Strategic Customer Success Manager

Strategic Customer Success Manager

Job Purpose

The Strategic Customer Success Manager is responsible for managing and strengthening strategic customer relationships, particularly with Banks and Non-Bank Financial Institutions.

The role proactively identifies customer concerns, critical issues, emerging risks, and unmet needs beyond day-to-day operational support. The position acts as the Voice of Customer internally, translating customer insights into actionable recommendations for management and relevant internal teams.

This role does not own day-to-day incident handling or technical support, which remains under the responsibility of the Support function.

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Key Responsibilities

1. Strategic Customer Relationship Management

• Build and maintain strong, trusted relationships with key customers and stakeholders.
• Establish regular communication with customer stakeholders to understand their business priorities, concerns, expectations, and overall satisfaction.
• Conduct regular customer check-ins, business reviews, and strategic discussions.
• Develop a clear understanding of each strategic customer's business environment, priorities, and challenges.
• Act as a strategic point of contact between customers and the company.

2. Proactive Identification of Critical Issues

• Proactively identify customer concerns that may not yet be formally raised through the Support channel.
• Conduct structured probing and discussions to uncover the root cause behind customer concerns, rather than focusing only on reported symptoms.
• Identify recurring issues, emerging risks, dissatisfaction, and potential escalation before they become major customer problems.
• Distinguish between operational issues and issues that require management attention.
• Monitor customer sentiment and relationship health.

3. Critical Issue & Escalation Management

• Monitor critical customer issues and ensure appropriate internal stakeholders are engaged.
• Coordinate with Support, Product, Engineering, Operations, and other relevant teams when strategic customer concerns require cross-functional attention.
• Ensure that critical issues receive appropriate visibility and follow-up internally.
• Monitor the progress and customer impact of critical issues without taking over the operational resolution responsibility.
• Ensure customer concerns are properly communicated back to the customer through the appropriate channel.
• Escalate significant customer risks to management with clear context, impact, and recommended actions.

4. Voice of Customer & Customer Insights

• Capture and consolidate customer feedback, concerns, expectations, and product needs.
• Identify patterns and trends across customers, particularly recurring or systemic issues.
• Translate customer feedback into actionable insights for Product, Technology, Support, Operations, and Management.
• Identify potential gaps between customer expectations and current product/service capabilities.
• Provide recommendations based on customer insights and business impact.

5. Customer Health Monitoring

• Develop and maintain a clear view of strategic customer health.

• Monitor indicators such as:

  • Customer satisfaction
  • Relationship strength
  • Recurring issues
  • Critical unresolved concerns
  • Customer sentiment
  • Escalation frequency
  • Product adoption/usage where relevant
  • Emerging customer risks

• Identify early warning signals that may indicate declining customer confidence or relationship risk.

• Maintain customer health assessments and action plans.

6. Management Reporting

• Prepare regular customer health and strategic customer reports for management.

• Provide management with visibility into:

  • Key customer concerns
  • Critical issues
  • Emerging risks
  • Customer sentiment
  • Recurring/systemic issues
  • Product/service gaps
  • Customer expectations
  • Recommended management actions

• Provide concise executive-level summaries and highlight issues requiring management attention.

• Track key customer trends over time and provide recommendations for improvement.

7. Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with Head of Support to ensure strategic customer concerns are aligned with operational issue management.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering teams to communicate customer needs and systemic product concerns.
• Work with Operations and other internal stakeholders to address customer experience gaps.
• Facilitate cross-functional discussions when customer issues require coordination across multiple teams.
• Ensure customer feedback is converted into actionable internal initiatives where appropriate.

8. Customer Experience Improvement

• Identify opportunities to improve the overall customer experience.
• Recommend improvements to customer communication, processes, product experience, and service delivery.
• Participate in customer journey and experience improvement initiatives.
• Establish feedback mechanisms to continuously understand customer expectations.

Requirements:

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Management, or a related field.

Experience

• 5+ years of experience in Customer Success, Customer Experience, Account Management, Service Management, Consulting, or a related role.
• Experience working with Banks, Financial Institutions, Fintech, Insurance, Multifinance, or other regulated industries is highly preferred.
• Experience managing enterprise customers and senior stakeholders is preferred.
• Experience in an IT/Product/SaaS/Technology company is highly preferred.

Skills & Competencies

• Strong stakeholder management
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Strong questioning, probing, and listening skills
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities
• Ability to identify root causes and business impact
• Strong escalation and issue management skills
• Strong presentation and executive reporting skills
• Ability to translate customer feedback into actionable insights
• Strong cross-functional collaboration
• Good understanding of IT products, systems, and technology environments
• Ability to communicate effectively with both business and technical stakeholders