1. 2013 STATE OF
THE PROFESSION:
CUSTOMER SUCCESS
PRESENTS

2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. The Average Customer Success Profile………………………..............................................................4
2. Our Customer Success participants...............................................................................................
2.1 Participant title breakdown………......................................................................................6
2.2 Where does their Customer Success function report to?..............................................7
2.3 How long has the Customer Success function been around?.......................................8
3. Top 10 Customer Success challenges............................................................................................9
3.1 Where else are Customer Success professionals facing challenges?...........................10
3.2 Analysis of Customer Success Challenges.......................................................................11
4. Looking into the Customer Success Toolbox................................................................................12
5. Anatomy of Customer Success Compensation.............................................................................14
5.1 Customer Success Annual Salary Distribution………………………..……………………………….15
5.2 Average compensation by title..........................................................................................16
5.3 Customer Success compensation structure....................................................................17
5.4 Customer Success compensation trends.........................................................................18
5.5 Things to negotiate for compensation..............................................................................19
5.6 Who earns the most/least on each end of the salary spectrum?..................................20
5.7 Is there a correlation between experience and compensation?....................................21
5.8 What about education and compensation? .....................................................................22
6. Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................23
7. Infographic.........................................................................................................................................24
8. About Totango...................................................................................................................................25

3. WHO ARE YOU,
CUSTOMER SUCCESS
PROFESSIONAL?
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4. THE AVERAGE CUSTOMER SUCCESS
PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
Title: Customer Success Manager
Experience: 6.5 years in Customer Success or
working directly with customers
Background in: Sales/Customer Support
Compensation Structure: Base salary + commission/
bonus
Annual Salary Range: $100-125k
Reports to: VP Customer Success
Team Size: 14 people
We’ve had Customer Success for: 1-3 years
Biggest challenges:
1. Lack of direction
2. Lack of tools/info to manage customer info
Vertical: Computer software
Education: Graduated with bachelor’s degree
4

5. MEET OUR SURVEY
PARTICIPANTS
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6. Our survey base spanned across
multiple industry verticals such
as: SaaS, analytics, broadcast,
technology, email marketing
services, call centers, project
management, building systems,
finance, automotive, and much
more.
We had a nice mix of participants
from all levels ranging from
Associate to Director to VPs of
Customer Success.
BREAKDOWN OF PARTICIPANT BY TITLES
19%
1%
9%
71%
Director
Associate
VP
Manager
6

7. True to its infiltrating nature, the Customer
Success function has touched every
department of an organization. This also
makes it difficult to pinpoint who would be
responsible for such a function.
Many companies (47.1%) have dedicated a new
organization to Customer Success, with 15.7%
reporting directly to the CEO.
It’s important that Customer Success
professionals are able to represent the
customers at the executive level.
For some companies, Customer Success is a
fairly new introduction to their business
processes; but there is a growing need for
benchmarks and best practices to help instill
this growth.
Customer Success
47%
CEO
16%
COO
3%
Sales
10%
Marketing
3%
CTO
1%
Chief Customer Officer
6%
Client Services
3%
Other
11%
WHERE DOES THEIR CUSTOMER SUCCESS
FUNCTION REPORT TO?
7

8. HOW LONG HAS THEIR CUSTOMER SUCCESS
FUNCTION BEEN AROUND?
37%
36%
26%
1%
More than 3 years
Between 1-3 years
Under 1 year
Just started
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9. TOP 10 COMMON CUSTOMER
SUCCESS CHALLENGES
Most of the Customer Success professionals share similar issues - here the most 10
frequent ones (in order of urgency):
1. Need direction/Lack of information/tools to manage customer info
2. External communication (with customers)
3. Adoption
4. Onboarding
5. Unclear definition or understanding of CSM role/customer culture
6. Internal communication (sales and other departments)
7. Product training
8. Measuring and acting on engagement
9. Lack of personnel in team
10. Identifying at-risk customers
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10. • Balancing time between selling/retention/relationships
• Retention/Renewals
• Customer employee turnover
• Accurate measurement/Analytics
• Technical Support issues
• Prioritize leads Budget
• Predict customer behavior
• Measurement usage/adoption
• Customer software usage
WHERE ELSE ARE CUSTOMER SUCCESS
PROFESSIONALS FACING CHALLENGES?
10

11. 37% of our survey population shared that Customer
Success has been in their organization for more than
3 years, but still, as seen in the top 10 challenges,
13% complain that there is unclear definition/
understanding of the CSM role. In general, the
Customer Success function is pretty new. Most of the
Customer Success professionals have only been in
this field between 0-2 years. (41%).
About a quarter (24%) of Customer Success
professionals come from a Sales background and
therefore may need direction or new tools on how to
approach the customer from a different point of
view, which is not pushing for a deal but
understanding customer needs and leveraging their
success.
Most frequently, these professionals ask:
• When does my role between firefighter and
customer advocate begin or end?
• My team is overwhelmed. The customer to CSM
ratio is too high, how can I manage this effectively?
• What can I do when I feel like I have no authority
or influence on product decision or priorities?
• How can I convince our executives of the value of
our work and not just another extra department?
• How can I improve communication with other
departments like sales or support to solidify our
customer understanding?
Even though these professionals ultimately want to
help the customer be successful, it helps to empower
them with the right training and tools. It’s important
to help these professionals achieve the goal of being
the customer’s advisor and advocate. A good place to
start is to create a company-wide understanding of
customer success: what does it mean? What is
considered a successful customer? How can we bring
the customer’s voice into the boardroom? It would
be a good idea to introduce structured training for
their customer success teams.
ANALYSIS OF CUSTOMER SUCCESS CHALLENGES
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12. LOOKING INTO THE CUSTOMER
SUCCESS TOOLBOX
5.2%
5.5%
6.2%
7.7%
11.9%
21.1%
21.7%
26.3%
Office Suite
Customer Engagement Management
Helpdesk
Proprietary (homegrown)
Analytics Tools
Communications
Other (social media, soft skills, etc)
CRM
TOP TOOLS USED DAILY IN CUSTOMER SUCCESS
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13. Salesforce was the big winner among our participants as CRM of choice, followed by
social media and communications tools. Following close behind was the need for
customer analytics.
In order to better manage the customer journey, key data for Customer Success
professionals comes from these customer intelligence tools to identify growth
opportunities and at-risk accounts.
One repeated comment from the surveyed participants who had to manually analyze
their customer data was the need to have amazing Excel kung fu. Our Customer Success
professionals made it a point to touch base with their accounts while also providing
added value via video conferencing, personal emails, and monitoring usage.
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14. ANATOMY OF CUSTOMER SUCCESS
COMPENSATION
Factor in experience and how established the customer success function is, and you’ll find
there’s a great range of how Customer Success professionals are being compensated.
The average Customer Success professional makes between $100,001-125,000 annually.
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15. $0-50,000
10%
$50,001-75,000
14%
$75,001-100,000
22%
$100,001-125,000
24%
$125,001-150,000
17%
$150,001-175,000
4%
$175,001-200,000
2%
$200,000+
7%
CUSTOMER SUCCESS ANNUAL SALARY
DISTRIBUTION
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16. AVERAGE COMPENSATION BY TITLE
Below is the average annual compensation of Customer Success professionals at VP,
Director, and Manager level respectively.
$90,750
$130,769
$181,250
Customer Success Manager
Director of Customer Success
VP of Customer Success
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17. CUSTOMER SUCCESS COMPENSATION
STRUCTURE
An interesting find was that a majority of customer success professionals are
compensated first with a base salary then with added perks like commission and
bonuses from the success of their accounts.
76%
17%
7%
Base+Commission/Bonus
Base Only
Commission Only
17

18. CUSTOMER SUCCESS COMPENSATION TRENDS
Altogether, 91% of our survey participants received a base salary. From that number, 64%
also received a bonus in addition to the base salary, while 33% received commission for
upsells/renewals in addition to their base salary.
64%
33%
Base
Salary
Receive
bonus
in
addi7on
to
base
salary
Receive
commission
in
addi7on
to
base
salary
18

19. THINGS TO NEGOTIATE FOR COMPENSATION
Here’s the breakdown on how Customer Success executives are being compensated for
commission and/or bonuses:
q % of sales
q % of renewal revenue, quarterly
q % of upsell revenue
q % of project value
q % of target met in relation to available bonus
q Reverse % of churn
q Team performance
q Personal performance
q Company performance
q Set percentage
In some cases, a certain threshold must be met before commissions/bonuses are activated.
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20. WHO EARNS THE MOST/LEAST ON EACH END OF
THE SALARY SPECTRUM?
Those on the higher end of the salary spectrum
($175k+) make up only 5.7% of the survey
population.
• Sr. Managers 20%
• Directors 20%
• SVPs 60%
Those who are on the lower end of the salary spectrum
($0-50k) make up 10% of the survey population.
• Managers 58%
• Leader 14%
• Specialist 14%
• Associate 14%
Those in the middle of the salary
spectrum ($100-125k) account for
24% of our survey population.
• Managers 80%
• Directors 10%
• Head of Customer Success 10%
LOW
HIGH
20

21. IS THERE A CORRELATION BETWEEN EXPERIENCE
AND COMPENSATION?
Those who earn the most ($175k+) are NOT the
most experienced workers, but the majority have
worked 3-10 years:
• 0-1 year: 20%
• 1-2 years: 0%
• 3-10 years: 80%
• 10+ years: 0%
Those who earn the least ($0-50k) are the less
experienced workers - most of them have only
worked 1-2 years:
• 0-1 year: 14%
• 1-2 years: 72%
• 3-10 years: 14%
• 10+ years: 0
Most of those who earn the median salary ($100-125k)
have only 1-2 years experience. However, here is where
the most experienced workers are too - 24% of the
survey population in the median salary range have
worked for 10+ years!
• 0-1 year: 0%
• 1-2 years: 47%
• 3-10 years: 29%
• 10+ years: 24%
21

22. WHAT ABOUT EDUCATION AND
COMPENSATION?
Interestingly, those who earn the most
($175k+) are not the most educated.
Only 20% graduated with an MBA.
Those who fall in the median salary range ($100-125k) have mostly graduated with a
bachelor’s degree (41%) and also 29% have MBA and we can see even 6% with PhD,
therefore we can assume that this market invests time in higher education, however,
educated as they might be, the big sharks show us that education might not be the key for
high salary!
Graduated with MBA/Masters: 20%
Graduated with Bachelor’s Degree: 40%
Graduated with Associate’s Degree: 40%
Graduated with PhD: 6%
Graduated with MBA/Masters: 29%
Graduated with Bachelor’s Degree: 41%
Graduated with Associate’s Degree: 18%
Incomplete Degree: 6%
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23. CONCLUSION
The Customer Success function is starting to emerge at all organization levels, including
executive ones. Customer success professionals come from varying experience and
backgrounds, but their goals are the same: reduce churn and earn customer loyalty.
Here is the 2013 State of the Customer Success Profession:
1. Customer Success is still emerging (and growing).
Businesses are in the process of trying to understand how to organize customer success and
manage compensation.
2. Businesses are missing the Customer Success Playbook.
They are figuring out how to define the role of Customer Success. What are their goals? How is
their performance measured? How can this role be more integrated in other aspects of the
business? More importantly, they need internal buy-in by upper management for more
successful adoption.
3. There is a need for the right technologies and tools.
Being able to narrow down the wide array of homegrown or scattered tools will help streamline
customer success processes. Customer Success professionals are looking for better ways to
prioritize accounts, monitor and analyze, as well as improve communications both internally
and externally.
Learn more about being a
Pro-Customer Company at
www.totango.com
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25. ABOUT TOTANGO
We’re a full-service Customer Engagement Management platform for online businesses.
Totango’s Customer Engagement platform helps online services create an active and engaged
user base. Totango combines big data analytics with powerful segmentation and engagement tools
to allow online services to take the right actions with each customer, in real time. End-users
become happier and more successful – driving usage and adoption, increasing conversions, sales
and lifetime value while reducing churn.
In the Customer Era, the whole dynamic and interaction model between vendors and users have
changed. Whether it’s for Customer Success or any function in your business, Totango was built
from the ground up to help businesses deliver more value and drive more active and engaged
users – the foundation for business success.
Find out more or start your free trial at www.totango.com.
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