What I'm writing about
Posts, articles and other customer success content I've been part of
After 20+ years on the front lines of customer success, I've seen it all—the wins, the failures, and everything in between. This newsletter cuts through the noise to deliver:
- Battle-tested strategies you can implement immediately
- Thought-provoking perspectives that challenge conventional CS wisdom
- Real-world lessons from working with countless clients across industries
No fluff. No theory without practice. Just concise, actionable insights from someone who started as a CSM and lived through the evolution of customer success.
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The weekly report I wish my manager sent me
What I built in Claude Code so my customer success team gets the coaching I never had
Early in my career, I had no idea how I was actually doing. Not because my managers didn’t care. Because nobody had the time or the data to tell me. I’d get feedback in a quarterly review that referenced things from months ago. Or I’d sit in a 1:1 and spend the whole time recapping my week from memory while my manager nodded along.
My thoughts on Customer Success over the years
Why did I write The Strategic Customer Success Manager?
Why Chad Horenfeldt wrote The Strategic Customer Success Manager: It's his way of sharing some of his life lessons with others, aiming to elevate the customer success industry.
What exactly is a strategic customer success manager?
I’ve shared an excerpt from my book, The Strategic Customer Success Manager, and provided a few additional resources. The book has been extremely well received and I’ve included an early review below from Michael J. Boyd at the end. 👉 Buy the book! Listen to an overview of the book on the The Daily Standup Podcast.
CSMs: Want to be strategic? Start by respecting support
Too many CSMs say they want to be strategic but still treat Support like a dumping ground for problems. They escalate without context. They forward frustrated customer emails with no background. They assume urgency without understanding priority. They treat Support like a ticket machine instead of a strategic partner. That has to stop. You cannot be a strategic CSM if your support team dreads seeing your name pop up. Support is one of the hardest jobs in any company.
The problem nobody talks about in customer success: Slack overload and how to deal with it
You manage a large portfolio of accounts. Every client has their own Slack channel. Every day, things happen in those channels. Issues get flagged. Decisions get made. Blockers appear. Most of them you never see. Not because you don't care. Because there are 100+ channels you need to monitor and you have many other priorities.
I automated my entire customer success team's weekly coaching. Here's the exact Claude prompt
I shared on LinkedIn that I built an automated weekly report for my CS team. It tells each person on my team where their time went, what they did well, where they need to improve, and what to prioritize next week. A lot of people asked: how does it actually work? Here's the full prompt I use in Claude Code.
CSMs don't need more playbooks. They need more reps
I recently wrapped up a workshop series with a CS team that was trying to do something hard. Not hard like learning a new tool. Hard like rewiring how they show up in customer conversations. We spent two sessions going deep on frameworks: how to ask better questions, how to listen, how to turn a routine check-in into something actually useful.