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Offices & Reach
Australia & APAC Region
Customer Success & Customer Experience Recruitment
Customer Success Recruitment
Customer Success Managers, Heads of Customer Success, Renewals and Onboarding leads and Customer Experience managers. We recruit for retention and expansion, not for support, and we back the hire with a written replacement assurance.
Customer success talent, explained
Customer Success and Customer Experience
Customer success recruitment for the people who keep the revenue
Customer Success Managers, Renewals and Onboarding leads, Heads of Customer Success and Customer Experience managers, hired against net revenue retention rather than ticket volume.
Winning the customer is the expensive part. Keeping and growing them is where the margin actually sits, and it is a commercial job, not a support one.
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Commercial, not reactiveThe best customer success people run a number. We screen for renewal rates held, expansion sold and churn prevented, not for how responsive somebody is to a support queue.
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Evidence, not narrativeNet revenue retention and gross retention actually held, book size, segment, and whether the numbers were built or inherited with a healthy base. Referenced with customers where that is appropriate.
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We recruit the whole revenue teamOver 9,000 placements since 2004 across new business, account management, customer success and revenue operations, so we can tell you where a candidate really belongs.
Roles We Recruit
Customer success and customer experience roles we recruit every week
From the first onboarding call through to renewal and expansion. If the role is measured on retention, adoption or account growth rather than on tickets closed, it sits on our desk.
Customer Success Manager
Owns a book of accounts and the revenue that renews from it. Adoption, health, risk and the expansion conversation.
Enterprise Customer Success Manager
Fewer accounts, more stakeholders, longer cycles. Runs executive business reviews and manages change inside the customer.
Head of Customer Success
Owns net revenue retention and the team that delivers it. Increasingly reports to the CRO and carries a number of their own.
Customer Success Operations and RevOps
Health scoring, forecasting renewals, tooling and the data that tells you which accounts are actually at risk.
Renewals Manager
Owns the contract event itself. Commercial negotiation, multi year structuring and protecting price under pressure.
Onboarding and Implementation Manager
The first ninety days, where most churn is actually decided. Time to value, not just go live.
Customer Experience Manager
Journey design, voice of customer and the fixes that raise NPS. Works across service, product and marketing rather than owning a book.
Account Manager, Retention and Growth
Where account management and customer success meet. Protects the base and sells more into it.
Customer success recruitment by sector
What good looks like changes with the contract. A SaaS customer success manager holding net revenue retention above 110 per cent is solving a different problem from someone protecting a multi year managed services agreement. Our consultants work the sectors below.
The Search
How we run a customer success search
Six stages, built around the retention number rather than a job description, with market coverage visible to you at every one of them.
- 01
Define the number
Book size, segment, contract value, current retention and what this person is actually accountable for. Renewal owner, expansion seller or adoption lead are three different hires and the title rarely tells you which.
- 02
Map the market
A named target list from businesses with a comparable contract, motion and customer profile. You see the list, so you can see who is in scope and who has been ruled out.
- 03
Approach directly
Every name on the list is contacted personally rather than advertised to. Confidential where an incumbent is still in the seat or the change is commercially sensitive.
- 04
Test the retention evidence
Gross and net revenue retention held, churn saved, expansion sold, escalations recovered, and whether the result came from the person or from a product customers could not leave.
- 05
Shortlist with proof
Three to five people, each with a written case covering evidence, motivation, risk and pay expectation. Referenced upward and downward before you meet them.
- 06
Land and hold the hire
Offer strategy, counter offer management and structured check ins through the first ninety days. Backed by a written replacement assurance of up to twelve months rather than an opinion.
9,000+
Sales and revenue placements
Specialist B2B commercial hires delivered since 2004.
71%
Repeat engagement
Employers who brief us again for their next revenue assignment.
89%
Still in seat at two years
Hires still employed and performing 24 months after placement.
27 days
Average time to fill
From client briefing to a signed offer accepted.
Commercial Clarity
Know the commitment before you brief the market
Standard Search
- Shortlist in 10 business days
- Inside a 30 day committed campaign
- 3 month replacement assurance
Most customer success roles
Priority Search
- Shortlist in 15 business days
- Inside a 45 day committed campaign
- 6 month replacement assurance
Executive Search
- Milestones agreed at calibration
- Scoped to appointment complexity
- 12 month replacement assurance
A fixed professional fee is agreed before work begins, not a percentage of salary. Fees are invoiced on the appointee's written acceptance of the offer, on 14 day terms. Replacement assurance is available where the fee was paid within terms.
Questions hiring managers ask
What is the difference between a customer success manager and an account manager
Accountability, mostly. An account manager is usually measured on revenue growth in a portfolio and often carries a quota. A customer success manager is measured on whether customers achieve the outcome they bought, which shows up as retention first and expansion second. In practice the two are converging, and plenty of businesses use one title for the other job. We start by agreeing which number this person owns rather than which title you use, because that is what decides who to approach.
How do you tell a genuinely strong customer success hire from a well presented one
By separating the person from the product. Somebody can post excellent retention numbers at a business with high switching costs and a captive base. We test what they personally changed: accounts saved that were forecast to churn, expansion they created rather than received, how they handled an escalation that went wrong, and what their retention looked like relative to the company average. The last one is the question most candidates have never been asked.
Do you recruit customer experience and CX roles as well
Yes. Customer experience roles sit alongside customer success but do a different job. A CX manager works on journey design, voice of customer and the friction that drives churn across the whole base, usually without owning accounts. Customer success owns named customers and the revenue attached to them. We recruit both, and we will tell you plainly if the brief you have written is actually for the other one.
Can you help with revenue operations and customer success operations hires
Yes. Health scoring, renewal forecasting, tooling and the reporting that tells you which accounts are genuinely at risk are increasingly a specialist role rather than something the customer success manager does after hours. We recruit those through our sales and revenue operations desk, and they are frequently briefed together with a customer success hire.
We are hiring our first customer success manager, what should we expect
A different profile from your fifth. The first hire has to build the playbook, the health scoring and the renewal process while also carrying accounts, which is closer to a founding commercial hire than a customer success job. People who have only operated inside a mature function often struggle with the ambiguity. We screen for people who have stood something up rather than run something that already existed.
Which sectors do you recruit customer success people for
Technology and SaaS, financial services, medical and pharmaceutical, FMCG and consumer goods, professional services, manufacturing and industrial, construction and building products, and transport and logistics. Each sector is worked by consultants who recruit in it continuously rather than occasionally.
Book a hiring consultation
Your next customer success hire starts here
Thirty minutes with a senior partner. Pick a time that suits you, no form to fill in first.
- What the role really needs, and what the market will actually pay for it
- Who is available now, named, before you commit to anything
- Which search model fits the risk, and what it costs
Prefer to talk now? Call 1300 774 900 or email enquiry@salesrecruit.com.au
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