forget roles. focus on expertise.

Forget roles for a minute. What expertise do your customers need access to?

We spend so much time debating CSM ratios, specialization, and org charts. But focusing solely on roles can obscure what matters: ensuring customers can tap into the specific knowledge they need to succeed, regardless of who delivers it. Rigid roles often fail to meet fluid customer needs.

Thinking in terms of expertise reveals four critical categories:

Deep Industry Knowledge

This is intimate understanding of the customer's world — the dynamics of their roles, standard workflows, common practices, and business challenges. It might be baked into vertical software, or it might come from hiring people directly from the industries you serve. Without this, your advice lacks crucial context.

Mastery of Your Product

This is the most obvious one. You need people who know your product inside and out — how to implement it, support it, troubleshoot it, and maximize its capabilities. This is table stakes for any tech company.

Strategic Engagement Guidance

Ah, this may be a new one... and it isn't just about project management; it's the how. How do you partner with the customer to collaboratively plan and deliver value through the product? It’s about building the roadmap for their success, guiding change management, and ensuring the product connects to their strategic goals.

Commercial Acumen

This covers working with the customer when they want to upgrade, expand, downgrade, or renew. It involves understanding contracts, navigating budgets, and structuring win-win commercial options that align with the value delivered.

Of course, how you deliver this expertise varies dramatically based on customer type and contract size. Your small customers might receive most industry and product guidance through in-app tips (think Pendo.io), a robust knowledge base, or a thriving community. Strategic accounts, meanwhile, might get full-blown consulting treatment with dedicated teams and partners.

But here's the non-negotiable part: you must cover all four bases for every segment. The delivery mechanism changes, but the need for access to industry, product, engagement, and commercial expertise does not.

And how does AI fit in? AI can be a powerful scaler here — surfacing relevant industry insights for CSMs, powering contextual product help, analyzing engagement patterns to suggest the next best step, or even drafting initial commercial proposals based on usage data. It can augment your team's ability to deliver expertise more efficiently across the board.

So, take stock. Do your customers have access to all four types of expertise they need, delivered in a way that makes sense for their segment?

How are you ensuring all your bases are covered?

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