Build CS from scratch with confidence

In Partnership With

Hey CS Pro,

No onboarding. No journey maps. Just a product, a few customers, and a lot of pressure.

If you’re the first Customer Success hire, this episode is your survival kit.

But first, today’s sponsor

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Post-sales leaders are under more pressure than ever to deliver personalized, scalable experiences while driving revenue impact.

That’s why EverAfter surveyed over 120 leaders to create the 2025 Customer Success Benchmark Report, a deep dive into how top companies are approaching onboarding, renewals, expansion, and AI adoption.

The report is packed with insights, best practices, and trends shaping the future of Customer Success. And the best part? You can download it today for free.

EverAfter is the AI-native, customer-facing interface trusted by companies like Okta, Salesforce, and ZoomInfo to deliver seamless customer experiences across the entire post-sales journey.

Go to everafter.ai/benchmark to grab your copy and see how your team stacks up

What NOT to do when you’re starting from zero

Most companies bring in CS way too late. The product is live, customers are already churning, and then someone on the exec team goes… “Maybe we need Customer Success?”

So you walk in and suddenly you’re responsible for everything. But here’s what you don’t want to do:

Mistake 1: Trying to build everything at once

Success plans, QBR decks, onboarding flows, health scores… all in your first 90 days? Nope. That leads to burnout, overpromising, and under-delivering. Start with one thing that truly matters and build from there.

Mistake 2: Copy-pasting big company playbooks

What worked at Salesforce probably won’t work at a 30-person startup. The maturity of your product, customer base, and internal teams matters. Borrow ideas, sure, but always adapt for your reality.

Mistake 3: Only focusing on renewals

Renewals are lagging indicators. Instead, focus on what drives them: onboarding, adoption, and value delivery. That’s where real impact starts.

Mistake 4: Going it alone

Customer Success isn’t a silo. You’ll hit a wall fast if you try to build without input from sales, product, support, or marketing. CS needs to be a company-wide mindset, not a solo mission.

Mistake 5: Measuring the wrong things

NPS and check-in volume don’t equal value. You want to measure outcomes like onboarding completion, goal achievement, and product adoption. What gets measured gets improved and vanity metrics just won’t cut it.

What to actually do instead

Now that we’ve covered what not to do, here’s how to build your Customer Success motion from scratch in a way that works.

Step 1: Map your customer journey

Not a pretty PDF. Just a clear internal view of the customer journey. Start with phases like onboarding, adoption, expansion, and renewal. Then ask, what does success look like for the customer at each of those stages?

Step 2: Align internally on what success means

Bring your team together. Sales, product, leadership. Ask them what Customer Success actually means to them. You cannot measure what hasn’t been defined.

Step 3: Build your minimum viable CS motion

• One success plan template.

• One onboarding checklist.

• One business review format.

That’s it. You can always scale and refine later. Keep it simple and focus on doing one thing really well.

Step 4: Involve every department

• Sales for handoffs.

• Product for adoption and feedback.

• Marketing for case studies and messaging.

• Support for issue tracking.

Customer Success is everyone’s job. Get everyone aligned around the journey.

Step 5: Track early metrics, even manually

You do not need a fancy tool. Just open a spreadsheet and start tracking onboarding completion, product usage, churn reasons, and expansion signals. Tracking is how you get visibility, buy-in, and momentum.

Weekly Challenge from the Podcast

Your one task this week:

Map your minimum viable customer journey.

Write down the basic stages (onboarding, adoption, expansion, renewal) and define one desired outcome and one possible play for each stage. That’s it. No full playbook needed. Just enough clarity to build momentum.

If you keep it simple, you’ll avoid overwhelm. And clarity is what drives strategic action.

That’s it for this week! This solo episode is for every CSM, CS leader, or startup builder who’s been dropped into a CS role with zero resources.

Have a listen to the latest podcast:

I hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us.

Cheers to your CS success,

Anika

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