warning: your CS model won’t scale (here’s why)
From rare events becoming common to the 'robustness tax,' learn why scaling demands new CS strategies.
April 6, 2025
"At scale, rare things become common."
The math is profound for customer success: At 10 customers, one angry escalation a year is all-hands-on-deck. The CEO might personally call the customer.
At 10,000, if just 0.1% have critical issues weekly, that's 10 escalations every week — a full-time job requiring a dedicated team.
Think about your current "rare" events: complex edge cases, unusual integrations, custom contract needs. Today, they might be quarterly occurrences. At 10x scale, they become weekly or daily operational challenges demanding standard processes, specialists, playbooks, and technology solutions, not just individual heroics…
One person handling all onboarding seems efficient — until they get sick, take vacation, or leave. Then, onboarding stops.
Scale requires resilience, which means building systems and teams, even if it feels less efficient per person initially.
Stripe, for example, maintained quality and improved time-to-value as they scaled to millions of merchants because they built robust systems (specialized teams, productized onboarding, knowledge bases, decision frameworks) instead of relying solely on brilliant individuals.
You're trading temporary individual efficiency for sustainable organizational resilience. Success isn't just retaining customers; it's when your star CSM leaves and satisfaction doesn't drop.
This is the necessary evolution for scale; the alternative is constant firefighting.
A CS initiative improving retention by 2% means 2 accounts saved at 100 customers (a startup win), but 200 accounts saved at 10,000 (a multi-million dollar win).
The paradox is that, as you scale, "material impact" scales too. Your CEO needs initiatives affecting hundreds of customers, not just the two saves celebrated in the early days.
High-tough programs that delighted early customers (like white-glove QBRs, custom reports, or broad exec sponsors) simply don't scale economically across a large base.
This is why mature CS organizations develop tiered service models that limit certain high-touch activities to segments where the economics make sense. They invest in technology platforms that scale impact without scaling headcount linearly.
Leaders must shift from celebrating heroic one-off saves to building systematic programs, asking "How can we improve NRR across our entire base?" rather than "How can we save this individual account?"
The individual account still matters, but you need frameworks to determine when the investment is warranted versus when standard processes should apply.
Scaling inevitably breaks internal communication. Sharing strategy with nine people is easy; ensuring clear understanding across hundreds is exponentially harder.
Large companies struggle with what Amazon's Werner Vogels calls the "two-pizza problem" — information doesn't easily flow between teams larger than can be fed with two pizzas.
Success requires a deliberate strategy: simple, repeatable messaging, shared visual frameworks, constant reinforcement, and training managers to echo the core principles.
The best CS leaders at scale don't communicate more — they communicate fewer points more effectively. Find your core principles and repeat them until you're tired of saying them, because that's when they're starting to sink in with your organization.
Success is when your most junior CSM can explain your customer model and service approach as clearly as you can.
Startups can be agile; scaled companies require predictability because other teams depend on it. Marketing, Sales, Finance, Product, and Recruiting all rely on consistent CS timelines, metrics, and forecasts.
Critically, you must predict CS headcount needs 4-6 months ahead to hire and train before you're overwhelmed, especially during growth spurts.
This shift from reactive heroism to proactive planning is survival. It requires consistent processes, capacity planning, early warning systems, and buffer capacity — achieving responsiveness through systems, not just sheer effort.
For CS leaders scaling their organizations, these shifts require fundamental changes:
Embrace low-touch
The high-touch model won't multiply. Design for the company you're becoming, not the one you were. Zoom, for instance, blended high-touch with digital-led experiences as they scaled.
Segment with strategic intent
Base service levels on economics and strategic value. Think Shopify Plus vs. standard merchants — different models for different segments.
Build systems, not heroes
Celebrate scalable processes. Your stars should design systems that elevate everyone. Atlassian serves huge customer volumes via scalable enablement, not individual heroics.
Internal communication is critical
How your team understands customers is as vital as customer comms. Twilio systematized sharing customer insights across departments to maintain alignment during growth.
Specialize
Generalists must give way to specialists (onboarding, adoption, renewals, etc.). Salesforce evolved from general account managers to specialized roles to handle massive scale.
Many CS leaders resist this evolution because the personalized approach feels right. It aligns with our values of putting customers first. They worry that systems and specialization will make the experience feel transactional.
The irony? Maintaining an unsustainable model as you scale harms those same customers through inconsistent experiences, burnout-driven turnover, and reactive rather than proactive engagement.
The greatest gift you can give customers at scale isn't preserving the old way — it's building a sustainable organization that will serve them reliably for years.
"What got us here won't get us there."
The uncomfortable truth: Scale fundamentally changes how you must engage with customers. Period.
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We’re grateful you choose to read each week.
When you’re ready for more, there are a couple ways we can help:
» Cover Your SaaS is a financial literacy course for go-to-market leaders. Grab your copy here.
» Promote your product and services to over 4,000+ senior SaaS Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success pros by sponsoring our twice-weekly newsletter and podcast.
