01Retail & Sales

Customer Success Manager Resume Example

Customer success is judged on retained and expanded revenue, yet most CSM resumes describe relationship management in the abstract. The ones that get interviews state the size of the book, the renewal rate, and the expansion generated — the same numbers the hiring manager reports upward.

Customer Success Manager resume sample

Jordan Ellery

Enterprise Customer Success Manager

Nashville, TN

Summary

Enterprise CSM with 6 years in B2B SaaS. Owns a $6.4M book at 118% net revenue retention; built the health-score model now used team-wide.

Experience

Enterprise Customer Success Manager · Thornbury Data2021 — Present
  • Own 28 enterprise accounts worth $6.4M ARR; 94% gross retention and 118% net revenue retention over two years.
  • Built a Gainsight health-score model from usage and support signals, flagging risk 60 days earlier; saved 7 accounts worth $890k.
  • Redesigned enterprise onboarding to a 30-60-90 plan; time-to-first-value 11 weeks to 4, 90-day activation 58% to 86%.
Customer Success Manager · Aldergate Software2019 — 2021
  • Managed 60 mid-market accounts ($2.1M ARR) at 91% gross retention; sourced $340k in expansion.
  • Ran the top-10 escalation path with product and support; P1 time-to-resolution from 9 days to 2.

Skills

Net revenue retention · Churn reduction · Onboarding · QBRs · Gainsight · Salesforce · Health scoring · Renewals · Expansion · Escalation management · Stakeholder management · SaaS adoption

Education

B.A. Communications — Vanderbilt University, 2019

A composite example. Figures are illustrative — use your own.

What recruiters scan for on a customer success manager resume

  • Book of business: total ARR, account count, and average account size
  • Gross and net retention, and logo churn — the core metrics of the function
  • Expansion revenue, and whether you carried a quota for it
  • Segment: SMB pooled, mid-market, or named enterprise accounts, which sets the whole shape of the job
  • Tooling named in the posting — Gainsight, Salesforce, Catalyst, Zendesk, HubSpot

ATS keywords for customer success manager roles

Terms that genuinely appear in customer success manager job descriptions. Use the ones that are true of you — keyword stuffing is obvious to a human reader and does not help the score.

customer retentionnet revenue retentionchurn reductiononboardingaccount managementupsell / expansionQBRGainsightSalesforcecustomer health scorerenewalsescalation managementadoptionSaaSstakeholder management

Weak vs strong bullets for a customer success manager

Managed a portfolio of enterprise customers and built strong relationships.

Owned a book of 28 enterprise accounts worth $6.4M ARR; held gross retention at 94% and grew net revenue retention to 118% across two years.

Book size, account count and both retention figures let a hiring manager place you instantly. "Strong relationships" is unmeasurable and appears on nearly every CSM resume.

Reduced customer churn through proactive outreach.

Built a health-score model in Gainsight from product usage and support signals, flagging at-risk accounts 60 days earlier; saved 7 accounts worth $890k in the first year.

Names the mechanism, the lead time gained, and the revenue saved — turning a claim anyone could make into something only you did.

Onboarded new customers and ran training sessions.

Redesigned enterprise onboarding into a 30-60-90 plan with named success criteria; time-to-first-value fell from 11 weeks to 4 and 90-day activation rose from 58% to 86%.

Onboarding is where retention is actually won. Two hard metrics on a redesign you owned demonstrate process ownership, not just execution.

Worked with product and support to resolve customer issues.

Ran the escalation path for the top 10 accounts with product and support leadership, cutting mean time-to-resolution on P1 issues from 9 days to 2 and clearing a $1.2M renewal that had been at risk.

Shows cross-functional influence with a measurable service improvement and a revenue consequence attached.

Common customer success manager resume mistakes

No retention numbers

GRR and NRR are the metrics the function is measured on. A CSM resume without them reads as relationship-only and gets filtered against candidates who quantified.

Not stating book size

Managing 400 SMB accounts and 12 enterprise accounts are different jobs with different skills. ARR, account count and average size are the fastest way to communicate which one you did.

Describing support work as success work

Ticket handling and reactive troubleshooting read as support. Lead with adoption, expansion and renewal ownership to position for a CSM role rather than a support one.

Ignoring expansion

Most CSM roles now carry a commercial component. If you sourced or closed expansion, say how much — even if you did not formally carry a quota.

Customer Success Manager resume FAQ

What metrics belong on a customer success resume?

Book size in ARR, account count, gross and net retention, expansion revenue, and adoption or activation rates. These are the numbers a VP of CS reports upward, so they are the numbers being screened for.

How do I move from support into customer success?

Reframe around outcomes rather than tickets: accounts you kept, adoption you drove, escalations you owned end to end. Use CS vocabulary — onboarding, health score, renewal, QBR — that the filter matches on.

Should I include named logos?

Yes if your employer discloses them publicly and you are permitted to. Recognisable accounts are strong evidence of the segment you can operate in. Otherwise describe them by size and industry.

Is customer success closer to sales or support?

Commercially it is closer to sales, and increasingly so. Resumes that lead with retained and expanded revenue outperform those that lead with satisfaction scores, though CSAT and NPS are worth including as supporting evidence.

Related resume examples

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