Customer Success Lead

Cognassist; Hebburn; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

A forward-thinking education tech company is seeking a Customer Success Lead to manage client relationships and guide a team of Customer Success Managers. This role involves leveraging data to drive customer outcomes and fostering a culture of collaboration. Ideal candidates have 3+ years in a similar role within the SaaS or education sectors, and strong leadership abilities. The position in Hebburn offers competitive salary and a range of employee benefits, including flexible working arrangements and health plans.

Benefits

Company share scheme

Flexible working

Paid birthday off

Health cash plan

Pension contribution scheme

25 days holiday plus bank holidays

Qualifications

• Minimum 3 years of experience in Customer Success or Account Management.
• Experience in SaaS or education/training sector preferred.
• Strong understanding of client engagement and retention.

Responsibilities

• Manage key client relationships and lead a team of Customer Success Managers.
• Analyze client behavior and product usage to inform strategies.
• Ensure customer onboarding and adoption processes run smoothly.

Skills

Customer relationship management

Data analysis

Team leadership

Communication skills

Commercial acumen

Tools

CRM software

MS Office

Job description

We’re looking for a strategic, data-driven, and people-focused Customer Success Lead to join our team. In this role, you'll manage key client relationships, lead a team of Customer Success Managers, and drive customer outcomes through insight, enablement, and collaboration. If you’re passionate about education, cognition, and delivering real value through thoughtful customer engagement we want to hear from you.

Responsibilities

Data-Driven Strategy & Insights

• Analyse client behavior, product usage patterns, and engagement metrics to identify trends, risks, and opportunities.
• Use data to inform strategic account planning, proactively address challenges, and enhance overall client outcomes.
• Produce and deliver clear, insightful reports for internal and external stakeholders, highlighting key performance indicators and actionable insights.
• Use product analytics to understand adoption and identify opportunities and risks within individual customer accounts and across the wider customer base.
• Leverage AI Tools: Proactively use artificial intelligence tools to support performance, problem-solving, and decision-making within your role, while maintaining data privacy and ethical standards.
  
  

Team Leadership & People Management

• Line manage a team of three Customer Success Managers, providing regular coaching, support, and performance development.
• Oversee team workload and priorities, ensuring consistent delivery of high-quality client experiences across all accounts.
• Foster a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing, encouraging continuous improvement and professional growth.
  
  

Customer Success Operations & Improvement

• Review, evaluate, and enhance Customer Success processes and frameworks, building on a full audit currently underway.
• Lead an annual process review cycle to ensure systems evolve alongside client needs and industry best practices.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product and Engineering to embed customer feedback into operational and strategic decisions.
  
  

Customer Enablement & Activation

• Lead on onboarding to ensure that new customers receive relevant education and activation collateral to successfully adopt Cognassist into their internal processes and programmes.
• Confirm customers value drivers, intended goals and outcomes from adopting Cognassist, solidifying the organisational value of Cognassist and helping our key stakeholders to communicate value in future.
• Provide effective guiding, training, enablement and signposting to referenceable material to ensure successful setup and implementation of Cognassist within their organisation and teams.
  
  

Activation & Adoption

• Champion the benefits of cognitive profiling and learning support strategies throughout the client business and senior management teams.
• Work to ensure that client requirements are understood and fulfilled in line with achieving their overall goals.
• Document and systematically track all activities and touchpoints to deliver feedback from customers to relevant internal teams as well as ensuring appropriate levels of touch based on lifecycle stage and value.
  
  

Consultative guidance & enablement

• Become a domain expert in your focus verticals through deep customer collaborations, general research and attending industry events/conferences.
• Become a customer expert by gaining an understanding of each customer’s specific challenges, processes, value drivers and effectiveness measurements to ensure ongoing success and retention.
• Conduct regular Customer Impact Reviews to focus on performance against value drivers, providing insights and actionable guidance in how to adjust/ improve performance based on best practice and other industry/ internal knowledge.
• Support customer teams’ adoption and effectiveness by delivering client specific training sessions online and in person, as appropriate.
• Assist with challenging client requests or issue escalations as needed.
  
  

Retention & Advocacy

• Successfully manage renewals on your accounts to timeline and in line with the account commercial strategy.
• Ensure account plans are in place for each account mapped against their size, value, potential values, success criteria and internal business goals, with clear stages and actions mapped to these.
• Report against account plan performance to support both forecasting and senior level support required to reach and meet and fulfil our goals.
• Incorporate other teams, people and Leadership in delivering against strategic account goals and to ensure customers are provided with consultative and high-value interactions, as appropriate.
• Support on the acquisition of case-studies and testimonial feedback including video media/filming, surveys and face to face interviews.
  
  

Ongoing Success and Growth

• Negotiate contracts and growth plans with the support of the Senior Customer Impact team members and close agreements in a timely and profitable manner.
• Forecast and track account metrics with a high degree of accuracy and deliver against collective revenue goals each quarter.
• Collaborate with external Sales support to identify and grow opportunities within territory.
  
  

Required Skills & Experience

• You are not new to Customer Success – you have a minimum 3 years’ experience as a Customer Success manager or Account Manager with mid-sized or enterprise-sized customers.
• Ideally your experience to date has been as a Customer Success Manager, Account Manager, Implementation Consultant or relevant role within SaaS and/or education/training sector experience.
• Experience of the EdTech/ HRTech/ LMSTech sector preferable but not mandatory, with passion about the professional development or education industry and the role of cognition in deliver employee/ learner achievement.
• You understand people and how to engage / deliver results in terms of training, product adoption as well as influencing usage, renewal, and growth opportunities.
• Self-motivated and driven by building your career by delivering customer-focused solutions to customer needs.
• You possess strong commercial acumen – with a solid understanding of commercial models and the ability to develop proposals to support renewal, upsell and cross sell opportunities.
• Demonstrable communication and relationship development skills via video and teleconference or face to face and the ability to communicate, present and influence key stakeholders at all levels of an organisation.
• Organised, hardworking and willing to build your career through delivering continued success with clients.
• A quick learner and the ability to work and think clearly when under pressure.
  
  

Key Competencies

• Solid experience with CRM software and MS Office (particularly MS Excel).
• Proven ability to juggle multiple account management projects at a time, while maintaining sharp attention to detail.
• Excellent listening, negotiation, and presentation abilities; and
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
  
  

Qualifications

• Experience of the Education and EdTech sector preferable but not mandatory, with passion about the education industry and the role of cognition in delivering learner achievement.
  
  

What's in it for You?

• EMI company share scheme, meaning you would own a percentage of shares, turning into significant monetary value in time.
• Competitive salary.
• Westfield Health cash plan.
• 1-2-1 Sanctus coaching sessions to support personal and professional development with proactive mental wellbeing support.
• Flexible working.
• A paid day off on your birthday.
• Aviva Life insurance.
• Workplace Nursery Benefit.
• Long service awards to celebrate key employment anniversaries.
• Excellent discounts/wider wallet.
• 5% matched contribution pension scheme
• Pension salary exchange scheme
• 25 days holiday + bank holidays (33 days).
• Paid wellbeing days, volunteer days, and study days.
• Quarterly All Star award.
• Annual company Summer event.
• Modern homeworking tech kit.
• Enhanced maternity & paternity pay.
• And being part of something AMAZING!
  
  

Cognassist is a Disability Confident Committed employer, and we welcome your application even if you believe you do not meet all of the above criteria - your unique skills, and experiences are valued, and your contribution could be exactly what we need to grow together.