Great article from Gainsight about the typical structure of a CSM Team :

• How many customers and ARR volume each CSM can manage.
• What are the last evolutions in term of CS team job roles.
• Cost of the CSM team vs ARR

Just remember that most part of the panel is US based which means that the figures should be lowered for France => My experience is that a CSM in France manage more €1M to €2M ARR than $2M to $5M but I welcome your figure Guys

Written by Scott GoldenDirector - Customer Success Strategy at Gainsight.

As most Customer Success leaders tend to be much more operations-focused as opposed to accounting-focused, it’s the right question to be asking. Well, we heard you loud and clear! At our recent Chief Customer Officer Summit, I asked a series of survey questions in order to capture these important Customer Success Cost benchmarks.

Before we get into the benchmarks, it’s important to understand both What and How these costs are being deployed. The What is easy: it’s the people that make up your Customer Success Team. The How gets a little more complicated as the CSM workload is different depending on the type of customer the CSM is managing. For this reason, the first question we need to ask as we explore Customer Success Costs is, "How do you segment your customer base?"

Key Takeaways: Segmentation

• The most common lever to segment the customer base is Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).
• ARR is the best proxy for CSM workload: escalations / meetings / touchpoints / headaches / high-fives are directly related to the size and scale of the customer.
• Slicing the customer base into three segments that dictate CSM workload and the related CSM coverage model is the most common methodology.

CSM Ratios Per Segment

We now know the bulk of the industry thinks about their customer base in three segments: High, Medium and Low-Dollar customers. The next thing we need to understand is how resources are being deployed to drive maximum success across these segments in the most cost-effective manner possible.

Key Takeaways: Enterprise Ratios

• The median amount of ARR that an Enterprise CSM manages is $2M to $5M.
• 69% of Enterprise CSMs manage more than $2M of ARR.