As your business scales, Customer Success must evolve from being a founder-led effort into a dedicated function.
This article focuses on helping founders determine when to make their first Customer Success hire, what roles to prioritise, and how to structure an early CS team that can scale alongside the business.
We’ll explore the skills and qualities to look for in early CS hires, strategies for onboarding and training new team members, and how to align Customer Success with other teams like Sales, Product, and Support to create a seamless customer experience.
1. When to Make Your First CS Hire:
In the early days, founders are often the default Customer Success Managers (CSMs). This hands-on approach works initially but becomes unsustainable as your customer base grows. Here are key signals that it’s time to hire your first CS professional:
Churn is rising: You’re losing customers due to a lack of proactive engagement.
Customer needs are being missed: You’re struggling to keep up with onboarding, support, and success check-ins.
Revenue opportunities are left untapped: There’s no dedicated resource to identify upsell, cross-sell, or expansion opportunities.
"You may find that you as a founder are spending a disproportionate amount of time in the details of customer engagements, or engaging with ICs on the team, rather than focusing on higher-leverage tasks.
Find someone who you think can grow to lead the team, at least through your initial phases of growth. Find someone who is as passionate about building out playbooks, tools and processes as they are about rolling up their sleeves and working with customers!
I would argue that a lot of companies wait too long to hire someone senior and founders wind up sinking too much of their time into an ineffective manager. Most companies can and probably should hire a skilled leader earlier than they do.”
Andrea Spillman-Gajek- Founder at
Customer Success Accelerators and Brighteye Mentor
Top Tip: Start by hiring a Customer Success Manager (CSM) who can own onboarding, customer health, and relationship management.
2. Key Roles and Team Structure:
Building a Customer Success team starts with defining clear roles and responsibilities. At this stage, you don’t need a full-blown department—focus on hiring for impact. Here are the key roles to consider:
Customer Success Manager (CSM): Owns customer relationships, ensures successful onboarding, and proactively drives adoption and engagement.
Onboarding Specialist: Focuses on helping customers achieve their first success milestone quickly.
CS Lead or Head of CS: A more strategic hire to align the CS function with company goals and revenue targets.
Top Tip: If you can’t hire multiple people, start with a generalist CSM and expand roles as the team grows.
“Note that whether you split these out or have one unified team depends on -
The complexity of the onboarding and implementation (more complex might need a separate team)
Skillsets needed to drive onboarding (is it a specialised skillset?)
Expected pace of growth - if rapid, a separate onboarding hire makes sense.
Team size - when smaller, having everyone wear all the hats creates more elasticity and buffer. The risk of losing the one person who knows how to onboard is huge.”
Andrea Spillman-Gajek - Founder at
Customer Success Accelerators and Brighteye Mentor
3. Aligning CS with Other Teams:
Customer Success doesn’t operate in a vacuum—it’s a cross-functional role that relies on alignment with Sales, Product, and Support teams. Here’s how to ensure CS integration:
With Sales: Align on handoff processes to ensure customers transition smoothly post-sale
With Product: Share customer feedback to inform product development and feature prioritisation. Engage product to build customer trust and excitement for product roadmap.
With Support: Collaborate to ensure a seamless experience between reactive support and proactive CS initiatives.
With Marketing: Collaborate to create case studies, testimonials and white papers, as well as to generate customer-facing email cadences and upsell marketing.
Top Tip: Set up regular cross-functional syncs to ensure all teams are aligned on customer goals, feedback, and challenges.
“You should also be mindful to ensure incentive structures, goals and compensation plans are aligned and motivating collaboration in the right ways.”
Andrea Spillman-Gajek - Founder at
Customer Success Accelerators and Brighteye Mentor
Key takeaways for Founders:
Know when it’s time to hire your first CS professional.
Prioritise roles like CSMs and Onboarding Specialists to drive impact quickly.
Align Customer Success with Sales, Product, and Support for a seamless customer experience.
Build a team that can scale with your company’s growth.
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