Evolving Customer Success and Renewals for High Tech and Software Growth

Amid ongoing retention pressure, shifting customer dynamics, and a continued emphasis on profitable growth over “growth at all costs,” high tech and software organizations are rethinking how to improve retention and fuel sustainable growth. Rethinking how customer success and renewals teams operate—and how they partner with sales—is a key step toward aligning with commercial goals.

Sustained pressure on net dollar retention rates persists, with many subscription software providers straying further from ideal targets (110-120%+).

Familiar challenges exist, but market and buyer behaviors are evolving

Many of the drivers that have recently contributed to declining net retention rates still apply—but the challenge has shifted from a “growth at all costs” mindset to one more focused on profitable, sustainable growth.

Despite external pressures, many root causes remain within a provider’s control—like immature renewals processes, siloed or un-actionable data, misaligned sales incentives, and fragmented customer engagement models. These internal barriers continue to limit retention performance even as external factors evolve.

A look at the current landscape

Retention pressure isn’t happening in a vacuum—it’s the result of multiple forces acting on the market, customers, and providers all at once.

Economic environment: Budget constraints from recent years persist, and many customers are reckoning with over-purchasing during the pandemic. Global uncertainty—including new tariffs and trade policies—adds pressure. In some cases, investors are pushing for faster returns.

Customer behavior: Organizations are applying more scrutiny to every dollar spent, cutting unused software and seeking higher value from active investments. Many are redirecting spend toward generative AI efforts—sometimes at the expense of traditional software. At the same time, price hikes from major providers are straining already tight budgets.

Software providers: Teams are still stretched thin. CCOs and CROs are being asked to deliver more with less. The working model between Sales and channel partners remains unclear. And while usage-based pricing may offer long-term gains, it introduces short-term churn and revenue compression.

Foundational challenges still matter. Poor forecasting, unclear ownership of the renewal process, or a disconnect between the product sold and customer outcomes can directly undermine retention. Without clarity across teams and systems, opportunities for expansion or churn mitigation are often missed.

What’s needed now: A shift in how customer success and renewal teams work

Many software providers navigating these challenges are revisiting models and motions. The goal? To ensure they’re aligned with their own strategic priorities, changing customer objectives and buying behaviors, and the need for growth. While driving healthy deployments, product adoption, and overall customer health is still paramount for post-sale teams, they’re taking a fresh look to understand how they can further impact growth—not just through renewals and retention but also expansion.

To get there, the roles of customer success and renewals need to evolve. These teams must play a more direct role in commercial strategy. We're seeing more emphasis on:

• Driving pricing uplift and consumption growth at the point of renewal
• Using product flip and swap plays to mitigate churn due to shelfware
• Expanding customer success involvement in cross-sell and upsell motions

Actions to take now managing retention and fueling growth

Translating strategy into action requires more than intention—it demands concrete changes across people, processes, and systems.

Make customer success more commercially oriented

Aligning CS with commercial objectives and account strategies means shifting the role profile, activities, and even metrics. For customer experience teams, this can mean:

• Changing the role of the customer success manager. Companies are increasing emphasis on a commercial toolkit within existing CSM profiles, and growing the CSM’s span of control in strategic, commercial discussions (versus “quarterbacking” other resources for various discussions and threads)
• Evolving customer success activities, success plans, and metrics to tie more directly to expansion and NRR goals—and, in some cases, measuring CS at least in part on net revenue retention

Rethinking teaming across sales, CS, and renewals

As customer success objectives change, re-examine existing account motions in this context to ensure coordination:

• Refresh the account segmentation and coverage strategy: Teams need to make sure that account segmentation is effective and appropriate, and that it is aligned across different teams. Then, assignment and coverage models need to be aligned to these segments—including potentially orienting CSMs and AEs in pods for tighter collaboration
• Update the ownership and accountability model for renewals and expansion across the teams to enforce the right teaming
• Refresh playbooks and templates for different segments, covering common inflection points like handovers, account planning, success planning & adoption, renewals, expansion, and at-risk scenarios

Clarify ownership and collaboration between sales, renewals, and CS. Without clearly defined roles, handoffs, and incentives, renewals will continue to fall into gray areas—leading to churn that could have been prevented.

Align incentives to support shared goals

Companies are updating targets, compensation, and teaming models to incentivize the right behavior—especially when teams must partner across traditional boundaries.

• Define which product swaps and flips should be prioritized
• Establish consistent revenue treatment in hybrid scenarios (e.g., upsell plus down-sell)
• Refresh pricing, uplift, and term length strategies
• Clarify upsell and cross-sell motions during renewals and off-cycle
• Introduce shared targets and revised comp models (e.g., expansion credit for CS and Renewals; renewal credit for Sales)

Modernize systems and data to support execution

Great strategy needs great tools. Teams need real-time access to customer usage and journey data to guide the right actions.

• Systems must support key plays like quoting, forecasting, commissions, and segmentation
• CS teams need visibility into usage, milestones, and risk indicators
• Retention performance must be measured granularly—by product, by segment, and over time

Organizations still struggle with disjointed or siloed data—limiting visibility into churn signals, customer health, and journey milestones. Inaccurate churn reason codes and inconsistent tracking make it difficult to pinpoint true root causes, let alone act on them.

Authors: Derek Lyon, Nadim Rajabi