Customer Success Performance Coach

IRIS; Manchester; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

IRIS Software Group in Manchester is seeking a Performance Lead to coach Customer Success and Renewals teams toward proactive, value-led conversations. You’ll work alongside managers and Learning & Development to translate performance data into practical action.

You'll help teams move from ticket-based support to outcomes, improve conversations, spot risks early, and drive retention and renewal. This hands-on role emphasizes coaching on adoption, value and commercial outcomes.

Qualifications

• Experience in Customer Success, Renewals, or Account Management in SaaS.
• Strong coaching and feedback skills.
• Ability to coach teams to adopt value-led conversations.

Responsibilities

• Provide practical coaching to improve performance, confidence and conversations.
• Help teams move from ticket-led to outcome-led by reinforcing consistent expectations.
• Support managers with coaching plans, feedback, and onboarding.
• Lead by example on day-to-day coaching on customer ownership and renewal conversations.
• Share best practice and create playbooks, prompts and resources.

Skills

Customer Success

Renewals

Coaching

Performance coaching

CRM Usage

Stakeholder Management

Tools

Salesforce

Job description

About IRIS

IRIS Software Group is one of the UK’s largest privately held software companies, trusted by 100,000+ businesses, schools and accountancy firms to keep their operations running. Our software pays 1 in 6 UK employees, supports over 12,000 schools, and is relied on by 91 of the top 100 UK accountancy firms.

We’re a Great Place to Work® certified employer, recognised for our commitment to well-being, inclusion and development - and we’re growing fast.

At IRIS, we build software that helps organisations work smarter, save time, stay compliant, and achieve more.

Our customers rely on our products every day, and our Customer Success and Renewals teams play a key role in helping them get value, stay engaged, and continue their partnership with us.

We’re now looking for a Performance Lead - Customer Success & Renewals to help our teams continue moving from a more reactive, ticket-based way of working to a more proactive, outcome-led and commercially confident approach.

This is a hands-on coaching and enablement role.

You won’t be line managing the team. Instead, you’ll be visible with our Customer Success Managers and Renewals Specialists, helping people understand what good looks like, improve customer conversations, build confidence, and turn the right behaviours into everyday habits.

You’ll work closely with managers, leaders, and Learning & Development to help make performance improvement practical, clear, and consistent.

Why This Role Matters

Great Customer Success is about more than answering queries or closing tickets.

It is about understanding what the customer is trying to achieve, helping them get value from our products, spotting risk early, building strong relationships, and supporting retention and renewal.

That shift takes coaching, consistency, and reinforcement.

That’s where you come in.

You’ll help our teams build the confidence, skills, and commercial awareness needed to have better customer conversations and drive better outcomes.

You’ll help people understand:

• what good customer ownership looks like

• how to move from reactive support to proactive value-led conversations

• how to spot customer risk and act early

• how to talk confidently about adoption, value, retention and renewal

• how to use performance feedback in a constructive way

• how to build stronger habits around activity, follow-up and customer outcomes

Simply put, you’ll help make the change happen on the office floor.

About the Team You’ll Join

You’ll work across our Customer Success and Renewals teams, supporting colleagues who are focused on helping customers stay engaged, get value from IRIS products, and continue their partnership with us.

You’ll partner closely with:

• Customer Success Managers

• Renewals Specialists

• Frontline Managers

• Customer Success Leaders

• Renewals Leaders

• Learning & Development

• Senior Customer Success stakeholders

This role is about being close to the team, understanding what is happening day to day, and helping managers and colleagues turn performance goals into practical action.

What You’ll Be Doing

No two weeks will look exactly the same.

One day you might be sitting with a Customer Success Manager to review how they approached a customer conversation.

The next, you might be helping a Renewals Specialist build confidence around a commercial discussion, supporting a new starter with their ramp plan, or working with a manager to reinforce consistent expectations across their team.

You might listen to calls, review CRM activity, look at performance trends, share best practice, or coach someone through how to handle a difficult customer situation.

Your focus will include:

Coaching Customer Success and Renewals colleagues

You’ll provide practical, supportive coaching to help people improve their performance, confidence and customer conversations.

You’ll help colleagues understand what good looks like, where they can improve, and what actions they can take straight away.

This could include coaching around customer ownership, renewal conversations, adoption, value, risk, follow-up, objection handling, call quality, activity levels or customer engagement.

Helping the team move from ticket-led to outcome-led

You’ll help reinforce the shift from simply responding to customer requests to taking ownership of customer outcomes.

That means encouraging people to think beyond the immediate query and ask:

• What is the customer trying to achieve?

• Are they getting value from the product?

• Is there a risk we need to act on?

• What action should we take next?

• How do we support retention and renewal?

You’ll help make this mindset clear, practical and consistent across the team.

Supporting managers

You won’t be there to replace managers, but you will help them land the message.

You’ll work with frontline managers to reinforce expectations, share themes, support coaching conversations, and help build consistency across teams.

You may support managers with performance check-ins, new starter progress, quality reviews, or practical coaching plans for colleagues who need extra help.

Supporting new starters

You’ll help new colleagues ramp up successfully by giving them practical support, guidance and feedback.

You’ll work with managers and L&D to understand where new starters are progressing well and where they may need more help.

You’ll also feed back any common themes that could improve onboarding, training or early-stage support.

Using data and insight to guide action

You don’t need to be a data analyst, but you do need to be comfortable using performance information to spot patterns and focus your coaching.

This could include CRM activity, call quality, customer feedback, renewal progress, customer health, activity levels, target progress, new starter ramp, or manager feedback.

The key is being able to turn insight into simple, practical action.

Sharing best practice

You’ll help create consistency by spotting what is working well and sharing it across teams.

That might mean helping build coaching guides, call examples, conversation prompts, playbooks, checklists, or simple best-practice resources that help people do the job better.

What We’re Looking For

We’re less interested in job titles and more interested in relevant experience.

You may currently be, or have previously been, a:

• Customer Success Manager

• Senior Customer Success Manager

• Renewals Manager

• Senior Renewals Specialist

• Account Manager

• Senior Account Manager

• Customer Success Team Leader

• Renewals Team Leader

• Customer Success Coach

• Customer Success Enablement Specialist

• Sales Enablement Specialist

• Commercial Enablement Specialist

• Customer Experience Coach

• Performance Coach

This could be a great move if you have previously managed a Customer Success, Renewals or Account Management team and now want to step away from direct line management while still helping people improve.

It could also suit a strong Senior CSM, Renewals Specialist or Account Manager who is known for doing the job well and now wants to pass on their experience to others.

Essential Experience

You’ll likely be a strong fit if you have:

• Experience in Customer Success, Renewals, Account Management, SaaS, subscription services, or another customer-facing commercial environment.

• A good understanding of what makes customer-facing teams successful.

• Confidence coaching others and helping people improve through practical feedback.

• Experience supporting customer conversations linked to value, adoption, retention, renewal, risk or commercial outcomes.

• The ability to help teams move from reactive customer handling to proactive, outcome-led customer conversations.

• Comfort using performance information, CRM activity, call reviews, customer feedback or manager insight to spot where support is needed.

• Strong communication skills and the confidence to give clear, constructive feedback.

• The ability to build trust quickly with frontline colleagues and managers.

• A practical, hands-on approach and the confidence to be visible with the team.

• The ability to reinforce expectations in a positive, consistent and supportive way.

• A genuine interest in helping people improve and succeed.

Desirable Experience

• It would be useful, but not essential, if you also have:

• Experience in a software or SaaS business.

• Experience supporting Customer Success or Renewals teams.

• Experience using Salesforce or another CRM system.

• Experience in coaching, enablement, training or performance improvement.

• Experience supporting new starter onboarding or ramp-up.

• Experience reviewing calls, customer conversations, activity data or quality measures.

• Experience helping teams become more commercially confident.

You’ll Thrive In This Role If You…

• Enjoy being close to the team and making things happen day to day.

• Like coaching people in real situations, not just in formal training sessions.

• Can explain things clearly and simply.

• Know how to challenge people positively while keeping trust.

• Are confident speaking to both frontline colleagues and managers.

• Can spot when someone needs extra support and help them take practical next steps.

• Care about customer outcomes, not just activity.

• Understand that performance improvement is about habits, consistency and follow-through.

• Are happy being visible, hands-on and part of the office-floor rhythm.

• Want to help a team change how it thinks, works and talks to customers.

Why Apply?

This is a great opportunity to use your Customer Success, Renewals, Account Management or commercial experience in a different way.

You’ll have the chance to help shape how our teams work, coach people through real customer conversations, and support a shift towards a more proactive, outcome-led and commercially confident way of working.

You’ll enjoy:

• A hands-on coaching role with visible impact.

• The chance to support Customer Success and Renewals teams directly.

• The opportunity to influence customer retention and customer experience.

• A role where you can pass on your experience without directly line managing a team.

• Variety, ownership and close partnership with managers and leaders.

• A supportive environment within a growing software business.

• Competitive salary and benefits package.

Why You’ll Love Working Here

• Impact: Your work will influence millions globally.

• Growth: Continuous learning and career development opportunities.

• Belonging: A culture that celebrates diversity and empowers every individual.