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Revenue Brew

Customer Success

Beck Salgado

revenuebrew.com

Being a sales account manager must often feel like you’re on the dating circuit in New York City: You’re overseeing multiple accounts, each containing specific attributes and posing unique challenges.

A successful account manager should be available for all clients, but not too clingy. You want to be aware of what competitors can offer, but not let rivals dictate your next move. You might nail the first date, but it’s the post-sales process that needs firm consideration. Clients can be mercurial, so once you’ve identified the ideal profile, retention is key. So how do you avoid being ghosted, or, in account manager parlance, the dreaded churn?

Revenue Brew spoke with three professionals on what subtle signs of churn look like, what to do if you see them, and how to avoid them.

Isabell Rashid is an account manager at end-to-end sales intelligence software company Apollo.io. She says changes in leadership are not a sure signal churn will happen, but it’s something to be cognizant of. Rashid says affirming value to a new hire is always a priority.

“Any time new leadership joins an organization, they obviously have their own perception in their mind on the processes that they use,” she said.

To avoid getting sidelined in a shake-up, Rashid uses internal technology that alerts her whenever there is a new hire on one of her accounts, which gives her the opportunity to reach out and affirm the value Apollo.io provides.

Sometimes the real churn is on the inside

Joe Fontana, VP of sales at sales coaching platform Dextego, agrees on the importance of account managers being proactive. But when it comes to churn, he says a lack of internal accountability is a major issue.

“I find quite often you have an account manager, you have somebody in customer success, you have a sales rep, and no one wants to take ownership of issues or challenges or problems,” Fontana said. 

He also warns against treating clients in a transactional manner.

“A customer is a guy that walks into McDonald’s, buys a cheeseburger, and you may or may not see again; a client is somebody you have a relationship and a partnership with,” Fontana said.

He says churn is often preceded by a lack of essential communication from account managers around the client’s feelings and their problems or roadblocks.

“When the shit hits the fan, you need to pick up a phone. You can’t rely on a text; you can’t rely on a Slack. You need to pick up a phone and have three days of Slacks on a 30-minute phone call. That’s when you’re having conversations,” Fontana said.

Some attrition rates could be higher simply by virtue of a company’s industry. John Burkhalter is a risk management and insurance advisor at insurance brokerage Higginbotham. He says it’s crucial to keep an eye out for loss run reports, statements outlining a policyholder’s prior claims that are used by insurers to assess risk, and by policyholders to control risk. When Burkhalter sees a loss run, it suggests a client could be shopping for lower premiums or alternative plans elsewhere.

To help mitigate this, Burkhalter tries to anticipate client needs by enacting loss control policies or preparing for rates to rise.

“For example, if you have, let’s say, a bunch of apartment complexes that had some issues where a dog bite or something happened on your apartment complex, our loss control team is going out there to put in new pet policies,” Burkhalter told Revenue Brew. “We might see this in the market upcoming, but here’s what we’re doing—A, B, C, and D—to make sure that it’s not the case for you and that it’s a better outcome.”

Three subtle signs of churn according to sales professionals

Sniffing out customer attrition.

Three sales professionals on subtle signs of churn

Layla Ilchi

When President Trump’s tariff talks started earlier this year, many American companies dependent on foreign partners—particularly in 

, where raw materials are imported from countries like India, Canada, Thailand, and Botswana— braced for impact.

For jewelry designer Adina Reyter, who launched her namesake label in 2001, tariff uncertainties came at a time when raw materials prices were already skyrocketing.

“When I started, gold was $300 an ounce. It’s now $3,000 an ounce,” Reyter said. “You always have to contend with this—diamond prices and gold prices are always fluctuating—and you build it into your cost of goods. For us, the tariffs initially were a little bit of a shock, but I knew that I wasn’t going to really have that impact on our customers because I felt like that would work itself out. Once we understand where gold prices are going, obviously we have to make it work.”

While tariffs and fluctuating prices have brought instability to Reyter’s gold business, the jewelry designer’s sterling silver collections have proven to be a bright spot amidst uncertain times, and one that’s helping increase company revenue.

Since March, Reyter said sterling silver sales increased in revenue by 49.6%. The category has also seen 1,821% YoY growth. The brand declined to share revenue numbers for this story.

Reyter offers most items in both gold and sterling silver, with the latter costing just a fraction of the former’s price. For instance, the brand’s popular initial chain necklace in 14-karat yellow gold retails for $3,996, while its silver alternative is $996. Similarly faced with economic uncertainty and price hikes, investing in silver has become a more appealing choice for some customers.

“We have such a loyal customer, and it’s such a repeat customer that the customer already has the chain, so she can come back for the charm or the bead,” Talya Spiwak, wholesale director, said. “It’s not a $2,000 purchase—maybe it’s a $500 bead—but they keep coming back for more and more.”

Due to increase in cost of materials, Reyter said she recently had to increase the prices of her gold jewelry by “no more than 15%.” Prices of sterling silver jewelry, however, have stayed the same, which she thinks has helped sustain its appeal. While gold jewelry sales make up the bulk of her revenue structure, sterling silver pieces comprise 10%–15% of overall sales.

“It speaks to the product,” Reyter said. “We treat sterling in a different way than other companies. We treat it like it’s fine jewelry. So much of our sterling—if you’re just going to get the charm or a bead—it has all diamonds in it, so it’s still that accessible price point but feels special and fine and every single day wearable.”

Inside Adina Reyter's silver business

The independent jewelry designer has seen a nearly 50% increase in silver sales since March. 

How Adina Reyter’s silver business helped her through tariff uncertainties

Nuuly, the Urban Outfitters-owned clothing rental market, has become a favorite of Gen Z and millennial shoppers. Under the "NuulyHaul" hashtag on TikTok, there are nearly 12,000 videos showcasing monthly hauls of the platform’s more than 25,000 items.

According to Urban Outfitter’s recent earnings report from May, Nuuly has 380,000 active subscribers. And in Q1 FY2026, Nuuly’s customer base grew by 53% year-over-year (roughly 40,000 new customers), helping the platform increase revenue by 60% to $124.4 million.

With its customer base steadily growing, Kim Gallagher, Nuuly’s executive director of marketing and customer success, and her team are able to use real-time insights, such as customer feedback and popular product searches, to inform larger company decisions.

“What we find is it really creates alignment across the company on where we need to focus,” she said. “We sit together and we prioritize initiatives in a data-based way of where we think our focus should be.”

Gallagher’s team stays in tune with customer pain points through customer surveys and focus groups. One of those pain points? Discoverability.

“We started to talk to customers to get a better sense of what they mean when they say, ‘what I want isn’t available,’” she said. “What we learned is that some product is more important than others, like having an occasion dress available might be more important than something that you could trade a little bit more easily, like a pair of shorts, but also that the customer was saying availability. Sometimes it was because we weren’t doing everything we could to make sure that she was seeing all the product that we have.”

Gallagher’s team used this insight to establish Nuuly’s “shops,” landing pages that focus on a specific type of clothing, like for a wedding or travel.

Nuuly subscribers can place their next order once the previous order has been returned. Gallagher said her team saw a lag in communication once returns were received, which ate away time in a customer’s subscription. With these insights, Nuuly developed a new feature that enabled faster communication, and faster orders.

“Utilization of that feature is so high,” Gallagher said. “It probably sounds like a crazy feature if you’re not a renter, but it was so intuitive to people. I was even surprised at how high the adoption was, but I think that just goes to show that really focusing on things that are very specific pain points in your business can have a pretty big effect.”

Pausing or canceling a subscription isn’t uncommon for Nuuly users and is often due to a customer’s finances or travel schedule. Gallagher said the majority of customers resubscribe, so her team wanted to make cancellation easy.

“We really wanted to make sure that was not a friction point because nobody likes when it’s a pain to cancel a subscription. You will never go back.” Gallagher said. “People really do come back to Nuuly because [cancellation is] not an issue. But there’s certain times a year where the business slows down, so summer is one of those times. We see this every year when people go on vacations.”

While Nuuly deals with a lot of seasonality, it hasn’t impacted growth.

“Q1 is really high, Q2 generally slows down, Q3 goes up again, and then holiday is actually not as busy for us as retail,” she continued. “We pick up a lot in January, so we have a little bit of a seasonal nuance, but year over year, we’re still seeing great growth.”

Inside Nuuly's customer service

The clothing rental company’s real-time insights have helped it adapt to customer needs, resulting in a 60% revenue increase in Q1 FY 2026. 

How Nuuly’s customer success insights inform business decisions

Ally Langan, account manager at TheRealReal, is an amalgamation of a few Gen Z stereotypes: has a side hustle, is very online, blunt.

She doesn’t buy into the “Gen Z is lazy” trope, for instance, saying instead that her cohort values themselves and their time more than perhaps their bosses and their bosses’ bosses do.

“Companies don’t value the time, the effort that Gen Z puts in everything they do,” Langan said. We chatted recently, discussing other misperceptions of her generation, what her generation brings to the table, and how companies can best approach their Gen Z employees.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You’re at the beginning of your career, but what made you want to start in sales?

Working in sales, it’s working one-on-one with people all the time, dealing with conflict, dealing with a lot of things I’ve dealt with before. Being a sorority president in my past, I was like, I could do this. It kind of just, weirdly enough, fell in my lap, and I was like, “You know what? Why not? Let’s give it a shot.” And I wound up actually being pretty good at it.

. How does being an influencer make you a better salesperson?

The most important thing with sales is you can’t feel like you’re selling somebody. If you’re selling somebody, you’re losing the sale. Being an influencer, you have to be your real and authentic self. You don’t want to feel like you’re selling people products. When I work with brands, I will always try out a product first before filming anything.

Do you feel that there’s anything unique that Gen Z brings to sales that other generations maybe didn’t?

Gen Z is a little more real. We’re not as stiff, right? We get on a phone call, obviously we want to close the sale, but we’ll talk to the person or try to get the conversation rolling and get them to talk about themselves, what they like, and kind of build that relationship. One of my clients loves 

! I’ve seen every single movie. He started talking about all the movies, and he was so shocked, so that’s how you build a relationship. It’s building a relationship, having a conversation with your friends, and then [asking questions like]: “Tell me about your business. How’d you get started? Where do you see your business growing [over] the next five years?”

It’s having that business side, but also having that casual, fun side, which I think sets Gen Z apart.

On that “fun side,” Gen Z has a reputation for being a little bit less professional in the workplace. Do you think that the less professional disposition is actually an advantage?

I think so, because sometimes when someone’s so professional, they come off as unapproachable. You don’t want to intimidate the person you’re trying to sell to.

What do you feel like people get wrong about Gen Z in the workplace? And what do they get right?

We’re not going to go the extra mile if we feel like the company isn’t going the extra mile for us, and I think that’s fair. Something that people do get right about Gen Z: We are ourselves. We’re not trying to pin on this corporate mask. Obviously, you’d be professional, but I do think that Gen Z is very authentic.

How can sales or revenue leaders understand Gen Z a little bit better?

To make things a little bit more personal, get to know the person and get to know the team. That’s how you make a strong sales team.

Are there different priorities in terms of what a company can offer Gen Z employees?

Understanding Gen Z in the sales world

Ally Langan on what to know about Gen Z salespeople.

The sales world according to Gen Z

Churn, SaaS lingo for losing a customer, is an unavoidable and unwelcome part of the job of any customer success manager. 

DTC subscription businesses, the report found, see higher customer churn rates than B2B businesses. 

Other consumer-facing industries like digital media, CPG, and retail see an average churn rate of 6.5%. 

On the lower end, Recurley noted that B2B companies, especially software and professional services, had average churn rates of 3.8%. 

Churn can be caused by a lengthy list of factors (including the customers themselves), but ultimately CSMs are generally blamed for attrition by their company’s go-to-market teams.

The customer success leaders Revenue Brew spoke with, however (and, well, obviously), offered some pushback.

“They’re the ones who are with the client 90% of the time,” Colene Castillo, director of account management at SEO consulting firm, Cadence SEO, said. “The way I think of it with our own clients is that they’re our babies, so it’s my responsibility to keep them happy and make sure that they have everything they need. If I’m taking that responsibility on myself, everyone else is also going to put it on me if they cancel. Is it 100% our responsibility? No, I don't think so, but that is why.”

CS leads say churn is complex and can be exacerbated by internal factors like strategy misalignment, poor communication, and undefined expectations. Churn can also be caused by external factors such as the economy or a client’s financial state or changing priorities.

Christina Kosmowski, CEO of IT infrastructure monitoring platform LogicMonitor, knows a thing or two about churn from her days as Slack’s COO and before that, CS lead at Salesforce. She addressed churn by integrating her customer success teams within the broader organization.

“One of the things that Salesforce did really well was thinking about customer success less as a department and more embedded into the DNA of the culture,” she said. “That came very much from the top down. It was in the core DNA, whereas I see a lot of companies view the customer success team as they’re the ones that are accountable to this. If that’s the case, that doesn’t work. The customer success managers are the facilitators of it and bringing the processes and the frameworks to bear, but they are not the ones solely accountable.”

Leaders say it’s crucial to have a well-defined customer success strategy throughout the whole sales organization so that clients don’t experience any confusion in the sales-to-CS handoff.

Shannon Nishi, director of customer success at customer engagement platform Customer.io said, “Having that clear strategy of who is our customer, what do we want to be providing to them, how do we think that we're providing customer value, and how are we going to continue to build on that—it’s so important for CSMs to have a strong grasp on because ultimately, they’re making decisions based on their understanding of that that have lasting impacts on the revenue and the way that the customer views us as a partner.”

Customer success managers can stress internal alignment, our experts said, and hold other teams accountable to help eliminate it as much as possible.

“The biggest thing is constantly tying back the day-to-day work to the big picture,” Nishi said. “For many CSMs, it’s really easy to get tied down in the day-to-day work and completing tasks, feeling like completing tasks or fulfilling individual requests is execution but losing sight of: What are the broader objectives? What are we working towards? How do we know and feel confident that the customer is getting value out of our platform and that we are always one step ahead?”

Why are customer success managers blamed for churn?

While CSMs are client-facing, churn isn’t always 100% their fault. 

According to a report from Gainsight, 52% of customer success (CS) organizations are using AI in some capacity to address job functions like retention, training, or churn. That number is only anticipated to grow, as more CS leads jump on the AI bandwagon.

AI can aid customer success leads in myriad ways, ranging from drafting emails to identifying at-risk clients. Revenue Brew spoke with four customer success leaders across various industries to see how AI is helping their processes and improving their outcomes.

Mary Migiano, head of customer success at employee stipends platform Compt.io, uses AI for documentation, email templates, and building out processes. She cited Confluence as one platform her team uses, and explained the key to getting the most out of AI tools is knowing how to interact with them.

“What I have learned about AI is it’s really about how you prompt it,” she said. “Once you get really effective at what prompts and questions you’re asking it, it makes such a difference. People that I talk to day to day, one of the biggest things is they’re like, ‘what are you prompting it with? Why did you even think about typing that into it?’ What I say is just talk to it like it’s a person. You’d be so incredibly surprised if you just interact with it like a person—how much valuable information you’ll get from it in that way.”

She also stressed knowing when not to use AI, especially in a client-facing role that requires some level of human interaction.

“There are some times you need to be incredibly authentic,” she explained. “AI can’t do that for you. That’s why AI can’t replace jobs either. I don’t think [AI] ever will for people that are at the top of their game because it’s there to make you better and more efficient, not necessarily to take away that human connection, because AI can’t connect the dots to your customer issue and things like that.”

David Graham, SVP of customer success at Intuit, explained that at the financial technology platform, AI is used to improve automation for its employees and customers through its proprietary operating system, GenOS. The system helps Intuit’s customer success team access to customer data faster, which he said has helped them serve two and a half as many customers.

“We’ve been able to find significant value in what we’re calling, ‘done for you experiences,’” Graham said. “What that really means is where we’ve been able to automate tasks, end-to-end workflows and more in the last couple of years, entire functions with a view that we’re building and using AI to be able to connect our customers directly to more than 12,000 of our AI-enabled human experts. That’s the philosophy and the overarching strategy.”

At AI video generation platform HeyGen, enterprise account manager Joy Chen uses the company’s product to connect with clients and better understand the platform.

“For HeyGen, we help people create their realistic avatar,” she said. “For us, we also have our own avatar, so I can use my avatar to generate a video message to welcome the customer. Also, we can use the avatars to generate an onboarding tutorial to build up this kind of personal touch.”

 to create tutorials and onboarding videos helps create a more personalized interaction with clients. It’s also helped her stay up-to-date with HeyGen’s latest features so she can continuously train her clients and make sure they have all the information they need.

For Allison Carroll, chief customer officer at revenue management platform Clari, one of the biggest benefits AI has provided is real-time insights into how customers are doing. Carroll’s team uses QuadSci, an AI analytics tool, which has helped her team predict with 90% accuracy within six months of an event if a customer was going to grow or churn.

“We were able to determine what were the two biggest drivers for growth in our customer base and what were the two biggest drivers for retention in our customer base,” she said. “We took those two drivers and we turned them into plays for the year. We turned them into key initiatives.”

With QuadSci and Clari’s other AI tools, Carroll’s team is able to quickly identify customer pain points and create a plan to address the issues. She explained the tools have helped her team’s productivity, which in turn makes them faster to react.

“That allows us to either be super fast in reacting to it or even be proactive—to get ahead of it before it becomes an escalation, and therefore, you can retain the account,” she said. “You can make sure you turn them from maybe a detractor to being happy and then you can say, ‘what’s the next best product they might have?’ They may be over their number of licenses, so they may be using more than they’re actually at a tier for, which means there’s an opportunity for expansion.”

Hands at a laptop with AI and code floating above keyboard

Customer success managers are using AI to improve outcomes

AI has helped CSMs improve their processes, delivering benefits to clients.

How four customer success managers use AI to improve outcomes

The B2B sales industry is poised for substantial growth in the next few years. A Forbes report projects that the industry will reach $31 billion by 2031, compared to $7.4 billion in 2022. It’s only natural that in conjunction, the number of sales-related roles across customer success, account management, and traditional sales will also increase.

But while joining a revenue organization can be an enticing career path for many new to the workforce, there are things to keep in mind to ensure the job is a right fit.

Revenue Brew chatted with business leadership coach Miranda Conlon, who has over 25 years experience in B2B sales, operations, and customer service, to talk tips for getting into a revenue organization.

Even if a traditional sales job wasn’t on your vision board, Conlon said it can be a great entry point into a revenue organization, as it teaches the foundations of any sales structure and transferable skills.

“It gives you exposure to the business itself, the product, and the customer,” she said. “A lot of new hires, like just out of college or early-career people, have the opportunity to work with so many parts of the business. Sales creates that opportunity.”

Conlon acknowledged that entry-level employees are likely coming in with minimal skills and knowledge. However, if they have a willingness to learn, that can make up for that lack of experience.

“I often talk, both as a sales leader and a coach, about the difference between will and skill,” she said. “It’s particularly relevant in sales. You may not know the product, you may not know the sales process. There may not be a sales process defined, but if you’re willing to learn and try new things, you have a high chance of being successful. The skill is pretty easy to learn, especially if there’s a training team or a coaching team or both. As a sales leader, I’d say I’m looking for people who are open to learning and have the will to do so. That is more important than somebody who has this exact industry specific experience or background.”

Similarly, Conlon stresses that employees should be open to coaching to help them learn more about their role, organization, and industry.

“If you’re not open to coaching, I’m not sure sales is a good role for you,” Conlon said. “You probably are going to join an organization where you’re getting coached all the time, in a good sales organization where someone’s trying to show you different ways to do things, maybe sitting next to you while you’re on the call. You have to be comfortable with that kind of work environment. You might be sitting on an open floor where you can hear all the people around you and they can hear you. If you’re really uncomfortable with somebody doing that, it may not be the right role for you.”

Communication is vital for any sales-related role, especially for those working in client-facing jobs like customer success.

“You do need to be a strong communicator, both verbal and written, especially because you want to avoid misunderstandings between a customer and salesperson or the team,” Conlon said. “Both written and verbal communication is important depending on whether your job is inside or outside, like the client may never see you, but you have to be able to express yourself well if you’re going to client sessions.”

Conlon highlighted honesty and integrity as two key values to have when working in a revenue organization. She stated that sometimes people assume salespeople try to “nickel and dime” when making deals, but she stresses that tactic doesn’t lead to success.

“A good salesperson knows they have to be skilled at explaining the value of what they’re selling and why the price ties to it,” she said. “It can be easy to think, ‘I just want to make this customer happy,’ but part of that integrity is understanding what’s best for the customer and also what’s best for the business. Sometimes a salesperson wants so badly to make the customer happy that they don’t propose something that is also good for the company they work for.”

Compensation and incentives are an integral part of any sales-based role. Conlon said it’s important to understand the organization’s compensation plan before onboarding to avoid future confusion or surprises.

“A lot of people start [sales jobs] not really understanding it and then learn later, [are like] ‘oh, there’s actually something called a clawback, where, if I earn something and then the product gets returned, for example, they actually take money back from me,” Conlon said. “Not a lot of companies do that anymore, but it still exists. So, really understanding what you’re signed up for is important.”

Update 06/23/2025: This interview has been edited since it was first published.