Customer success manager vs customer service director

The differences between customer success managers and customer service directors can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes 6-8 years to become a customer success manager, becoming a customer service director takes usually requires 4-6 years. Additionally, a customer service director has an average salary of $134,962, which is higher than the $93,820 average annual salary of a customer success manager.

The top three skills for a customer success manager include client facing, cloud and account management. The most important skills for a customer service director are customer satisfaction, customer support, and continuous improvement.

Customer success manager vs customer service director overview

	Customer Success Manager	Customer Service Director
Yearly salary	$93,820	$134,962
Hourly rate	$45.11	$64.89
Growth rate	5%	6%
Number of jobs	95,053	158,016
Job satisfaction	-	-
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 78%	Bachelor's Degree, 69%
Average age	46	47
Years of experience	8	6

What does a customer success manager do?

A customer success manager works to understand repeat customers and prioritize their long-term needs. Primarily, they manage the customer relationship and give them prompt value propositions. They act as mentors to customers by educating them about the sales process and ensure efficient transaction processing. Their tasks include advocating for the company, onboarding customers to the products, follow-up on renewals, and encouraging cross-sells and upsells. Additionally, they build relationships with the customer and the support team as well as advocating customers' needs.

What does a customer service director do?

A customer service director is primarily in charge of spearheading and overseeing the efforts in customer service operations. It is their duty to establish goals and guidelines that will usher the workforce in building strong and positive relationships with clients, develop strategies to optimize procedures, identify the strengths and weaknesses of current processes, implement solutions, and conduct research to find new business and client opportunities. Furthermore, as a director, it is essential to lead and encourage the workforce to reach goals, all while implementing the company's policies and regulations.

Customer success manager vs customer service director salary

Customer success managers and customer service directors have different pay scales, as shown below.

	Customer Success Manager	Customer Service Director
Average salary	$93,820	$134,962
Salary range	Between $61,000 And $142,000	Between $94,000 And $191,000
Highest paying City	Redwood City, CA	Olympia, WA
Highest paying state	California	Washington
Best paying company	VMware	VMware
Best paying industry	Technology	Health Care

Differences between customer success manager and customer service director education

There are a few differences between a customer success manager and a customer service director in terms of educational background:

	Customer Success Manager	Customer Service Director
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 78%	Bachelor's Degree, 69%
Most common major	Business	Business
Most common college	University of Pennsylvania	California State University - Bakersfield

Customer success manager vs customer service director demographics

Here are the differences between customer success managers' and customer service directors' demographics:

	Customer Success Manager	Customer Service Director
Average age	46	47
Gender ratio	Male, 54.9% Female, 45.1%	Male, 55.0% Female, 45.0%
Race ratio	Black or African American, 3.2% Unknown, 4.4% Hispanic or Latino, 9.8% Asian, 4.1% White, 78.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%	Black or African American, 9.6% Unknown, 4.8% Hispanic or Latino, 18.2% Asian, 5.9% White, 60.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.7%
LGBT Percentage	7%	8%

Differences between customer success manager and customer service director duties and responsibilities

Customer success manager example responsibilities.

Help doctors manage their facebook page and website.
Achieve excellent performance results as compared to other Aarons stores.
Help customers establish spend and savings goals and achieve those to get full ROI.
Link QuickBooks system with customer sales database to automate the process of tax administration.
Well verse in leveraging CRM to manage accounts, capture metrics, and implement relevant processes.
Raise RingCentral's NPS score, by creating superb relations with clients that lead to increase survey ratings.

Customer service director example responsibilities.

Manage basic call center KPIs as well as worked closely with sales relate to new promotions and issues.
Manage payroll hours to ensure maximum productivity.
Manage domestic and international logistics operations for a plastics manufacturer with 4 warehouses , 2 manufacturing plants and 5 third-party warehouses.
Create ERP system base validation process, diminishing shipping errors to rate of 1 in every 15K lines and 5.3 sigma.
Work with medicare and medicaid.
Identify serious flaws in ERP set-up and thus metrics used to guide the company.

Customer success manager vs customer service director skills

Common customer success manager skills

Client Facing, 10%
Cloud, 7%
Account Management, 7%
Customer Relationships, 5%
Saas, 5%
Customer Service, 5%

Common customer service director skills

Customer Satisfaction, 14%
Customer Support, 6%
Continuous Improvement, 6%
CRM, 4%
Project Management, 4%
Employee Development, 4%

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Customer Success Manager
Customer Success Manager vs Customer Service Director

Updated January 8, 2025

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