Many B2B SaaS companies still treat Customer Success as a reactive support team. It solves problems, manages churn, and handles renewals. But this limited role keeps CS from delivering its full value.
Here's the contradiction.
Customer Success teams talk to customers more than anyone else in the company. They understand what customers struggle with, what they care about, and what drives retention. Yet when it's time to define product strategy, go-to-market priorities, or allocate resources, CS leaders are often excluded.
This disconnect leads to missed opportunities. Customer Success holds strategic insight that can directly impact growth. But without visibility, even the best insights stay buried.
To reposition CS as a growth driver, companies need to elevate the function from reactive support to strategic influence.
That means giving Customer Success managers the tools, customer intelligence AI, and executive platform they need to lead with insight. AI with customer context helps CS leaders move beyond anecdotal stories and provide patterns that align directly with revenue outcomes.
The data is clear.
According to BackEngine's 2025 Customer Feedback Maturity Report:
Only 11% of B2B SaaS companies say they truly understand customer needs Just 33% of executives review customer feedback on a monthly basis or more Companies with expert-level feedback systems are more than twice as likely to improve customer satisfaction compared to those with basic systems
This isn't just about better processes. It's about changing how Customer Success is seen across the organization.
When CS becomes a strategic partner, it helps the entire company stay closer to the customer. It fuels smarter decisions, sharper messaging, and better product development.
For revenue operations leaders, this is where AI for customer success managers connects directly with growth—transforming CS into a measurable driver of Net Revenue Retention.
Customer Success isn't a cost center. It's a strategic growth engine, if you let it be.
Eli Portnoy shared more on this topic during a recent webinar. Want to hear the full breakdown? Watch the session here.
For a deeper dive into the data behind this conversation, access and download the full Customer Feedback Maturity Report here.
