Vice President of Customer Success

Vice President of Customer Success

Position Summary

The Vice President of Customer Success is responsible for developing and executing the company's global customer success strategy to maximize customer satisfaction, retention, expansion, and lifetime value. This executive leader oversees the customer journey from implementation through ongoing engagement, ensuring customers achieve measurable business outcomes while driving recurring revenue growth. The VP of Customer Success partners closely with Sales, Professional Services, Support, Product, Marketing, and Finance to deliver a world-class customer experience to existing customers.

This role is a key member of the executive leadership team and is responsible for building scalable processes, leading high-performing teams, and establishing a customer-centric culture across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

Customer Success Strategy

• Develop and execute a global Customer Success strategy aligned with company growth objectives.
• Build scalable customer engagement models for SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise, and Strategic Accounts.
• Establish customer health scoring, success plans, lifecycle management, and executive business reviews.
• Defining and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as customer retention rates, upsell and cross-sell revenue, and customer satisfaction scores.
• Champion customer advocacy throughout the organization.

Customer Retention & Growth

• Own Net Revenue Retention (NRR), Gross Revenue Retention (GRR), customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty.
• Identify at-risk customers and implement strategies to mitigate churn while maximizing renewals and customer lifetime value.
• Drive renewal and expansion strategies in partnership with Sales.
• Reduce customer churn through proactive engagement and risk management.
• Identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

Customer Experience

·         Create and oversee best-in-class customer onboarding and adoption experience, including the entire customer journey, ensuring a seamless and value-driven customer experience.

·         Partner with sales and product teams to create and improve onboarding and engagement processes.

• Create a best-in-class customer onboarding and adoption experience.
• Ensure customers realize measurable ROI from company solutions.
• Develop customer success playbooks and standardized engagement models.

Leadership

• Strong leadership skills, with the ability to inspire and guide cross-functional teams to drive customer-centric initiatives.
• Lead, manage, and scale a high-performing Customer Success team, including managers and individual contributors.
• Recruit, develop, and mentor Customer Success leaders and managers.
• Build a high-performance, metrics-driven culture.
• Define organizational structure as the business scales globally.
• Foster collaboration across Customer Success, Support, Professional Services, and Sales.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Partner with:

• Working with sales teams to ensure seamless handoffs and effective upsell and cross-sell strategies.
• Partnering with product teams to inform product development priorities and ensure that customer needs are met and to influence roadmap priorities.
• Collaborating with marketing teams to develop targeted campaigns and messaging that resonate with customers.
• Professional Services on implementations.
• Support on customer escalations.
• Finance on renewals, forecasting, and customer profitability.
• Act as the voice of the customer in internal discussions, influencing product roadmaps and sales strategies.

Operational Excellence

·         Own and report on key customer success metrics (e.g., NRR, churn, customer health score) to the executive team.

·         Provide actionable insights and data-driven recommendations to inform strategic decisions and improve customer outcomes.

• Develop KPIs and executive dashboards.
• Drive process improvement and automation.
• Build forecasting models for renewals and customer health.

Financial Responsibilities

• Own customer retention targets.
• Forecast renewal and expansion revenue.
• Manage Customer Success budget.
• Improve customer lifetime value (CLV).
• Lead initiatives to improve customer retention rates and ensure customers realize the full value of the product.

Key Performance Indicators

The VP of Customer Success will be measured on:

• Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
• Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)
• Customer Churn
• Renewal Rate
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
• Customer Health Score
• Time to Value
• Product Adoption
• Expansion Revenue
• Executive Business Reviews Completed
• Customer Reference Program Growth

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in business, Engineering, Information Technology, or related field.
• 15+ years of progressive leadership experience in Customer Success, Professional Services, SaaS, Technology Services, or Enterprise Solutions.
• 7+ years leading large Customer Success organizations.
• Proven experience managing global teams.
• Demonstrated success improving retention and recurring revenue.
• Strong executive communication and presentation skills.
• Experience building customer success organizations from growth-stage through enterprise scale.

Preferred

• MBA
• Experience with private equity-backed companies
• Experience in enterprise software, managed services, cybersecurity, AIDC, RFID, mobility, or supply chain technology
• International leadership experience