Let me ask you something :

When churn shows up…

When renewals get defensive…

When value realization slips…

Is your first instinct to look at your CSMs?

Because in high-growth SaaS, churn is almost never created by the CSM ; and it’s certainly not created solely by the CSM.

In most cases, the CSM is simply the first person to see churn that was created much earlier in the lifecycle… or deeper in the organization.

In Episode 2 of Rethinking Customer Success in High-Growth SaaS, I break down why traditional churn diagnosis fails, why blaming CSM performance is a leadership trap, and how fixing churn actually starts with fixing your operating system, not your people.

If you want renewal cycles to stabilize and expansion to become predictable, this episode is essential.

Welcome to CS Shift, the podcast that goes beyond retention with strategies for customer success leaders navigating the new era.

Let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome back to CS Shift and to our executive miniseries, Rethinking Customer Success in Niagara of SaaS.

I'm your host, Nanjita Su, and today we are addressing one of the most persistent myths in our industry, which is about Churn.

I do believe that Churn does not start with your CSMs and it certainly does not end with TAM.

Churn starts with your organization.

So let's get into it.

There is a pattern I see and I'm sure if you're a CS leader you have also seen it before.

CHURN rises, renewals get tense, leadership becomes concerned, and instinctively all eyes turned toward the CSM team.

Now, I believe that CSMs are not solely the origin of churn.

Most of the time they are the first people to observe Churn that was created long before the renewal cycle.

The real question is not why did not the CSM prevent this?

It's actually what part of our organization made this Churn predictable?

Now, there are real root causes of Churn and I want today to break down where Churn truly begins because we're going to see that it almost never starts in customer success.

That might happen and we can address that.

But it's so important for us to look at the system because once the systems are fixed, then we can really concentrate on what the CSM are doing.

Now.

One thing is that Churn begins at the point of sale.

How well, poor qualification, misaligned expectations, selling to customers who don't match our ICP or use cases.

Now sometimes we can save the account by selling the ROI to the decision makers, but most of the time it's very difficult to prevent CHURN when the customer was never the right fit.

Also, Churn begins in onboarding even when CSMs lead it.

If there is no defined life cycle, no standardized milestones, unclear ownership, misaligned expectations, capacity and resourcing issues, technical blockers, no cross functional readiness.

Even when a CSM leads, on boarding the structure around it will determine success.

Churn begins in organizational misalignment.

When sales see as support and product are not working as one team, Churn becomes inevitable.

Broken feedback loops, delayed issue resolution and disconnected insights, confusion around ownership.

So you see, fixing the system is step one.

And once the foundations are aligned, high growth SaaS companies invest in enabling their CSM to operate at a strategic level.

And in order to assess if your CSM are currently operating at a Strategy Level number one do you think your CSMs have clarity on their scope and their lane?

CSMs cannot be strategic if they are doing everything.

So it's important to define what they own, what they influence, what they don't own, and where escalation paths begin and end.

This clarity will create confidence and confidence will improve performance.

Also, do your CSM have the tools that make risk and opportunity visible?

CSMs cannot prevent churn when they can't see churn and it requires a usable health score, leading indicators, not lagging ones, standard risk categories, simple escalation frameworks, clean customer Data do your CSMs have a consistent playbook?

The best CSM organizations don't rely on heroic individuals, they rely on consistent motion.

So if you want to create a playbook or if you want to assess that you have a very helpful playbook, your playbook should include onboarding steps and milestones, adoption frameworks, renewal timelines, QBR guidelines, expansion triggers, templates and narrative.

Very also important to train your CSM on influence and not just product.

Your top performers don't succeed because they know every feature.

They succeed because they know how to influence stakeholders, drive accountability, communicate value, manage difficult conversations, partner with sales, escalate effectively.

These soft skills drive hard outcomes and you might partner with your sales enablement or CS enablement team in order to make this possible.

And I want to finish with the importance of providing cover from leadership to CSMs.

The most successful CSMs operate in organizations where leaders remove blockers, clarify ownership, reinforce standards across teams, support escalation path so churn does not drop because CSMs work harder.

Churn drops because CSMs have support, authority and training to drive outcomes.

I want to finish with three truths you can walk away with Today's episode Number one, the biggest drivers of CHURN are organizational, not individual.

You fix CHURN by fixing the system.

Number two, once the system is aligned and fixed, CSMs must be empowered and not overloaded, clear lanes, better tools, stronger playbooks and leadership support.

And when the system works and CSMs are equipped, churn becomes predictable and preventable.

And this is when customer success becomes a revenue engine and not a safety net.

If this episode reframed how you think about churn, share it with a CS leader, VP or founder who is scaling fast.

In our next episode, I'm going to talk about how to structure a scalable CS organization.

Thank you so much for listening and see you in the next shift.

Thank you for listening to this show.

Remember, the new mandate for customer success is driving growth and growth does not happen in isolation it's driven by strategic and operational leadership.

Subscribe and share this episode with an overseas leader ready to shift their strategy.

I'm Nendi do sue and this is CS Shift.