Larry Weidel argues customer success should report to marketing, not sales, because sales chases new deals while success teams gather insights that drive growth. They train users, handle support, and learn what actually matters to decision-makers.
I often advise companies to move customer success under marketing because sales often doesn't want them. That great sales leader often wants the next deal and they don't care so much about renewing or upselling. And that customer success team, the person that takes you through your pipedrive or Salesforce CRM and teaches your people how to use it and does their support tickets and trains them to use more of it so that they now bring on more users and they get more value. Well that's a function sales usually doesn't want. They need it for revenue but we can deal with the revenue piece of it. But that's the most valuable place to get insights to what your customers and potential customers are actually doing, not just with your product. If you want to grow a company I need to know so much and be able to repeat so much about what your life is in your job as the decision maker that I can repeat back to you everything you're doing.