Customer Success Manager

Overview

You own retention and expansion for a portfolio of Sendoso customers. Your job is to make sure they're actually using the platform (not just paying for it), running successful gifting campaigns, and expanding from one team to multiple departments. You're part account manager, part product trainer, part campaign consultant.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Growth stage (406 employees suggests Series C+)

Size: 406 employees

Growth: Forbes Top Startup Employer recognition suggests positive culture and active hiring

Market Position: Category leader in sending management, competing on retention and expansion in a market with growing competition

GTM Reality

Customer Base: Mix of mid-market and enterprise B2B companies (200-5,000 employees) using Sendoso for sales prospecting, marketing campaigns, customer gifts, or employee engagement

Typical Customer Journey:

• Month 1-3: Onboarding, integration setup, first campaigns
• Month 4-12: Optimize existing use case, prove ROI
• Month 13+: Expand to new teams or use cases

Book of Business: 40-60 accounts, segmented by ARR (likely mix of $15K-$100K+ customers)

Expansion Triggers: Sales team wants gifting, marketing wants direct mail, HR wants employee swag, new budget year

Competitive Landscape

Churn Risks:

• Budget cuts (gifting seen as discretionary spend)
• Low adoption - they bought it but teams don't use it
• Competitor switches (Reachdesk, Alyce offering better pricing or features)
• DIY solutions - "We'll just use Amazon and track manually"

Retention Strategies:

• Prove ROI with data (pipeline influence, meeting acceptance rates, employee engagement scores)
• Drive feature adoption (AI recommendations, integrations, reporting)
• Build champions across multiple teams so you're not dependent on one stakeholder

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Customer Meetings (35%) | Expansion Planning (25%) | Renewals (20%) | Fire Drills (20%)

Key Activities

• Quarterly business reviews: Walking through campaign performance, ROI data, adoption metrics. You're building the case for renewal and expansion—showing pipeline influenced, cost-per-meeting improvements, response rates.
• Troubleshooting campaigns: Address confirmation not working for international sends, integrations breaking after CRM updates, gifts going to wrong addresses, budget burn rate questions. You'll escalate to support but customers expect you to own resolution.
• Adoption drives: Most customers use 30% of the platform. You're training teams on features they're not using—triggered sends, AI recommendations, event management, warehouse integrations. Low adoption = churn risk.
• Expansion motion: Identifying new use cases—sales team is using it, can we get marketing on board? Marketing is using it for campaigns, can we get customer success using it for renewals? Building business cases for new teams.
• Renewal negotiations: Handling price increases, contract terms, downgrades. Some renewals are smooth, others involve procurement and budget battles. You'll work with your manager on at-risk accounts.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Low adoption is constant - customers buy Sendoso but their teams don't use it consistently, then complain about ROI at renewal time
• Budget volatility - gifting is often first to get cut when budgets tighten, so you'll lose deals to macro conditions outside your control
• Champion turnover - your main contact leaves, new person wants to "re-evaluate all vendors," and you're suddenly at renewal risk
• Fire drills - last-minute campaign issues before big events, integration breaking before a 5,000-send campaign, inventory delays for time-sensitive gifts
• Expansion requires net-new selling - you're not just managing renewals, you're prospecting internally and building business cases like an AE
• Product limitations - customers want features that don't exist yet, and you're managing expectations while lobbying product team

What Success Looks Like

• Maintain 95%+ gross retention (lose fewer than 5% of customers annually)
• Hit 110-120% net retention (expansions offset any churn/downgrades)
• Expand 30-40% of your book into new teams or use cases annually
• Keep health scores green (adoption metrics, NPS, executive engagement)
• Renew 90%+ of your book without escalations or down-sell

Who You're Working With

Primary Contacts:

• Marketing Operations / Demand Gen (day-to-day users running campaigns)
• Sales Operations (managing sales team gifting workflows)
• Customer Success Ops (using Sendoso for customer retention programs)
• HR/People Ops (employee gifting and swag programs)
• Procurement/Finance (renewal negotiations and budget approvals)

What They Care About:

• Ops teams: Is it easy to use? Does it integrate cleanly? Can we get data out for reporting?
• Executives: What's the ROI? How does this compare to other channels? Can we justify the spend?
• End users: Is the gift selection good? Are sends going out on time? Can I track delivery?

Requirements

• 2-4 years in customer success or account management, preferably in B2B SaaS
• Experience managing 40+ accounts with expansion responsibility
• Comfortable with data and ROI discussions - you'll live in dashboards proving value
• Strong troubleshooting skills - you're the first line for complex issues
• Consultative selling skills for expansion motion (this isn't pure support)
• Familiarity with marketing/sales tech stack helpful (Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, etc.)
• Resilience around churn - you'll lose customers despite your best efforts