29 October 2026 11:15 - 11:45
One size fails all: Rethinking CS for SMB, mid-market, and enterprise
The job of "customer success" looks completely different depending on the company you're doing it at.
At a startup, CS is often one generalist reporting straight to the CEO, doing onboarding, support, and renewals all at once. At mid-market, roles start splitting out and CS Ops becomes necessary just to stop everyone from reinventing process on every account. At enterprise, CS is a multi-layered function with dedicated ops, tooling, and journey-stage specialists.
Lorenzo Serva breaks down what actually changes internally at each stage, and the transitions that catch CS leaders off guard.
Key subtopics:
- The generalist-to-specialist shift: when to split onboarding, support, and renewals into distinct roles
- Why CS Ops becomes non-negotiable once a team passes about 5 CSMs
- Reporting lines: CS under the CEO vs. under a CCO vs. buried in sales
- Tooling maturity: spreadsheets and CRM, to a CS platform, to a fully integrated data stack
- What breaks when a growing company keeps its startup-era CS structure too long
For any CS leader who has inherited a structure built for a company three sizes ago, this session offers a practical read on which changes to make, and when, from someone navigating that evolution directly.