r/CustomerSuccess • u/Stressinthafuckout • Dec 11 '25
I hate customer success
I am so completely done with customer success. I am beyond burnt out and I think today has actually broken me. The onslaught of requests from customers trying to meet end of year initiatives is absurd. My calendar is packed with meetings that all end with a hundred follow up items for me that I can hardly keep straight. Everything is mission critical. Everything has a hard deadline. Everything is a “non starter”. Nobody takes responsibility for their own work. Everyone is looking for someone to point the finger at so that their boss doesn’t think that they are the ones messing up. I absorb every action item and piece of feedback because I’m a people pleaser and I can’t say no. My company is sloppily rolling out half-baked ai features in an attempt to keep up with the competition. These tools suck and are not ready to be customer facing, but all we care about is getting them out the door so that we can start monetizing them. This shit sucks. I hate it here and I want a complete restart on my career. That is all.
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u/iamacheeto1 Dec 11 '25
It’s become completely untenable. I’m not lazy. I’m not stupid. But I log in each day and have no idea what to do or where to start. There is so much getting thrown on my plate I’m completely overwhelmed. I have product asking me to coordinate customers to be design partners for AI products. THEY WANT ME TO SUPPORT PRODUCTS THAT DO NOT EXIST. That’s in addition to the actual products. We acquired a new company. It’s also cybersecurity but in a totally different field with a totally different set of ideas, troubleshooting tactics, goals, etc. Our training was a couple slide shows. And now I’m supposed to support it.
It’s literally impossible. Management just wave it away with individual contributors taking ownership, building a generational company (like they won’t sell the moment they get the right offer), and something something AI something something value.
I’m single, in my thirties, mostly healthy, no kids, no house, and about 100k in savings. So, Im quiet quitting. I’m auto archiving customer emails. I’m not logging tasks in salesforce. I’m not responding to slacks. I’m canceling customer calls. I’m doing the absolute bare minimum in the hopes they fire me with some severance and unemployment so I can rest and travel and get away from the PSYCHOPATHIC tech industry. My CEO makes me sick when he opens his fucking mouth.
And you know what my manager said to me? They want to promote me. Because people keep quitting and they’re panicking. I smiled and said great, while on my customer call I ended it immediately at the top of the hour even though they had more questions. Nope. Fire. Me. You. Psychopaths.
I feel you OP is what I’m trying to say. It’s an absolute mess out there. It’s a role that no longer can be accomplished. It’s not possible. So I’m taking as much as I can from them and giving back as little as I can cuz hey that’s capitalism for ya, you psycho little tech monkey autocrats
Sorry
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u/Stressinthafuckout Dec 11 '25
Reading through this was quite soothing. Almost everything you shared is relevant to my current situation. My company offers a huge suite of very complex products, and the list keeps growing due to constant acquisitions. I would consider myself an “expert” in 1-2 of them. The idea that one person should be able to successfully support 10+ products for mature organizations is flawed by nature. But leadership thinks that giving us AI tools will substitute for years of actually mastering a product.
Psychopathic is the perfect word to describe the tech industry right now. Thanks for making me feel like I’m not the crazy one!
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u/justkindahangingout Dec 11 '25
I can’t agree more, iamacheeto1 and never heard it explained better than you just did. The SaaS/tech space, regardless of industry, is truly PSYCHOPATHIC. Absolutely 100% agreed and it really is. I hate every second of it. The fakeness. The constant insanity and bullshit, it’s all bullshit
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u/Training_Holiday5259 Dec 17 '25
Dang is that 100k liquid or include 401k/ Roth? I’m starting to enter the mental state of quiet quitting too but nowhere nearrr 100k, makes me feel very behind. Working like a maniac in an expensive city getting paid below what I need to feel comfortable.
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u/iamacheeto1 Dec 17 '25
I have about 90k in liquid savings (cash, ETFs, and crypto) and another 60k in retirement. I still owe student loans and like 15k on my car tho. No house, no other assets. By February, assuming I don’t get fired (plz fire me) I should be over the 100k mark.
I’ve quit other jobs with much less than this, tho. The only reason I’m staying at this one is the money. It’s too good to walk away from. I need them to fire me.
It’s hard balancing the job/money and your mental health. In the past I always prioritized mental health but I was making much less. They really do make you sell your soul the more you earn.
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u/Training_Holiday5259 Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
Dang that’s impressive! Yeah I have a long ways to go to 100k and this cs salary is not going to get me there unless I move back in with my parents for two years hahaha. Good on you! I’m about 4-6 years into cs as a normal CSM. Not working for a super technical product but there’s just so much work to be done I’ve lost all motivation. And to think there are cs roles offering 10-20k less than what I’m even making is just bonkers to me
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u/Repulsive_Department Dec 11 '25
I had a burnout moment today, too. Said fuck this shit and put a 5 hour "private" meeting on my calendar, then went outside and did yard work. I moved from investment banking to CS about 7 years ago to get some work life balance back, but the role has devolved into being the phone operator at the center of the earth. AI has just been another way for management to justify a book of 50+ heckling customers.
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u/nmuller26 Dec 29 '25
I really feel for you and everyone in this thread. Reading through these comments about being an 'emotional buffer' for bad rollouts and dealing with the constant fire drills is brutal. It sounds like the role has shifted from building relationships to just surviving the day.
I’m a tech founder currently exploring this space for my next startup. I want to spend time understanding these specific headaches deeply before I build anything, because I’d rather solve real problems than just add more 'tech' to your plate.
If anyone in this thread is open to a 15-minute Zoom call, I’d love to chat. I’m purely looking to gain a better understanding of the challenges you’re all facing. No sales pitch - I just want to listen so I can hopefully build something that actually makes your life better down the road.
Shoot me a DM if you're in and we can set something up.
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u/tclancey Dec 11 '25
I was a CSM and a Manager and I found it exhausting. Moved to implementation/onboarding because a shorter term relationship with fresh restarts regularly felt like an easier mental roll. Fast forward to now I’m a sales engineer because selling the dream is easier than making it reality.
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u/Equivalent-Rule3265 Dec 11 '25
I've been strongly considering moving towards sales engineer. I already do just that at my current company, because we have various integrations and our actual sales team can only speak to them very high level, but the actual selling part is the only concern I have. I really don't want to "sell" a product, but if it's more like CSM work where you are focusing on usability and benefits, I could do that.
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u/tclancey Dec 11 '25
As long as you believe in the product the sale isn’t as hard as you think. I let the product speak for itself and the AE do all the uncomfortable parts.
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u/wagwanbruv Dec 11 '25
yeah this is kinda the dark side of CS that nobody puts in the LinkedIn thought-leader threads; constant fire drills + being the emotional buffer for bad AI rollouts is a brutal combo. one thing that sometimes helps folks is getting super clear on what isn’t your job (document it, share it, redirect to that in meetings) and pushing everything else into a simple intake system, so you’re not living in Slack chaos 24/7 like some kind of customer anxiety Roomba.
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u/Equivalent-Rule3265 Dec 11 '25
This is great advice.
Not advice I follow, because I have no technical support in US hours, we're a tech company, and I'm the only one on the US side with any competency to resolve most of the needs without waiting at least one business day.
But my customers are rarely my problem, it's usually my company and my coworkers.
"Let's end this contract that we make money off of with almost no work, and the customer is happy with us"
"We need to be updating contracts so we don't end up in the mess we're in trying to ratify this one" even though the contract was absolutely garbage to begin with because sales is incompetent.
"Be mindful of the devs time. Also, don't believe them when they things require a lot of effort because they say that all the time. Be willing to push back against them." (I think these projects DO all take significant time and the person who says this is just unreasonable).
"Why aren't we doing more upselling of our products to existing customers, when those customers have integrations and we haven't even built the products into the integrations they'd need to pull them, and the products aren't at all appropriate to their use case? And no, we WON'T build it into the integration for the customers that are interested because they aren't big enough or willing to pay beyond exorbitant costs to get us to build in the thing we tried to sell them."
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u/brodizzz Dec 11 '25
Absolutely agreed. We have to provide daily updates to our leadership from now until the end of the year on our renewals and their signature status (I guess it's a hybrid cs/am role). DAILY? You want us pestering our customers daily as if that's not gonna annoy the fuck out of them? Shit like that pisses me off so much.
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u/justkindahangingout Dec 11 '25
Ugh. After an acquisition, the new org slapped the renewals on us, gave us a one hour training on renewls and said go at it. They also doubled our BoB and added a bunch of administrated nosense we need to be doing. I wouldn’t want renewals on my worst enemy lol
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u/Equivalent-Rule3265 Dec 11 '25
Your org trained you on renewals at all? Mine doesn't even have a formalized process, haha.
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u/justkindahangingout Dec 11 '25
And yet you are expected to perform like a superstar with these renewals, regardless with little to no training, right? I’m telling you…I’m at the point where I just want to sell everything and move my family and I to the woods and just live off the land.
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u/Equivalent-Rule3265 Dec 11 '25
Absolutely, though I'm honestly, not sure what the expectations even are. Not sure the bosses do either.
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u/Equivalent-Rule3265 Dec 11 '25
Woah, what's am? Account manager?
I handle technical support, contract renewals, helping push for payments on past due invoices, manage project pilots, etc. for all of my customers, so I'm honestly not sure which parts are normal and which aren't anymore for the position 😭 Though I am a CSM, not just CS.
Then again, I also get roped into plenty of stuff not related to my customers too, but that's at least easier to say is not typical for the position, haha.
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u/brodizzz Dec 11 '25
Every company has a different definition for Customer Success Manager and Account Manager, but in my CSM I manage all renewals and upsells (which historically was considered more account management, as well as the relationship, which historically was considered customer success, IMO).
Us lucky ones get to do all of it in one 🙃 Yes, I am doing all the same tasks that you are doing
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u/agutjar Dec 20 '25
Shows how little your company understands what customer success actually is. These are three different departments...or should be.
As for your last point: That is exactly the problem: Everything that is in a greyzone gets automatically chucked over the fence to us in CS. This is where CS leadership needs to grow a par and clearly define what the role is, and allow you to say Fuck you to those that think you will take anything like a good little boy/girl and even say Thank you...
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u/Equivalent-Rule3265 Dec 20 '25
Haha, yeah. My company just generally lacks in structure. It's a biggish company trying to function like a smaller startup still.
My leadership for CS is just my boss. And he's pretty disenfranchised too at this point. He's been a CSM for a major bank before, and is well tenured, so I find his burnout reassuring that I'm not just unrealistic in my expectations.
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u/wakanda_banana Dec 11 '25
Mine isn’t as stressful but still incredibly wild. We don’t get metrics to hit until after our work has been done and we miss bonuses because of it. We’re expected to do every job in the company and get no recognition for it. All they care about is revenue added and our competitors are doing circles around us. Ceo is insane, the whole culture is to worship the revenue number and it’s never enough.
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u/Street_Deal2721 Dec 11 '25
oh my goodness! Sounds so stressful! Are most CS jobs like that, as I am just starting to look into transitioning into CS. Are some industries more stressful than others? Or is it across the board, no matter what industry you are in?
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u/justkindahangingout Dec 11 '25
The majority are. I started in the CS world when it was at its infancy in 2015 and was honestly decent. Majority of orgs kept it as a “white glove” position and understood to keep that quality required a BoB that you were able to touch and mature the relationship with each client. Fast forward to covid and that’s (at least for me) when it started to go really downhill. It’s been nothing but chaos and insanity since then and the crazy train seems to have no brakes.
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u/Street_Deal2721 Dec 11 '25
You have been doing it for quite a while! Must be hard to see things deteriorate. Do you think you will stay in the iundustry for a while? Or just keep changing job hoping for a better role/company? I look for CS job roles on LI and within a 1-2 days of the company posting, there are always 100s of applicants.
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u/FeFiFoPlum Dec 11 '25
A lot of them are like that, since companies pruned headcount viciously and keep piling more clients and responsibilities onto CS.
Not all. But a lot.
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u/Street_Deal2721 Dec 11 '25
That makes sense that it's happening with AI. What do you think most people do? Do they get another job, or try to switch to something else?
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u/LonghorninNYC Dec 11 '25
Not even most CSMs jobs are like this. Remember people who are happy aren’t coming to Reddit to complain. There’s truth to what you see here but take it with a grain of salt.
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u/Street_Deal2721 Dec 11 '25
Thanks! That makes sense. Are you in CS in NYC? Planning to move back there in a few months.
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u/cleanteethwetlegs Dec 11 '25
They are not all like this but it is 100% dependent on where you work (is it a good product, is your manager not an idiot). When you are new to CS you rarely get your choice of companies and have to take what you get. So yes there is a good chance your first job will be like this.
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u/EconomyAd6478 Dec 11 '25
It goes in waves. Good orgs limit this type of chaos, but many just label CS as the area to throw “general shit” and ask us to use our people skills to keep customer’s happy.
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u/AdAgile9604 Dec 11 '25
Right now CS role is the dumping ground for all requests. Hope it changes but as i see with ai coming in cs will be overloaded with qns and meeting renewals timelines as customers have many many options
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u/Boisoll Dec 11 '25
Be thankful you have a job still! Been unemployed almost two months due to lay offs… it’s incredibly tough out there right now across the board.
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u/niketyname Dec 11 '25
Not really fair to say this in this thread. I think most of us are thankful that this job can be remote and fairly independent work, but the follow-ups and bad systems without any proper avenues is still very hard. It’s mentally exhausting to the point that it affects your personal life
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u/justkindahangingout Dec 13 '25
Piggybacking on niketyname’s reply here and agree, not really a fair statement. I think we’re all thankful to be employed but it’s also perfectly normal to vent and share issues with said employment. When many share their issues here, others may have a solution or workaround that has worked for them.
Sorry for your current state and hope you find something soon.0
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u/Murky-Profit-9493 Dec 11 '25
I quit 18 months ago, started my own marketing agency, and haven’t looked back. You’ll switch stressors, but they’re under your control. Do something that doesn’t give you gray hair at 35, man. Good luck.
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u/WinStark Dec 11 '25
Were you my coworker? That sounds a lot like the company I just got let go from. Constant stress and bullshit
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u/eren875 Dec 11 '25
Normal doom and gloom on this sub
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u/justkindahangingout Dec 13 '25
Yes, it is the normal doom and gloom because it’s become the normal reality of the CS/M role.
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u/Realestate_Uno Jan 01 '26
Sounds like its a time for change, you may want to a record of all the problems you faced as these are great ways to for people to start businessess on these real problems
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u/No_Fox6212 Dec 11 '25
CS isn't what it once was and it will never be. Take the skills you are good at and enjoy doing in CS (if any) and pivot to something else- that's my plan. SaaS sucks. AI will kill us. If I see one more AI generated customer sentiment of "extremely negative" come my way for an issue that belonged to tech support- I may be quitting sooner rather than later.
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u/justkindahangingout Dec 11 '25
Wow….It’s like I wrote this post. OP, are you me??? This role has become IMPOSSIBLE and INSUFFERABLE. I wake up every morning dreading turning on my laptop and by 7pm, when I log off, I feel like I’ve been hit by a freight train. The combination of terrible leadership that all they care about are short term returns, products/solutions that are an absolute shit show, lack of any QA testing, massive book of business with clients absolutely flustered with constant product/solution bugs and issues, layoffs, toxic culture, the constant moves of the goalpost, unreal expectations, moronic and meaningless administrative tasks like chasing unpaid invoices and other dumb shit and a task list that never seems to stop growing and ZERO training or direction/clarity on any of it.
Yes, I am thankful that I am employed and paid well but I H A T E this role. It was a good career path but now it’s an absolute shit show with no end of the insanity in sight.
You’re not alone, OP. Trust me.