Before You Hire Your Next CSM – What to Check First
- Deborah Knight
- Jun 6
- 2 min read
Why structure needs to come before headcount
Most teams I speak to don’t have a hiring problem.
They’ve just not had a chance to get clear on what the role really needs to do.
We’ve seen it time and again: A founder starts scaling. Pressures build. Someone suggests hiring a Customer Success Manager. The job goes live before anyone stops to ask: “What will they actually be doing all day?”
Three months in, they’re chasing support tickets, plugging onboarding gaps, and nowhere near the renewals they were hired to lead.
Not because they’re the wrong person – they just walked into the wrong setup.
So, even before you start to design that job description, ask yourself these questions first:
What is the work you’re hiring for?
Is it churn prevention?Is it onboarding?
Is it engagement recovery or revenue expansion?
If you don’t know – or if it’s “a bit of everything” – you’re not ready to hire.
Do you know where time is currently being spent?
If your team is already at capacity, take a look at why.
You might not need more CS people.
You might need fewer repeat queries, better triage, smarter tooling.
Sometimes the first hire isn’t a CSM – it’s someone to fix the operational drain.
Are you solving the right problem?
We’ve helped HealthTech teams who thought they had a people problem – but in reality, they had role confusion, unclear ownership, and no plan for how customer touchpoints should actually work.
Until that’s solved, new hires just inherit the chaos.
A final check-in:
Are you clear on what this role needs to deliver?
Or are you hoping they’ll work it out once they land?
If you’re hesitating on those answers – that’s your signal to pause.
Rethinking now is always cheaper than re-hiring later.
And if it helps to talk it through, book a timeslot in my diary.
