Customer Success Manager

Overview

You own the post-sale relationship for 30-40 mid-market and enterprise accounts using Hightouch's data activation platform. Your job is making sure customers successfully sync their warehouse data to marketing tools, expanding into new use cases (more destinations, more use cases), and ensuring renewals. You work closely with customers' marketing ops and data engineering teams to troubleshoot issues and drive adoption.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Series C+ (503 employees, well-funded)

Size: 503 employees

Growth: Active hiring across all functions, Forbes #8 Best Startup Employer

Market Position: Category leader in Composable CDP / Reverse ETL with 250+ integrations

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• Expansion revenue comes from customers adding new destinations ("we want to sync to Google Ads now"), new use cases ("can we use Hightouch for our product data too?"), or higher-tier features (AI decisioning, governance)
• Renewals are generally smooth if they're actively using the product, but you're measured on net retention (expansion minus churn)

SDR/AE Structure: You partner with AEs on expansion deals over $50K; smaller add-ons you handle yourself

SE Support: Solutions Engineers available for complex technical questions, but you're expected to handle most troubleshooting yourself

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Census (customers sometimes evaluate switching), build-it-yourself (engineering teams push to bring it in-house at renewal), Segment (trying to win customers back)

How They Differentiate: Breadth of integrations, ease of use for marketing teams, AI features

Common Objections: "It's expensive for what it does", "Our data team wants to own this", "We're not using it enough to justify renewal"

Win Themes: ROI from marketing efficiency, engineering time saved, marketing team autonomy

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Customer Calls/Support (50%) | Expansion Planning (25%) | Internal (25%)

Key Activities

• Onboarding new customers: First 90 days post-sale, you're making sure they successfully set up their first syncs, understand the platform, and hit their initial use case goals. This means frequent check-ins, troubleshooting data model questions, and pushing them to set up monitoring/alerting.
• Quarterly business reviews: You prep decks showing their usage metrics (syncs running, rows synced, destinations connected), ROI stories ("you've saved 40 engineering hours"), and expansion opportunities. About 60% of QBRs lead to expansion conversations.
• Technical troubleshooting: Customers hit issues - syncs failing because of API rate limits, data quality problems in their warehouse, schema changes breaking syncs. You diagnose whether it's a Hightouch issue, their data issue, or the destination tool's issue. You spend more time than you'd like explaining that the problem is in their Snowflake table, not Hightouch.
• Expansion conversations: When you see customers syncing to 3-4 destinations successfully, you suggest adding more ("you're using Facebook Ads and Google Ads - what about TikTok?"). Or you identify new use cases ("you're syncing marketing data - want to do sales data to Salesforce too?"). You scope the expansion, loop in an AE if needed, and close the deal.
• Renewal prep: Starting 90 days before renewal, you audit usage, address any concerns, and build the business case for renewal. Most of your churn risk comes from customers who aren't actively using the product or whose champion left the company.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Technical complexity: You need to understand data warehouses, SQL, APIs, and how different marketing tools work. When a sync breaks, you're digging into error logs, checking data types, and sometimes writing SQL queries to diagnose the issue. If you're not technical, you'll struggle.
• Low engagement accounts: About 30% of your book isn't using Hightouch much. Maybe they only set up one sync and never expanded, or their data team isn't prioritizing it. These accounts are at risk, and re-engaging them is a grind ("just checking in" emails that go unanswered).
• Customer blame game: When something breaks, customers assume it's Hightouch's fault. Often it's their messy data, their warehouse performance issues, or the destination tool's API being flaky. You spend a lot of time diplomatically explaining that they need to fix their data model.
• Expansion quota pressure: You're measured on net retention (renewals + expansions - churn). Even if your renewals are perfect, you need to drive expansion to hit 110%+ net retention targets. That means constantly identifying upsell opportunities and pushing customers to add more use cases.

What Success Looks Like

• 95%+ gross retention (minimal churn)
• 110-120% net retention (expansion covering any churn)
• 80%+ of accounts actively using the product (syncs running regularly)
• Clear expansion pipeline with 3-4 deals per quarter

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Director of Marketing Operations (expansion buyer for new destinations/use cases)
• Head of Data Engineering (technical gatekeeper who can block or champion expansion)
• VP Marketing (economic buyer for larger expansions or renewals)

What They Care About:

• Are we getting ROI? (marketing efficiency gains, engineering time saved)
• Is the platform reliable? (syncs need to run without constant babysitting)
• Can we expand without major implementation lift? (new destinations should be quick to set up)

Requirements

• 3-5 years in technical CSM or solutions consulting role, ideally in martech or data tools
• Strong technical skills - comfortable with SQL, data modeling, APIs, and troubleshooting
• Experience managing 30-40 accounts with mix of high-touch and scaled engagement
• Track record of driving net retention over 110% through expansion
• Ability to have credible technical conversations with data engineers and marketing ops teams