Internal Alignment and Revenue Growth in Customer Success: Insights from the LA Executive Roundtable

Arrows recently co-hosted the LA Executive Roundtable with Origin 63, an Elite HubSpot partner specializing in HubSpot setup for customer success and support teams.

The event was a mix of thoughtful discussion, actionable takeaways, and genuine conversations about one of the biggest challenges in customer success:

How can customer success teams align with other departments to drive revenue growth?

Over brunch, we heard from industry leaders and experts who tackled topics like breaking down internal silos, proving the value of customer success to leadership, and rethinking onboarding strategies to reduce churn. Here’s a recap of the highlights and key insights.

Internal Alignment: The Foundation for Customer Success and Onboarding

Key Insight: You can’t deliver exceptional onboarding—or effective customer success—without strong internal alignment.

In their session, Kim Hacker and Shareil Nariman  shared insights from their experiences running onboarding programs at both startups and public companies, highlighting the hidden ways siloed teams derail customer onboarding and retention efforts.

“What we always come back to is: you can’t build a good customer experience without good internal alignment, especially around customer success.” – Kim Hacker

The Problem with Silos

Sales teams rushing to close deals without proper handoffs, customer success teams scrambling to make sense of missing information, and product teams building features that don’t solve real customer problems—these issues may sound familiar. The result is often frustrated teams, churned customers, and untapped opportunities.

At Sprout Social, Shareil faced these challenges head-on: “We were bringing on a thousand-plus subscriptions a month, and only five percent of them were getting some degree of handoff support.” Customers frequently expressed their frustration when asked for the same information repeatedly, leading to negative experiences and early churn.

The “Onboarding Guild” Approach

To break the cycle, Shareil launched an Onboarding Guild, a cross-functional group of leaders from sales, marketing, product, and CS. The meetings focused on identifying key challenges, creating actionable solutions, and building shared accountability for customer outcomes.

“We weren’t just identifying problems; we were finding solutions—together. That alignment made all the difference.” – Shareil Nariman

One success story involved focusing on a seemingly small feature: tagging content. By working across teams to promote the feature during onboarding, in marketing materials, and through in-app guidance, they drove adoption and reduced churn.

Steps for Better Team Alignment

Kim and Shareil outlined practical steps for teams looking to foster collaboration and streamline onboarding:

• Start Small: Tackle one or two specific pain points, such as improving CRM handoffs or clarifying customer expectations during onboarding.
• Tie Efforts to Metrics: Track measurable outcomes like time-to-first-value and feature adoption rates to demonstrate the business impact of onboarding improvements.
• Create a Feedback Loop: Regularly bring teams together to share insights from customers and address challenges collaboratively.

Building Momentum for Long-Term Change

Kim emphasized the importance of starting with small wins to build trust and momentum: “If you meet with someone in sales or support who’s willing to champion the process, you can set a foundation for bigger conversations down the line.”

When teams align, the benefits extend far beyond efficiency. Improved collaboration creates a ripple effect that enhances the customer experience, strengthens onboarding, and supports long-term retention and growth.

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Turning Customer Success into a Revenue Driver

Key Insight: Customer success teams need to focus on measurable business outcomes to demonstrate their value as revenue drivers.

In her talk, Jan Young, a seasoned CX consultant and coach, explained the traditional view of customer success as a cost center. She shared actionable strategies for CS teams to shift perceptions and tie their efforts to meaningful business metrics.

Understanding the Cost Center Perception

Jan explained why customer success often struggles to prove its value to leadership. “In the profit and loss statement, CS is considered cost of goods sold,” she noted. “It’s inherently seen as a cost center because of how it’s accounted for.” This positioning makes customer success one of the first areas considered for cuts during lean times.

To counter this narrative, Jan encouraged teams to document and communicate their impact on retention, expansions, and referrals—key areas where CS can directly contribute to revenue.

Strategies to Shift the Narrative

Jan highlighted several ways teams can elevate their role and gain executive buy-in:

• Track and Celebrate Milestones: Mark customer achievements like onboarding completion and feature adoption. “If you onboard them but don’t celebrate the launch, you’ve missed an opportunity to reinforce their progress,” Jan explained.
• Focus on Business Value: Customers care about how your product impacts their business goals. Jan emphasized that it’s not enough to simply deliver value—you must also show them that value in clear, quantifiable terms.
• Tie Customer Success to Revenue Metrics: Align CS initiatives with metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV) and expansion revenue to highlight their direct impact on the bottom line.

Building Advocates and Referrals

One of the most powerful insights Jan shared was the importance of creating advocates. “Referral customers are 50 times less expensive to sell to than new acquisitions,” she said, underscoring how strong customer relationships can drive growth.

To build advocacy, Jan recommended creating intentional processes for identifying and nurturing satisfied customers who can promote your product or service. These processes help generate leads and foster long-term loyalty.

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Customer Success and Onboarding: The Hot Topics

While the roundtable discussions covered various aspects of customer success, customer onboarding emerged as a central theme.

Attendees shared candid experiences about their struggles with onboarding, revealing common challenges:

• Incomplete Handoffs: Sales teams often fail to provide customer success teams with the necessary context to hit the ground running.
• Retention Risks: Customers disengage early when they don’t see value quickly, jeopardizing renewals.
• Demonstrating ROI: Many teams find it difficult to show leadership how onboarding directly impacts business outcomes like churn reduction and upsells.

These challenges reflect the critical role onboarding plays in the broader customer journey. As one attendee noted during the discussions, “Without a strong onboarding process, customers rarely reach the value they signed up for.”

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Final Thoughts: Building a Culture of Collaboration in Customer Success

The LA Executive Roundtable highlighted a critical insight: customer success teams thrive when organizations foster collaboration and align around shared goals. Whether it’s improving handoffs between sales and CS or demonstrating the revenue impact of success initiatives, the solutions discussed emphasized practical, incremental steps toward better outcomes.

As Kim Hacker noted, focusing on a single process or creating a consistent feedback loop can set the stage for lasting change. Jan Young underscored the importance of clearly documenting and communicating the value delivered to customers and internal teams alike. These actions help build trust, drive retention, and create stronger connections across the organization.

By prioritizing alignment and measurable outcomes, teams can not only improve how they operate but also elevate the experience they deliver to their customers.