Customer Success Manager

Key Responsibilities:

Team Leadership and People Management

·     Directly manage six Customer Success Executives, including two Senior CSEs who hold additional responsibility for covering the manager, onboarding new starters, and mentoring junior team members.

·     Hold line management responsibility for the Adoption & Enablement POD (POD Lead and two Trainers), deploying their services on behalf of customers and directing their work in line with CS priorities.

·     Lead,coach, and develop the team to deliver consistent, proactive customer successacross their portfolios, holding them to the same performance standards youhold yourself to.

·     Recruit,onboard, and where necessary performance manage and exit team members, workingwith HR and leadership support throughout.

·     Conductregular one-to-ones, team meetings, and formal performance reviews to ensureevery CSE is developing, accountable, and set up to succeed.

·     Fostera team culture that reflects iplicit’s values: proactive, commercially minded,customer-obsessed, and focused on creating Raving Fans rather than managingrelationships.

Lead the Adoption & Enablement POD

The Adoption & Enablement POD is a free-of-charge service deployedto ensure customers are not left unsupported through critical early-lifeevents. It is not a replacement for Professional Services where a customerrequires paid delivery work. The CSM directs the POD’s deployment in line withcustomer need and CS priorities.

·     Deploy the POD to support customers through high-risk early-life events: e.g. first month-end, year-end, first VAT return, first HESA return, and first budget cycle - the moments where customers are most likely to struggle and most likely to lose confidence in iplicit.

·     Use the POD for Executive Onboarding when a new CFO or Finance Director joins a customer organisation - ensuring leadership transitions do not become churn risks by getting new finance leaders up to speed on iplicit quickly and effectively.

·     Make active, prioritised decisions about where POD resource is deployed - not every customer needs the POD at the same time, and not all requests are equal. The CSM is accountable for those deployment decisions.

·     Line manage the POD Lead, set clear expectations for the team’s performance, and ensure the POD operates to the same standards of quality and customer experience as the broader CS function.

·     Maintaina clear boundary: the Adoption & Enablement POD supports customers in usingwhat they have already implemented. Where a customer needs configurationchanges, additional modules, or paid delivery work, that conversation routes toProfessional Services - not the POD.

Own Your Portfolio

·     Managea personal portfolio of 20–30 customers to the same standard expected of yourCSEs: structured outreach cadence, proactive adoption monitoring, advocacydevelopment, and commercial awareness.

·     Demonstratethe behaviours and outcomes you are asking of the team - your portfolio is yourproof of concept.

·     Buildrelationships that generate referrals, advocacy, testimonials, andreferenceable customers from within your own accounts.

·     Identifyand manage at-risk accounts within your portfolio, developing and executingrecovery plans, escalating to the Customer Success Director where authority orresource beyond your remit is required.

Performance Management and Reporting

·     Holdeach CSE accountable to their individual portfolio targets across churn, NRRcontribution, NPS, adoption, referrals, and proactive coverage - the samemetrics you are accountable to on your own portfolio.

·     Reportregularly to the Customer Success Director on team-wide performance across thefull customer base: aggregate health, churn risk, NRR trajectory, NPS, advocacypipeline, and at-risk accounts.

·     Analysedata to identify patterns across the customer base - common churn signals,adoption barriers, friction points - and translate insight into action for theteam and for leadership.

·     Ownthe at-risk escalation process for the team: when a CSE identifies a customerat risk, the recovery plan sits with the CSM. You diagnose, decide, and execute- escalating to the CS Director only when resolution requires authority orresource beyond your remit.

·     Maintainfull visibility of commercial data across the team’s portfolio - renewalpipeline, ARR by account, expansion signals - and use it to inform both teamdirection and leadership reporting.

Customer Advocacy and Raving Fans  

·     Drive the Raving Fans agenda across the team: ensure every CSE has an active advocacy pipeline within their portfolio and is converting satisfied customers into active promoters.

·     Oversee the team’s delivery of testimonials, case studies, referrals, and reference able accounts for Sales and Marketing, tracking output and holding the team to defined targets.

·     Contribute your own advocacy pipeline from your personal portfolio - the same referral and NPS targets apply to your accounts.

·     Collaboratewith Marketing on community initiatives, customer events, webinars, and panels-ensuring the team actively nominates and supports customer participation.

Revenue Protection and Growth  

·     WhileNRR is owned at director level, you are responsible for creating the conditionsthat make NRR growth achievable: adoption, retention, satisfaction, andexpansion signal identification across the full customer base.

·     EnsureCSEs are identifying and qualifying expansion opportunities, handing them to PMOwith appropriate context on customer goals and commercial readiness ready forthem to process.

·     Supportthe team in conducting licence true-up conversations commercially andappropriately and assist with renewals where executive presence adds value.

·     Keepthe CS Director informed of commercial trends, renewal risks, and expansionopportunities across the customer base, providing commercial data to supportdecision-making at leadership level.

Cross-Functional Collaboration  

·     Workclosely with Professional Services and Partners to ensure structured,context-rich handovers at go-live - the quality of the Implementation-to-CStransition directly affects your team’s starting position with every newcustomer.

·     Collaboratewith Support to maintain awareness of trends, ticket patterns, and systemicissues affecting your customer base - without owning ticket resolution.

·     Partnerwith Sales on expansion opportunities, providing the customer context thatmakes commercial conversations more likely to succeed.

·     Consolidateand channel customer feedback to Product, Support, and leadership -synthesising what the team hears across accounts into structured, actionableinsight rather than anecdote.

Success Metrics

You are measured at two levels: your own portfolio and the team’saggregate performance across the full customer base.

Individual Portfolio (same targets as CSEs)

·     Avoidablechurn: <2% of your portfolio

·     NetRevenue Retention: ≥105% across your accounts

·     Referralsgenerated: ≥10% of your active portfolio provides at least one qualifiedreferral annually

·     NPS:Portfolio NPS ≥60

·     Proactivecoverage: 100% of your portfolio engaged per defined cadence

·     Adoption:Measurable improvement in usage metrics across your accounts

Team-Wide Performance

·     Aggregatechurn, NRR, NPS, referral, and coverage metrics across all CSE portfoliosreported to the CS Director

·     CSEperformance: all team members actively managed to individual targets; no CSEconsistently below threshold without a documented improvement plan in place

·     At-riskrecovery: documented recovery plan in place for every at-risk account within 5business days of identification

·     Advocacypipeline: team collectively maintaining a pipeline of referenceable customers,testimonials, and case studies aligned to Sales and Marketing needs

·     Reportingquality: regular, data-driven performance updates delivered to the CS Directoron time and with sufficient depth to inform strategic decisions

Core Competencies:

Essential  

·     Proven experience in a customer success, account management, or customer-facing role within a SaaS or software business.

·     Previous line management or team leadership experience - you have managed people, not just influenced them.

·     Confidence holding commercial conversations with finance professionals - CFOs, Financial Controllers, Finance Managers - without being salesy.

·     Data-literate: comfortable using commercial and usage data to make decisions, manage performance, and inform leadership.

·     Genuinebelief that customer experience is a commercial lever, not a support function.

·     Proactiveand structured: able to manage your own accounts, lead a team, and reportupwards simultaneously without any of the three suffering.

·     Strongwritten, verbal, and presentation skills: you communicate clearly withcustomers, your team, and exec leadership.

·     Resilientand calm under pressure: at-risk accounts and underperforming team membersrequire clear thinking, not reactive management.

Desirable  

·     Experiencewith accounting, ERP, or finance software.

·     Trackrecord of generating customer advocacy, referrals, or references at scale.

·     Familiaritywith CRM and customer success tooling (HubSpot, Freshdesk, or similar).

·     Backgroundin professional services, implementation, or customer onboarding.

What We Provide

Two-way accountability matters to us. Here is what iplicit commits toproviding to make this role achievable: 

·     Full visibility of commercial data across the team’s portfolio: renewal pipeline, ARR by account, expansion signals, and usage analytics.

·     Access to exec sponsorship for at-risk accounts where the situation requires authority, resource, or intervention beyond the CSM remit.

·     Structured handover from Professional Services at go-live, with full implementation context for every new account.

·     Clearescalation paths and leadership support for complex people management andcommercial decisions.

·     Cross-functionalcollaboration with Support, Sales, Product, and Marketing teams.

·     Regular enablement on product updates, new features, and best practices to keep you and the team informed and effective.

·     Marketing support for customer advocacy, events, community initiatives, and reference able customer development.

What This Role Is Not

·     Not an administrator. Your value is in relationships, performance, and commercial outcomes - not process management for its own sake.

·     Not a reactive escalation handler. You build the team’s capability to handle their own accounts well; escalations to you should be genuine exceptions.

·     Nota revenue target holder. You have commercial conversations and managecommercial signals, but you do not carry a sales quota.

·     Not a support manager. You collaborate with Support but you do not own tickets, SLAs, or first-line resolution.

·     Not satisfied with satisfied. Your team’s job is Raving Fans - customers who refer, advocate, and promote iplicit without being asked. Satisfaction is the floor, not the ceiling.

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Career Progression

This role sits within a growing Customer Success function at a point ofsignificant investment and ambition. As iplicit scales, the scope of thisposition will grow with it. Future opportunities may include progression toCustomer Success Director, strategic account leadership, or broader customerexperience leadership as the function expands.

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