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CS Ops Central

Accelerate Retention and Growth with Customer Success Operations

A group from the CS Ops Team gathers around a table with charts and papers, stacking their hands in unity. On the table are graphs, notebooks, a coffee cup, and sticky notes. A small plant sits in the corner, symbolizing the collaborative spirit of operations teamwork.

CS Ops Overview

What is Customer Success Operations?

CS Ops has a clear mission: Help the CS team operate efficiently and with excellence, so that CSMs help customers to achieve their goals.

Companies invest in CS Ops as a strategy to drive retention, expansion, advocacy, and efficiency.

Top responsibilities include systems & tools to support the customer experience, data and analytics to measure success and make decisions, and program management and process development to improve how the business operates.

Best-in-class CS Ops teams are thought partners to design strategic initiatives, and then they execute to make a vision into reality.

Is CS Ops taking your business to the next level?
89%

Average Gross Retention

111%

Average Net Retention

Are you budgeting the right level for CS Ops?
12:1

Average CSM: CS Ops Ratio

7%

Average CS Spend (Ops + CS Org)

Source: Gainsight CS Ops Benchmarking Survey, 60+ private and public software companies with at least one CS Ops role

Value of a CS Ops Team

Organizations create Customer Success teams to increase NRR, and we’ve recently published research showing that NRR drives valuation.

Over time, organizations find that the baseline impact of simply having a CS team will plateau — your NRR stagnates. So, to improve NRR or to reduce costs by scaling up your customer base with the same CS headcount, organizations recruit people who make it their career to continuously improve CS functions.

The value and impact of CS Ops often matures on a common pathway for companies leading to improvements in Efficiency, Retention and Growth. The next section breaks down these three levels of value creation by CS Ops teams.

Learn more about the typical responsibilities of CS Ops. Hear leaders speak about the positive impact of CS Ops at ServiceTitan and PTC.

CS Ops Value Creation Levels

Where do CS Ops teams typically drive the most value?

Level 1
Efficiency

CS Ops Enables Higher Ratios

CS Ops has the most immediate impact on efficiency improvements like increasing account ratios by providing structured processes and resources for CSMs to use with customers.

Critically, this is a scaling investment that leads to a permanent efficiency increase in ratios across the team.

Level 2
Retention

CS Ops Scales Risk Identification + Management

Faster risk identification and resolution reduces dollars lost to churn. Every day CSMs are individually identifying and addressing risks.

CS Ops creates standardized ways of identifying risk and provides best practice playbooks based on what works from individual CSMs.

Level 3
Growth

CS Ops Drives Advocacy + Expansion

CS Ops typically runs the survey programs that identify potential promoters or leverages the data to systematically guide promoters to advocacy. CS Ops also maintains the processes, tools and data to track and communicate Value Realization (aka ROI) back to customers. Each success creates an opportunity to expand.

Taken together, your CS ops team can quantify the increased advocacy and expansion from CS Ops programs.

Learn

Where do CS Ops teams typically drive the most value?

Check out this variety of short blogs to get started:

Illustration of several hands of varying heights reaching upward against a red grid background. A white line graph with dots shows an upward trend, symbolizing the strength when you join our CS Ops team.
Issue #54: 10+ CS Ops Questions Answered

CS ops experts share answers to common questions about the role, function, and more.

Read More
A logo featuring the words
Why it’s Time to Build a CS Ops role

Much like the evolution within the Sales team and the creation of “Sales Ops”, Customer Success is on a similar trajectory.

Read More
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How to Build an Effective CS Ops Team

11 questions you should ask yourself before embarking on a CS Ops career.

Read More

How do you climb a mountain? One step at a time!

See where a CS Ops team will start, and where it will go.

See the Journey
Illustrated promotional materials titled "CS Ops Journey" by Pulse feature a dynamic CS Ops Team engaging in discussions and using technology. The graphics emphasize a team-driven, programmatic approach, customer focus, and organizational strategies.

Act

When and How do I Hire?

Start with a High Level Budget / Business Case

Whether it’s your first hire in CS Ops or you’re looking for a specialized resource to join an existing team, it’s critical to start with the result – what impact does this person need to have to justify the investment?

Estimate the value from one or more of these key assumptions:

Increase in Ratios

By automating CSM tasks and standardizing resources, how much money can you save with higher CS ratios?

Increase in Retention

With better data and processes, how many at risk accounts do you need to save to justify hiring a CS ops person?

Increase in Growth

How much additional revenue can the CS org source by understanding customer needs? (Hint: Customer Success Qualified Leads)

With a few basic assumptions, you can figure out what level of Ratio, Retention and/or Growth is needed to pay for a CS Ops investment.

Act

Create a Job Description

CS Ops often starts as a single process-minded generalist. As you mature, your CS Ops team will become a team of specialists with deep skills and experience in a few aspects of ops.

  • Gainsight Administrator
    The cornerstone of any CS ops team is your Gainsight Administrator. We’ve created a job description based on 10+ years working with our customers and managing Gainsight internally. Critically, you don’t need past Gainsight Administration experience. There are often other experiences or job responsibilities that are effective signals for a high potential admin. Download a sample job description here.

  • CS Ops Manager
    A generalist and leader across process, analysis, and resource creation.

  • CS Ops Specialist
    Early career ops generalist to add leverage to your Ops team.

Get Guidance

Connect with your community

CS Ops Leadership Slack

CS Ops leaders created this channel to connect about strategic priorities, specific tactics, and everything in between.

Join the Channel
Global Gainsight Admin Slack

If your role in CS Ops includes administration of Gainsight, you want to be part of this community-driven channel to hear about specific product solutions and share best practices with other Admins.

Join the Channel
Mentorship

The CS Ops Mentor Program has hundreds of participants who have raised their hands to connect. Find someone to talk with about CS Ops, at any level of experience or seniority.

Find a CS Ops Mentor

Start a New Career in Customer Success.

Check out these opportunities with SV Academy.

Gainsight has partnered with EdTech master, SV Academy, on our mission to level the playing field for underrepresented communities in Customer Success and to support our Veterans returning to civilian life.

Click here to learn more about the program which trains underrepresented individuals and Veterans and then places them in entry-level CS Associate and CS Ops Associate apprenticeship roles at companies.

Learn More
CS You
in partnership with
SV Academy