The Role of Customer Success in Shaping Company Culture
By Kristen Hayer
Customer success teams often reflect a company’s culture. They absorb the tone of leadership, adjust to internal expectations, and adapt to the structures around them. But what if CS teams didn’t just mirror culture, but instead helped to define it?
This article is about flipping the narrative. Customer success has the potential to shape company culture from the inside out. When CS teams step into that role, they can influence how organizations think about accountability, communication, and collaboration.
CS Has a Unique Cultural Viewpoint
Customer success sits in a rare position. Most CS teams have visibility into both the customer experience and the internal operations that support it. They hear what customers actually say. They also witness how internal teams respond to those voices.
Because of this dual perspective, CS becomes a kind of early-warning system for cultural disconnects. If product teams aren’t aligned with customer needs, CS sees the issues first. If sales overpromises and delivery struggles, CS feels the tension. This awareness positions customer success to play a key role in shaping how the company operates and collaborates.
Where CS Can Shape Culture
Customer success teams already influence culture in subtle ways. However, by making that influence intentional, CS can have a powerful ripple effect across the business. Here are three areas where Success can actively shape how a company functions.
Accountability
At its core, customer success is about delivering outcomes. That requires clear ownership. Not in an “I own this customer all by myself” kind of way (see my recent article on account ownership) but in an “I am taking accountability for this outcome” kind of way. When CS teams model accountability — for results, for communication, for timelines — it sets a tone that others often follow.
Accountability is also about boundaries. CS leaders who resist taking on work that belongs to other teams reinforce the idea that accountability is shared, not outsourced. That shift is cultural.
Listening
CS professionals are natural listeners. But that skill can go beyond customer conversations. CS can model how to listen well across teams, how to surface insights without blame, and how to advocate for the voice of the customer with clarity.
When companies start to internalize customer listening as a shared responsibility — not just something CS does — that shift begins to influence product decisions, go-to-market strategies, and leadership priorities.
Cross-Functional Alignment
Customer success teams are often the connective tissue in a business. They bridge the gap between sales and support, product and marketing, leadership and the front line.
This gives CS an opportunity to lead by example. Teams that align around outcomes instead of departments help foster a culture of collaboration. When CS sets the tone for that kind of partnership, it becomes easier for other functions to follow.
The Risk of Staying Passive
When CS teams see themselves as responders to culture rather than participants in it, they risk becoming a catch-all for what’s broken. Poor product-market fit, gaps in onboarding, and weak communication: These problems often land at the feet of CS.
Without a clear cultural role, CS can get stuck in reactive mode. That’s where burnout happens. It’s also where customer outcomes suffer.
Stepping into a leadership role in culture doesn’t mean taking over. It means showing what good looks like. It means operating with intention, modeling the behaviors the company needs, and naming what is often left unsaid.
How CS Leaders Can Take the Lead
Culture is built through repeated behavior. Here are a few ways CS leaders can shape that behavior from within:
Model transparency in executive meetings by bringing in unfiltered customer feedback
Integrate CS values into team rituals like standups, onboarding, or retrospectives
Share stories that connect customer outcomes to internal work
Acknowledge cross-team wins publicly and frequently
Partner with HR or people teams to represent customer-centricity in company values or training
Each of these actions is small on its own. But together, they start to shift how people think and work.
A Cultural Challenge for CS Teams
If you’re in CS, consider this a challenge. Identify one place where your team is already shaping culture. Then ask: How could we make this influence more intentional?
Maybe you want to model better handoffs. Maybe you want to champion a new way of thinking about feedback. Whatever the area, take one step to lead by example.
Customer success is more than a function. It’s a lens into how the company actually operates. When CS professionals step into their cultural power, they help create organizations that are more accountable, more aligned, and more connected to their customers.
You don’t need permission to shape culture. You’re already doing it. The opportunity is to do it on purpose.
The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that offers a robust certification program for of both CS Leaders and CSMs (both with live instructors and now on-demand). Please visit our website at TheSuccessLeague.io for more.
Kristen Hayer - Kristen founded The Success League in 2015 and currently serves as the company's CEO. Over the past 25 years Kristen has been a success, sales, and marketing executive, primarily working with scaling tech companies, and leading several award-winning customer success teams. She has written over 100 articles on customer success, and is the host of 3 podcasts about the field. Kristen has served as a judge for the Customer Success Excellence awards, and is on the board of several early-stage tech companies. She received her MBA from the University of Washington in Seattle, and now lives in San Francisco.
