It’s a familiar story across growing companies: The first customer team the company needs and puts in place is a purely reactive one. You want to provide support to your clients in working with your product and answer their questions. In Startups and Scaleups this is then often referred to as “Customer Success”.
The logic seems sound – the team contributes to the success of the customer in using your product. So it is Customer Success, right? And when topics like churn, retention, advocacy, growth generation or renewal come along you would give them to this team to handle!
But strangely churn rates remain unchanged, retention and growth targets are not met and this gets executive attention.
The Startup Evolution: From Necessity to Strategy
This progression is natural and necessary. Startups and scaleups must prioritize customer support— without it, early customers abandon ship quickly. The support function becomes the backbone of customer satisfaction and early retention efforts.
But as companies grow and seek more sophisticated growth strategies, they encounter the term “Customer Success” in industry conversations, case studies, and investor discussions. The concept sounds exactly like what they need: customers who are successful. And they already have a team by that name.
The challenge is that with the title alone the team the team remains a support team. Often, the most experienced support or operations leader gets promoted to “Head of Customer Success” — a title that sounds strategic and investor-friendly. But underneath the new org chart, the same reactive processes, operational focus, and support-oriented metrics continue. These leaders are experts at keeping customers happy and operations running smoothly, but they haven’t been equipped with the commercial skills, strategic frameworks, or revenue focus that define true Customer Success leadership.
The Critical Distinction: Reactive vs. Proactive
Support is reactive and essential. When customers encounter issues, they need immediate, expert assistance. Support teams solve problems, answer questions, and ensure customers can use the product effectively. This function is vital for customer satisfaction and retention — there’s nothing wrong with reactive support. It’s a cornerstone of customer experience.
Customer Success is proactive and strategic. CS teams focus on deeply understanding customers — their business goals, challenges, and success metrics. They ensure customers achieve meaningful outcomes with the product through strategic guidance, adoption planning, and consultative support. This customer intimacy allows CSMs to identify both opportunities for growth and risks of churn based on genuine customer needs and business outcomes.
The commercial aspect flows naturally from this customer understanding. When CSMs help customers achieve their KPIs and see clear value from the product, renewal conversations become easier and expansion opportunities emerge organically. Some CSMs handle these conversations directly; others partner closely with sales or dedicated renewal managers to execute on the opportunities they’ve identified. The key is that revenue outcomes with existing customers stem from genuine customer success, not sales tactics.
Why the brand alone fails
1. Leadership Skills Don’t Transfer Automatically
Support professionals excel at troubleshooting, product knowledge, and rapid problem resolution. Customer Success Managers need deep customer understanding, analytical skills to interpret usage and health data, consultative abilities to guide customers toward their business goals, and strategic thinking to identify opportunities and risks.
These are fundamentally different skill sets. A stellar support agent who can resolve complex technical issues in minutes might struggle to conduct quarterly business reviews, analyze customer success metrics, or develop adoption strategies that drive long-term customer outcomes.
2. Reactive Habits Are Hard to Break
Support teams are trained to respond quickly to incoming requests. Their success metrics revolve around ticket resolution times and customer satisfaction scores. Customer Success requires a different mindset — one focused on preventing issues, driving adoption, and creating value that customers are willing to pay (more) for.
Even when given CS titles, formerly reactive teams often continue operating in response mode, waiting for customers to reach out rather than proactively engaging based on data insights.
3. Strategic Customer Understanding Gets Lost
Support teams focus on resolving immediate issues, which doesn’t require deep understanding of the customer’s business objectives, success metrics, or strategic challenges. Customer Success requires CSMs to become consultative partners who understand what customers are trying to achieve and how the product fits into their broader business goals.
This customer intimacy enables CSMs to identify opportunities for deeper product adoption, recognize expansion potential, and spot early warning signs of churn risk. Whether they execute on these opportunities directly or partner with sales and renewal specialists, the key is that these insights come from genuine customer relationships and strategic understanding, not reactive problem-solving.
The Path Forward: Building True Customer Success Capabilities
Step 1: Preserve and Optimize Support
Don’t diminish your support function — strengthen it. Invest in tools, training, and processes that make support more efficient. This includes Self-Help, Automation, Documentation as well as AI. Happy customers whose issues are quickly resolved are the foundation of successful retention strategies.
Step 2: Define Your CS Strategy
Before hiring CSMs, define what customer success looks like:
- What business outcomes do your customers need to achieve?
- Which usage patterns indicate successful adoption vs. risk?
- How will CSMs partner with sales for opportunity execution?
- What does the renewal process look like and who owns what parts?
- How will you measure CS impact on customer outcomes and business results?
Step 3: Build CS-Specific Capabilities
Customer Success requires different tools, processes, and skills than support:
- Customer success platforms to track usage patterns, business outcomes and automate
- Playbooks for onboarding, adoption, renewal, and expansion conversations
- Consultative training to help CSMs understand customer business objectives
- Cross-functional alignment with sales, marketing, product, and renewal teams for seamless opportunity execution
Step 4: Create Clear Handoffs
Support and CS should work together seamlessly. Support identifies customers who might benefit from strategic CS engagement, while CS proactively addresses issues before they become support tickets. Clear escalation processes and shared visibility into customer interactions prevent things from falling through the cracks. On larger accounts, support must be part of QBRs.
Both Functions Are Essential
This isn’t about elevating Customer Success above support or suggesting that reactive assistance isn’t valuable. Both functions are critical for different reasons:
- Support ensures customers can successfully use your product when they need help
- Customer Success ensures customers achieve their business objectives with your product, building loyalty and identifying natural opportunities for growth
Companies that excel at customer retention and growth understand this distinction and invest appropriately in both capabilities.
The Real Question
Instead of asking “How do we turn support into Customer Success?” ask “How do we build Customer Success capabilities that complement our strong support function?”
The answer involves strategic hiring, process design, technology investment, and cultural change. It’s more complex than a rebrand, but the results—measurable revenue growth from existing customers—make the investment worthwhile.
Ready to build true Customer Success capabilities alongside your essential support function? The transformation requires strategic expertise, process design, and change management.
Let’s discuss how to make it happen in your organization.
