources where they’re most impactful.
And contrary to traditional belief, scaled CS isn’t just for SMB customers. Even enterprise-focused organizations are recognizing the need to rethink their post-sales approach. It’s a strategic imperative for any organization focused on efficient, sustainable growth.?
It’s an approach that’s still evolving (a different post for a different time) but regardless of how you define scaled CS, I suggest starting with these priorities in this order:
If you’ve attempted any of these initiatives, you’ve discovered that building scalable systems forces organizations to address foundational issues, like clear value delivery and clean data. Any AI layer supporting your scaled initiatives will need clarity and comprehensiveness in these four areas to achieve increased scale, customer satisfaction, and customer outcomes.?
It’s been said ad nauseum: customer success is not the sole responsibility of the Customer Success department. It’s a team sport that unfortunately and frequently leaves half the roster empty.?
That oversight reflects a systemic failure. The path forward to durable revenue requires a dramatic shift—in perspective, in operations, and in strategy. This year, instead of letting post-sales remain a footnote in the SKO agenda, make it the centerpiece of your 2025 strategy.