How to Build a High Performing CS Team that does not Burn-Out
As CS leaders, we face a tough balancing act:
✅ Deliver retention and growth targets.
✅ Keep your team engaged, productive, and thriving.
But here’s the problem:
We might prioritize performance over people and leave enablement as an afterthought.
What happens?
- High turnover.
- Morale dips.
- And ironically, performance suffers.
Here’s how to avoid the burnout trap and build a team that performs and stays healthy.
Transcript
Welcome to CS Shift, the podcast that goes beyond retention with strategists for customer success leaders navigating the new era.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Naldido Su, customer success executive with over a decade of experience helping enterprise organizations scale with purpose and passionate advocate for growth that is both measurable and human.
Speaker A:My objective with this podcast is to help customer success leaders like you and me transform their organizations from adoption to growth without burning out their teams in the process.
Speaker A:On this show we cut through the noise and focus on what actually works.
Speaker A:How to lead your customer success team from adoption to expansion, how to drive net revenue retention and how to equip your people and yourself using frameworks, mindset, hard won lessons and technology to thrive through it all.
Speaker A:Because the shift is happening, will you lead it or break it?
Speaker A:Let's dive into today's episode.
Speaker A:Welcome to CS Shift to the podcast that goes beyond retention with strategies for customer success leaders navigating the new era.
Speaker A:Today I would like to discuss about how to build a high impact customer success team that does not burn out.
Speaker A:Because let's be honest, as a CS leader we face a tough balancing act between delivering retention and growth targets and keeping our team engaged, productive and thriving.
Speaker A:And one thing where we can miss it is when we start prioritizing performance over people by setting aggressive KPIs and leaving enablement as an afterthought.
Speaker A:When we do that, what happens?
Speaker A:High turnover, moral dips and ironically performance suffers.
Speaker A:And I do believe that, you know, there are free foundation of a high impact team that performs and stays healthy.
Speaker A:Number one, clear roles and outcomes.
Speaker A:Ambiguity is the enemy of performance.
Speaker A:And I have a story about this.
Speaker A:When I was leading a team in EMEA when I joined the company, one thing I noticed, you know, during my first week is that the team was all over the place because the sales team realized that, you know, to close much more quicker when they were telling their prospect that if they sign by this day they could have a customer success plan in, you know, in two days or the following day.
Speaker A:Well, the prospect was signing contract and then they were telling, you know, the members that hey, there was a customer success plan tomorrow and they were actually scheduling those meetings in their agenda.
Speaker A:So the CSM were not prepared, they were jumping in a customer success plan that they are kind of decided to build, you know, not having all the informations, not having, you know, the handover set up properly.
Speaker A:And the problem is in those meetings we didn't necessarily have the all the right people on the customer side.
Speaker A:So that was creating chaos.
Speaker A:So I worked with my cross functional partner, head of sales to say, well, actually we want our customers to succeed and onboarding and customer success plan is our responsibility.
Speaker A:We own that and we are accountable for that.
Speaker A:So we are going to lead on that.
Speaker A:So when you tell the customer that if they sign, they're going to have a customer success plan, don't give, you know, a date before a minimum of a week, a minimum of seven days.
Speaker A:And another thing I did is that, you know, Andover deciding on who owns Andover from, you know, from, you know, the new newly signed customer to the customer success team.
Speaker A:Is it the CSM team or is it the sales team?
Speaker A:If it's a sales team, well that, that means they're going to schedule the end of a meeting.
Speaker A:And we had also to define, you know, at which level of spend we have to do meetings of endovers with the customer.
Speaker A:And then finally we decided that we were owning that and were accountable for that.
Speaker A:So what I did was that once a new customer was signed, I was sending a welcome email and I told the sales team that, you know, they can just tell the customer, you know, you're going to receive in the next 48 hours an email from the head of customer success.
Speaker A:We're going to explain to you the next steps.
Speaker A:So I was emailing, well, I had a canned email message that was emailing them to tell them that, hey, welcome to the company, thank you for trusting us.
Speaker A:Now we're going to, you know, continue this relationship that you started with the sales and you know, this is the person in my team.
Speaker A:We're going to support you in your journey.
Speaker A:And I was, you know, giving a quick description of that person just to reassure the customer that this person was able, will be able to support them properly.
Speaker A:And then after that email, the CSM now was emailing customer and saying, hey, this is me.
Speaker A:And you know, we're going to have a customer success plan which is about so and so and so.
Speaker A:And here's how the dates I'm proposing to you so that we can have this meeting and these are the people who should attend the meeting in order to make this plan very successful.
Speaker A:So when I talk about clear roles and you know, ownership, this is an example.
Speaker A:It's the same creating clarity by defining success metrics.
Speaker A:Also important because a clear framework reduces stress and drives accountability.
Speaker A:Foundation two is enablement.
Speaker A:We cannot expect a CSM to deliver commercial outcomes if they've never been trained for that.
Speaker A:So I do believe that it's our responsibility to invest in designing a program that gets, first of all, new hires productive in six to eight weeks.
Speaker A:Invest in skill development, from executive conversations to managing expansion pipelines and also building playbooks that provide tools and tips and tricks for repeatable success.
Speaker A:In a team, I had to help in shifting from adoption to expansion.
Speaker A:I work with them in building that sales playbook, you know, discussing everything around mindset, how to have sales conversations, how to handle objections, you know, all these things that are so important where they needed, you know, a place as well to practice as a team.
Speaker A:And number three is psychological safety.
Speaker A:Honestly, as a leader, sometimes we don't have all the resources we want to have.
Speaker A:So it's important to create that savvy so that our team feels confident to flag risk early, share ideas and ask for support when they need it.
Speaker A:I do believe that as a leader it's important to model healthy boundaries and celebrate progress and not just outcomes.
Speaker A:So honestly, I went through, you know, in different companies I went through the same thing of, you know, building the team, scaling the team.
Speaker A:And one thing I focused on was really making sure that we had a structured onboarding.
Speaker A:We had a weekly coaching, focusing on real customer scenarios and working all together.
Speaker A:I loved in the weekly team meetings having sometimes set aside for CSM to ask questions and so that, you know, over CSM can also provide, you know, some answers, some responses and then where I can also add value when needed.
Speaker A:And you know, number three, protecting the focus, being able to say no to unnecessary meetings and tasks so that the team can feel that, you know, they can focus on their job.
Speaker A:The results consistently.
Speaker A:I was able with the team to deliver on the growth, retention return on more than 90% and for net retention return more than 120%.
Speaker A:Doing that with a team that was not just surviving but thriving.
Speaker A:So this week you can try to review onboarding to make sure that your CSM are up for success and not up for stress.
Speaker A:And why not also schedule skip level 101s if you have managers you know, between you and the CSMs so that you can listen for early signs of burnout.
Speaker A:Well, your team is your greatest growth asset.
Speaker A:So if you build them intentionally, they will deliver beyond your expectations.
Speaker A:In our next episode, we're gonna tackle breaking the silos because growth starts with cross functional alignment.
Speaker A:If you find this episode valuable, subscribe, leave a rating and share it with another CS leader.
Speaker A:I'm Nandi Dossue and this is CS Shift.
Speaker A:Thank you for listening to this show.
Speaker A:Remember, the new mandate for customer success is driving growth and growth does not happen in isolation.
Speaker A:It's driven by strategic and operational leadership.
Speaker A:Subscribe and share this episode with an overseas leader ready to shift their strategy.
Speaker A:I'm Nandi Dosu and this is CS Shift.
