Most CS leaders are playing defense when they should be playing offense.
Here's what I mean.
Too many CS teams spend their days apologizing for product gaps. They're firefighters. They smooth over customer frustrations and promise that "the product team is working on it."
This is backwards.
CS teams talk to customers every single day. They hear the pain points. They know what's broken. They understand what customers actually need versus what product thinks they need.
Yet they're stuck in support mode instead of strategy mode.
The Real Cost of Playing Defense
When Customer Success teams operate in reactive mode, the entire company suffers.
Product teams build features based on assumptions rather than customer reality.
Engineering priorities get misaligned with actual customer needs.
Revenue teams lose expansion opportunities because they don't understand what drives customer value.
The numbers tell the story: companies with strong customer feedback loops achieve higher Net Revenue Retention rates. They retain customers better and expand accounts more reliably.
Meanwhile, companies stuck in firefighting mode watch competitors who move faster steal their customers.
Own Customer Feedback Like Your Career Depends On It
The fix is simple: Own customer feedback like your career depends on it.
Not just collect it. Not just pass it along. OWN it.
Here's what ownership looks like:
Build a real system for capturing what customers tell you. Stop relying on scattered notes in CRM systems and weekly recap meetings. Every customer conversation contains valuable information that gets lost in translation. AI with customer context ensures those signals don't disappear.
Analyze patterns across all your conversations. Individual complaints are anecdotes. Patterns across your entire customer base are data. Customer intelligence AI helps CS leaders turn raw conversations into systematic insight.
Package information in ways that product and engineering can't ignore. Replace "customers are frustrated" with "47% of our enterprise accounts mentioned integration challenges in the past month, directly correlating with a 23% increase in support tickets."
Show up to executive meetings with data, not anecdotes.
Connect customer feedback directly to revenue outcomes like churn prediction and upsell identification.
From Support Mode to Strategy Mode
When CS leaders make this shift, everything changes.
Suddenly you're not the person explaining why customers are unhappy. You're the person who knows exactly what will make them successful.
You're not asking for a seat at the table. You have one because everyone needs what you know.
Your voice carries weight in product roadmap discussions because you bring concrete evidence of what customers actually value.
Engineering teams prioritize differently when they understand the revenue impact of technical decisions.
Sales teams close more deals because they understand what messaging resonates with prospects.
The Systematic Advantage
It's not about being louder. It's about being systematic.
The companies that win in today's B2B environment have figured out how to turn customer communication into competitive advantage.
They've moved beyond manual processes and gut feelings to create systematic approaches for understanding and acting on customer needs.
With AI for customer success managers, this systematic approach becomes scalable. It enables teams to identify churn risks before they become critical, spot expansion opportunities when customers are most receptive, and provide product teams with the guidance they need to build features that drive retention and growth.
Stop Bridging Gaps. Start Driving Strategy.
Your customers are telling you exactly what your company needs to build. The question is whether you're set up to listen, analyze, and act on it.
The CS teams that will thrive are those that transform from reactive firefighters to proactive strategists. They understand that their role is not just to keep customers happy but to help the entire company understand what drives customer success and revenue growth.
The path forward requires moving from periodic check-ins to continuous understanding, from siloed information to shared intelligence, and from manual tracking to automated analysis.
When you own customer feedback systematically, you don't just retain customers better—you become the strategic partner your company needs to grow sustainably and predictably.
- Eli Portnoy is the CEO and Founder of BackEngine, which helps B2B SaaS companies maintain deep customer connection as they grow. BackEngine creates a high-velocity customer feedback loop that ensures feedback reaches the right teams quickly, directly, and with no bias or translation. The result? Higher retention, happier customers, and a competitive advantage that drives sustainable growth. If you'd like to learn more from Eli and BackEngine, schedule a demo here.
