Customer Success Manager

Sapienceai; Seattle, Northern (WA, KY); Hybrid; USD 80,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Early-stage equity

Job summary

Sapience AI is seeking a Customer Success Manager to own customer relationships, onboarding, retention, and expansion. You’ll work within an early-stage, fast-paced environment, building playbooks and processes that turn customers into long-term advocates.

You’ll lead onboarding for associations, manage a portfolio of accounts, and drive renewal and growth with product and sales collaboration. Experience with CRM and CS platforms, strong communication, and the ability to operate with incomplete

Qualifications

• Experience managing a book of business with onboarding, retention, and expansion metrics.
• Comfort with early-stage dynamics—wearing multiple hats and influencing product direction.
• Exceptional communication skills—strategic with execs and actionable for individual users.
• Proven ability to build structure where little exists.
• Experience with CRM, CS, and project platforms (Salesforce, Gainsight, HubSpot, ClickUp, ChurnZero, or similar).

Responsibilities

• Lead onboarding for new association and membership organization customers—from kickoff to first value milestone.
• Build onboarding playbooks, self-serve guides, and enablement materials for scaling the customer base.
• Drive activation against milestones (content uploads, member engagement, admin adoption) within 30–60 days.
• Own a portfolio of accounts as primary contact for executive sponsors, admins, and platform champions.
• Conduct regular QBRs and check-ins to surface value, deepen relationships, and identify expansion opportunities.
• Proactively identify at-risk accounts and implement recovery plans before churn.
• Identify expansion signals and partner with AE to close growth within the base.
• Convert Freemium/Base-tier to Premium through demonstrated ROI and strategic nudging.
• Build and track a renewal pipeline with discipline and rigor.

Skills

Account management

Customer success

CRM

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication

Asynchronous work

Tools

Salesforce

Gainsight

HubSpot

ClickUp

ChurnZero

Job description

Sapience AI is the collective intelligence platform for professional communities. We sit above the CRMs, AMS platforms, and knowledge bases that organizations already run, and we turn the expertise scattered across them into something every member can search, act on, and share.

The intelligence a community needs is already inside it. Most organizations just cannot reach it. Knowledge lives in silos, in legacy systems, in the heads of a few experts, and in fragmented records no one can connect. We change that.

Our work is grounded in four commitments: technology elevates people and never replaces them, the best expertise is already inside the community, everything is built on trust, and every deployment is purpose-driven for the organization it serves.

Let’s achieve more, together.

About the Role

We're hiring a Customer Success Manager to own customer relationships, experience, and outcomes. As a Customer Success Manager, you'll be part of the team building the playbooks, relationships, and processes that turn customers into long-term advocates. You'll own onboarding, retention, expansion, and everything in between.

This is an early-stage, high-ambiguity environment. No established playbook is waiting for you here. You'll run your own customer conversations and make judgment calls with incomplete information at times, because that's the job. If you thrive in a fast-paced environment, love building things from scratch, and genuinely believe that customer outcomes are what matters most — keep reading.

What You’ll Do

Onboarding and Activation

• Lead onboarding for new association and membership organization customers — from kickoff through first value milestone
• Build and iterate on onboarding playbooks, self-serve guides, and enablement materials that scale across a growing customer base
• Drive customer activation against defined milestones (content uploads, member engagement, admin adoption) within the first 30–60 days

Retention and Relationship Management

• Own a portfolio of accounts and serve as the primary point of contact for key customer stakeholders — executive sponsors, platform admins, and platform champions
• Conduct regular QBRs and check-ins that surface value, deepen relationships, and identify expansion opportunities
• Proactively identify at-risk accounts and execute recovery plans before churn becomes a conversation

Expansion and Revenue Impact

• Identify and surface expansion signals — new use cases, additional tiers, member-facing programs — and partner with the AE to close growth within the base
• Convert Freemium and Base-tier customers to Premium services through demonstrated ROI and strategic nudging
• Build and track a renewal pipeline with the same discipline and rigor as new business

Voice of the Customer

• Translate customer feedback, friction points, and feature requests into structured product insights for the founding team
• Identify and elevate complex issues to higher-level support or management
• Develop and maintain customer health scoring, NPS feedback loops, and churn risk dashboards
• Champion customer stories internally — wins, testimonials, and case studies that fuel marketing and sales

What We're Looking For

We're looking for drivers, not passengers. Specifically:

• Experience managing a book of business with ownership over onboarding, retention, and expansion metrics — with the organizational skills to manage multiple accounts and priorities simultaneously
• Comfort with early-stage dynamics — experience wearing multiple hats and influencing product direction
• Exceptional communication skills — you can hold a strategic conversation with a C-suite exec and a how-to walkthrough with a first-time member in the same afternoon
• Proven ability to build structure where little exists
• Experience with CRM, CS, and project platforms (Salesforce, Gainsight, HubSpot, ClickUp, ChurnZero, or similar)
• A genuine affinity for the customer — you lose sleep over churn, celebrate renewals, and advocate relentlessly for the people you serve

Nice to Have (Strong Differentiators)

• Experience selling to or serving professional associations, membership organizations, nonprofits, or expert networks
• Background that spans both customer delivery and commercial outcomes — you understand that CS is a revenue function

Requirements

• 3–5 years in Customer Success, Project/Program Management, or a related customer-facing role
• Remote work experience with a proven track record of successfully managing independent workflows using asynchronous communication tools

How we hire

We review every application, and we encourage you to apply even if you do not match every line above. Research shows that talented people, especially those from underrepresented communities, often hold back when they do not meet every qualification. If that is the only thing holding you back, apply anyway.

Sapience AI is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to a workplace where everyone, regardless of background, has a voice in building what comes next.

Compensation

Base Salary: $80,000 - $95,000 + early stage equity

• Generous health and wellness benefits

Sapience AI is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of gender, race or color, ethnicity or national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. If you need an accommodation to complete our application process, let your recruiter know.