The Essential Guide to

Customer Success for Chief Revenue Officers (CROs)

Chief Revenue Officers (CROs) occupy a unique position within the c-suite. With responsibility for overseeing every revenue-generating process, being a CRO is a high-profile, strategic role that stretches leaders in many different directions. CROs must be visionary but practical, consistent but nimble, and data-driven but people-savvy. 

And in the past few years, their job has become even harder. 

For one thing, the cost of acquiring new customers has increased. For CROs, that means gone are the days when they could rely on new logos to hit their goals. At the same time, investors are moving away from the ”growth-at-all-costs” mindset that took hold during the pandemic. Instead, they are prioritizing net revenue retention (NRR) over new logo growth. This shift in investor sentiment is bearing out in the numbers, as companies with strong NRR trade at a significant premium to those without it. 

That’s why forward-thinking CROs are realizing that Customer Success (CS) is their secret weapon. As the owners of the post-sales customer experience, CS lives and breathes the practices that drive retention, expansion, and ultimately, revenue growth. So when CS is integrated across business operations, it has a significant impact on the bottom line.

In most companies, Customer Success owns the post-sales relationship, helping customers achieve value, troubleshooting issues, and nurturing long-term relationships. But to transform CS into a true revenue engine, its principles must be operationalized in more strategic, growth-oriented ways.

First, the mission of CS needs to expand beyond traditional support and relationship management to align more closely with revenue. That doesn’t mean changing the core competencies of CS; it means taking what they’re already good at and directing it toward the bottom line. 

Beyond onboarding and adoption, Customer Success should be doing more than just check-ins and support. They should work closely with Sales and Account teams to identify expansion motions with a clear eye toward revenue targets. Renewals and upsells should be built into customer touchpoints. CS isn’t just about issue resolution—it’s about helping customers achieve measurable outcomes in the product and identifying opportunities for deeper engagement.

That said, while the business case for CS’s role in revenue is clear, the transition isn’t always easy. Many CS professionals have built their careers on relationship management, not revenue targets. Now, they are being asked to develop real commercial acumen. That means understanding deal dynamics, identifying expansion triggers, and knowing how to have strategic, commercial conversations.

A more direct way to align CS toward revenue is to literally monetize customer success activities. Instead of offering CS support as a free add-on, innovative CROs are creating premium success tiers for specific services. 

This shift requires strategic execution:

1. Be smart about customer segmentation to determine which accounts benefit most from paid CS services
2. Equip Sales with the right positioning so they can introduce CS tiers naturally during the buying process
3. Recognize that this process will take time and require some trial and error 

But the reward is undeniable. In addition to making CS a revenue generator, monetizing CS signals to both external and internal stakeholders that CS delivers real value.

Another high-impact play is integrating CS data into the revenue strategy. Existing customers generate mountains of usage data, which CS teams are already using to track adoption, assess customer health, and predict churn. The next step is to turn that data into a revenue advantage by identifying expansion-ready customers through sentiment signals. But CS teams should understand the customer journey well enough to be able to predict when a customer actually needs an expansion to obtain more value from the product.

But execution depends on clear ownership. When CS, Sales, and other functions don’t have well-defined roles in expansion, everyone assumes someone else is responsible, and opportunities fall through the cracks. The best companies bring CS under the CRO to ensure that expansion isn’t an afterthought—it’s at the core of the go-to-market strategy.

Regardless of which operationalization strategies are used, the key is to make sure the engagement model is scalable. In a new, revenue-focused model, CS teams will have more on their plates, so scalability is a must. Carefully considered automation will enhance the ability of the CS team to reach more customers effectively.

Every CRO has a revenue playbook that aligns with their company’s go-to-market strategy—from product to pricing and the sales funnel. To make recurring revenue a central objective, Customer Success (CS) must be explicitly embedded into that playbook. 

When CS is truly woven into the fabric of the playbook, CROs accomplish two things: 

1. They position CS as a core revenue driver, not just a post-sales function
2. They signal to other teams that CS is a true partner, equally invested in revenue growth

Here’s a straightforward four-step plan for revising the revenue playbook to include CS:

1. Incentivize cross-functional alignment

Compensation structures should reward retention and expansion across CS, Sales, and Account Management teams. Creating a revenue goal that all teams are working against will make recurring revenue generation more actionable while also creating transparency and better collaboration across teams. 

For example, managing churn risk has traditionally been CS’s responsibility. But when you make it a shared metric across teams, it changes the dynamic. If Sales knows they’re partially accountable for churn, they’ll be more selective in closing customers who are a strong fit for long-term success. Similarly, when Sales prioritizes expansion potential, they can plant the seed for future growth during the sales process, making renewals and upsells a natural progression rather than a forced conversation later.

While insightful CROs recognize the revenue-producing power of CS, many other stakeholders are still stuck in the mindset that it’s primarily a cost center. To maintain momentum in the drive to integrate CS across the revenue organization, CROs need to demonstrate the quantitative impact of CS as much as possible. 

It’s important to remember that while the impact of CS is not always obvious, it is absolutely real. Even small improvements in retention can drive massive financial upside, and any increase in customer retention metrics can significantly boost growth and profitability.

Let’s break down the essential CS metrics every CRO should track, and how they translate to bottom-line impact. 

Gross revenue retention (GRR) is an indicator of revenue stability and the fundamental health of a SaaS business. It measures how much revenue is retained during a specific period, factoring in churn, downgrades, and cancellations, but excluding upsells and expansions. 

The closer GRR is to 100%, the better a company is at retaining customers and ensuring they continue to find value in the product. A low GRR, on the other hand, means there are underlying problems with the business; perhaps the product has fallen behind the market, or the customer base has moved on, or something about the delivery or the customer service is failing. 

You can look at GRR as a baseline “gut check” for the business, providing a snapshot of the foundation of the business.

Credit: Benchmarkit B2B SaaS Performance Metrics Benchmark Report

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) measures retention, but also factors in upsells and cross-sells. It’s calculated by subtracting revenue lost from churn from the total revenue generated from customers, including expansions. 

NRR can exceed 100% if the company retains its customers and expands their revenue from expansions or upsells. For CROs, NRR is the true North Star for revenue generation. An NRR over 100% demonstrates that the business has achieved momentum in terms of growth, scalability, and valuation. That said, exceptional NRR levels don’t happen by accident; they require a well-orchestrated strategy across CS, Sales, Product, and Marketing.

Logo Retention Rate indicates the percentage of customers a business retains over a period of time. In SaaS, it specifically reflects how many customers renew their accounts out of those up for renewal within a set timeframe.

While this metric provides a high-level view of customer satisfaction and product value, its real power lies in the insights behind the number. Logo retention is a measure of breadth, showing how well a company retains customers across its base. However, CROs shouldn’t just focus on hitting a benchmark; they need to dive into the “why.” 

• Is a particular segment churning more than others?
• Are certain product lines driving higher retention?
• Is external market pressure influencing renewal rates?

Think of Logo Retention as another piece of the puzzle that helps to build a 360° vision of the health of the business. Logos can be affected by factors outside the control of the CRO, such as the business cycle, but it can also be a red flag that a particular segment or product is succeeding or failing. 

Expansion ARR to Growth ARR measures the percentage of total revenue growth that comes from expansions rather than new customer acquisition. Typically, this metric will increase as companies grow and become more mature, i.e., in the early days most growth will come from new customers, while larger more established companies rely more on revenue growth from existing customers. But while that serves as a general rule, it is never too early to start mining existing customers for expansion revenue. 

Credit: Benchmarkit B2B SaaS Performance Metrics Benchmark Report

Aligning Sales and CS under the leadership of the CRO is a natural move for companies shifting toward a unified strategy focused on retention, expansion, and long-term customer value. But there are other functions that have an important role to play in this effort, specifically, Product and Marketing. 

Below are key revenue plays that drive stronger collaboration and immediate impact:

Sales and CS: Implementing structured handoffs. The transition from Sales to Customer Success is hugely important for achieving rapid time-to-value and an excellent customer experience. A well-structured handoff process sets the tone for your future customer relationship. After a lengthy sales process, customers expect CS professionals to know their needs and preferences. 

It guarantees your customers can see value continuously from their investment, reducing the possibility of churn and improving the chance of retention and expansion. Establishing dedicated one-to-one partnerships between CS and Sales pros will foster collaboration, allowing them to develop a strong working relationship for the benefit of customers. 

While strategic and tactical plays are essential for embedding CS into the revenue organization, there is a technology component as well. AI is increasingly becoming table stakes for CS teams that need to produce revenue at scale. Equipping CS with AI tools will make a successful transition to revenue generation much faster, with less friction. 

Here’s how AI can help:

Identify churn risks and expansion opportunities earlier. AI-driven health scores analyze usage patterns, sentiment shifts, and executive engagement trends to help CS teams proactively prioritize high-impact accounts. AI excels at spotting hidden signals in customer behavior that humans might miss. 

For churn prevention, it detects subtle combinations of declining usage, delayed responses, and reduced feature adoption—often months before visible red flags appear. With retention, AI identifies successful customer patterns during onboarding, adoption, and general usage. For expansion, it recognizes behaviors that indicate a customer is open to upgrading. 

Forecasting revenue is an essential skill for CROs. Traditionally, that meant predicting sales based on market size and other factors, but in a recurring revenue model that also includes predicting renewals and expansions. Accurate forecasting helps the revenue organization on a number of fronts, including, strategic planning, resource allocation, and risk management. But the impact goes way beyond the CRO’s direct purview; the entire company is looking to the CRO to deliver an accurate picture of where the business will be in the next quarter and even the next year. 

Customer Success can be another tool in the CRO’s kit when it comes to forecasting. Here are some best practices for integrating CS into the forecasting process:

Integrate CS data: As discussed in Chapter 4, CS metrics are reliable indicators of future revenue. NRR, churn rates, and expansion indicators, when considered in the context of the larger business, will help CROs refine their forecasts. At the account level, health scores, product usage, and customer sentiment data all send reliable signals about whether customers are likely to churn and take their revenue with them. Obviously, CS is just one input in the revenue formula, but it’s a source of truth that a CRO would be foolish to ignore. 

Adopt predictive retention models: AI tools have revolutionized retention forecasting by giving CROs the power to process enormous amounts of data. Machine learning can quickly identify historical patterns across inputs like product usage, customer lifetime, sentiment analysis, and other metrics. This automated analysis eliminates a lot of the “noise” surrounding forecasting so that humans can focus on the most critical situations, whether that is a customer at high risk for churn or a significant expansion opportunity. Continuous training further increases forecast accuracy over time.

Establish quarterly CS reviews with Finance: The impact of CS goes way beyond the revenue function. Finance needs to know what is going on with retention and possible expansion in order to understand the true financial health of the company. Establishing a regular cadence of reviews between Revenue and Finance can help tremendously. 

For CROs who are ready to integrate CS into revenue generation, tackling the challenge with a 30-60-90 day plan can help them effectively define and execute this enhanced revenue creation strategy. 

Days 1-30: Rethink CS as a key driver of revenue, not just a support function

• Align with CS leadership around the new direction. CROs will want to explain the new direction clearly, with well-defined expectations. But this shouldn’t be a one-way conversation—CS should be active participants in shaping the new approach. 
• Analyze current retention and expansion rates. Get a sense of where the company is now, including what’s working and where there’s room for improvement. 
• Identify revenue risks. What are the biggest risks on the horizon? What is the CS team’s track record on identifying possible churn in the past?

Days 31-60: Plug leaks and protect profits

• Implement shared revenue goals for CS and Sales. Once a CRO has a firm grasp of the current situation in CS, it’s time to bring in Sales. A shared revenue goal is a great way to get the conversation—and the collaboration—started. 
• Begin a proactive churn mitigation program. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment where everyone on the Revenue team works together to start fighting churn. Expect some initial friction—but prioritizing retention must become a company-wide initiative.

Days 61-90: Deliver sustainable growth through customer expansion

• Launch AI-driven tools. Once the plans and programs are in place, it is time to start scaling with AI. The tactics discussed in Chapter 6 can all be useful here. 
• Integrate CS insights into revenue forecasting. When CROs have gained confidence in CS data, they can begin incorporating the insights into revenue forecasting. See Chapter 7 for a good breakdown. 
• Set new NRR targets. By Day 90, the CRO should have enough data, alignment, and strategic initiatives in place to set a new NRR goal. This is the moment where CS transformation becomes measurable.