Craig Blum

Because its teams see adoption, product gaps, customer risk, and expansion opportunities across the customer lifecycle, they can inform decisions by Sales, Product, and company leaders.

Craig Blum calls CS both the “glue” between Sales, Product, and Revenue and the “engine.” Leaders, they argue, need a place in the executive room to bring customer evidence to decisions.

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To drive net revenue retention, CS must identify customers ready to expand, choose the right timing, and present new value as a partnership rather than a sales pitch.

Craig Blum flags a risk-only dashboard as a blind spot: it shows accounts in trouble but misses customers who may be ready to grow.

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They describe useful, lower-touch support that adapts to customer needs and helps people make progress without assigning every account a dedicated CSM.

Craig Blum's list includes onboarding that drives adoption, content tailored to customer maturity, in-app guidance, signals that distinguish thriving from drifting accounts, community, and customer education.

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Their test is whether a situation calls for a routine message or someone who can notice uncertainty and respond with context.

Craig Blum contrasts automated outreach with hearing hesitation on a renewal call or recognizing that a customer's “everything’s fine” email may conceal a competitor conversation.

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Blum opens by naming the parts of the job people rarely put on a slide — cleaning up misaligned expectations, calming customers after a bug or delay, mediating between roadmap constraints and renewal deadlines.

• Then comes the turn: because CS sees the whole lifecycle, from onboarding through adoption to advocacy, it knows which accounts are at risk and which are ready to grow.
• The argument is that this visibility makes CS strategically important, so treating it as "the department that just owns renewals" wastes the function.

For brands planning a campaign

The gluestick-to-engine framing is a ready-made opening for an internal workshop or advisory session with a SaaS leadership team that still views CS as a renewal-owning cost center. Blum's list of what CS uniquely knows gives the workshop its agenda: where the function already has evidence product, sales, and revenue decisions should draw on.

Blum argues that CS leaders cannot shape product, revenue, or customer lifetime value from outside the decision-making room, and that sending Slack updates is not influence.

• The value of a seat at the table, in this account, is informing decisions about which features drive stickiness, which customers are ready for expansion, where adoption gaps are and why, and what blocks referrals and renewals.
• The closing line — that great CS leaders bring "data, story, and commercial impact — and yes, a little swagger" — frames executive presence as earned through commercial substance rather than claimed.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful for a campaign focused on executive influence. It gives a sponsoring leader a defensible list of decisions CS should inform, making it more actionable in a workshop than a general push for "a seat at the table."

Blum draws a hard line between a CS org that reduces churn and one that drives net revenue retention.

• The defense-only version is reactive, with the team putting out fires rather than spotting opportunity.
• The offensive version depends on knowing which customers are ready for more and when, and having enough trust to introduce new value as a partnership rather than a pitch.
• The practical complaint is about dashboards: if yours only shows who is at risk, it is silent about the accounts ready to grow.

For brands planning a campaign

This is the piece to hand a team that wants expansion revenue but measures CS only on churn. The dashboard critique turns the argument into a concrete change — add expansion-readiness signals to the CS scorecard — a workable first deliverable for an advisory engagement.

Blum pushes back on the idea that scaled Customer Success means setting something up and leaving it alone.

• A working scaled program still delivers high-touch outcomes through low-touch tactics: onboarding that drives adoption, content matched to customer maturity, in-app guidance that solves problems quickly, signals distinguishing customers who are thriving, drifting, or ready to expand, targeted plays that feel personal even when automated, a community users want to join, and education that turns casual users into power users.
• The summary: every customer should feel like they matter, with or without an assigned CSM.

For brands planning a campaign

Use this as the checklist for a digital-CS or scaled-success workstream. It also sets the expectation that a scaled program is judged on adoption signals and expansion readiness, not on how many emails went out.

Blum grants that automation saves time, scales outreach, and keeps a small team in front of more customers, then lists what it cannot do: read the room when a customer sounds off in a meeting, catch hesitation in a voice during a renewal call, or interpret a polite "everything's fine" email that signals a competitor conversation.

• They distinguish sending from judging — knowing when to hit send and when to pick up the phone.
• Automation, in this framing, is a tool that should reinforce trust rather than substitute for it.

For brands planning a campaign

Practical as a guardrail discussion in any scaled-CS or automation project: which customer moments stay human, and what signals should trigger a call instead of a sequence. It complements the scaled-success checklist.

In one post, CS is both the glue between Sales, Product, and Revenue and the engine that drives customer-facing revenue.

• In another, if CS is not in the executive room, it is in the waiting room.
• The point is not that CS should fight for a seat, but that it should earn visibility by bringing data, story, and commercial impact to decisions about product, retention, and expansion.

Contrast framing: CS as “glue” and “engine,” and the executive room versus the waiting room, repositioning the function from support cost to revenue influence.

For brands planning a campaign

A CS leadership workshop or advisory engagement can build the executive narrative: what data CS brings to leadership, how it informs product and revenue decisions, and how to move from reporting churn to shaping strategy.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The post lists what real scaled success includes: onboarding that drives adoption, content tailored to customer maturity, in-app guidance, clear signals on who is thriving or drifting, targeted plays that feel personal even when automated, a strong customer community, and education that turns casual users into power users. It also rejects the idea that scaled CS means ignored accounts or a quarterly email blast.

Definition by contrast: negative examples first (“not a quarterly email blast,” “not set it and forget it”), followed by a checklist of what scaled CS should include.

For brands planning a campaign

A brand evaluating Craig Blum for a CS engagement can test whether its model needs a scaled success design: customer segments, lifecycle signals, content and community programs, and automation that supports rather than replaces connection.

Examples: Source 1

Stronger CS organizations spot expansion potential early, know which customers are ready for more, and introduce new value as a partnership rather than a pitch.

• A dashboard that shows only who is at risk misses customers who are ready to grow.
• That is the difference between renewing revenue and driving net revenue retention.

For implementation, ask the client for its data to design the dashboard, scoring model, and expansion-play sequence.

For brands planning a campaign

An advisory or workshop can help a CS organization build expansion signals into its operating rhythm: who is ready, when to approach, and how to frame expansion as partnership. It can also assess whether current dashboards and metrics focus only on risk or also on growth.

Examples: Source 1

The post says it can save time, scale outreach, and keep more customers in view with fewer resources.

• But automation cannot read the room when a customer sounds off, catch hesitation in a renewal call, or interpret an email that says “everything’s fine” when the customer may be talking to a competitor.
• Customer Success, in this view, is about judgment: knowing when to hit send and when to pick up the phone.

Balanced argument: concedes what automation does well, lists three things it cannot do, then closes with a decision rule about when to automate and when to show up personally.

For brands planning a campaign

An engagement can focus on hybrid CS operations: where automation belongs, where human escalation must happen, and how to design decision rules that preserve trust while scaling coverage.

Examples: Source 1

Examples include “If CS isn’t in the exec room, it’s in the waiting room,” “Scaled CS ≠ ignored accounts,” and “Automation: great for emails.

• Terrible for empathy.”
• The posts address CS leaders directly, using short lines and concrete buyer-facing language about adoption, renewals, expansion, and executive influence.

For brands planning a campaign

A brand can assess whether this style fits co-created content, webinars, or advisory material. Direct, problem-first, and focused on operational choices rather than abstract theory, it suits a B2B SaaS audience of CS and revenue leaders.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4 · Source 5

The mention illustrates a point about visibility inside the executive room, not an endorsement, sponsorship, or disclosed partnership.

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Patin’s posts on onboarding quick wins and renewals as proof points align with Blum’s operational focus on adoption, retention, and customer value.

Patin’s material is more tightly structured as a series, with tactical onboarding and renewal playbooks, client stories, and checklists. Blum more often argues for the function’s strategic position, executive influence, and role in expansion revenue.

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Gaspar’s posts on customer journey mapping, post-go-live value, and risk detection overlap with Blum’s interest in adoption, expansion readiness, and executive visibility.

Gaspar’s approach is more framework- and data-heavy, with cited statistics and journey milestones.

• Blum’s posts are shorter arguments built around contrasts, checklists, and direct calls to connect.
• Gaspar also writes more directly about AI adoption in CS work.

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Ravichandran’s posts on change management, adoption, and value realization align with Blum’s emphasis on customer evidence, expansion, and executive relevance.

Ravichandran focuses more on transformation, influence without authority, and the CSM as a change agent, often in longer, inspirational posts. Blum concentrates on scaled CS, automation judgment, and the function’s role in revenue and executive decisions.

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Both posts are method-focused series installments.

• The onboarding post explains how to find quick wins in the first 30 days: identify use cases that solve immediate pain, prioritize features that are easy to adopt but visibly impactful, and celebrate wins through dashboards, shoutouts, and executive summaries.
• It includes a concrete case: a client had low post-onboarding engagement, but adoption climbed after the team focused on a single reporting feature that saved ten hours a week.
• The renewal post adds a second routine: treat renewal as a proof point, start the conversation months rather than weeks ahead, and make the case with data, stories, and outcomes.
• If the deliverable is a playbook of onboarding and renewal procedures CSMs can use next week, Patin's posts lead to that output more directly than Blum's.

The tradeoff is scope.

• Patin's posts focus on CSM execution: winning early adoption and protecting renewals.
• They don't make the case for CS as a revenue function deserving executive influence or shift the scorecard toward expansion readiness.
• A workshop built on Patin's material would yield onboarding and renewal routines, not the executive narrative and expansion metrics the buyer is seeking.
• The question of how CS earns strategic weight in the business remains unaddressed.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The journey post covers value expansion arcs beyond go-live, persona-segmented journeys for admins, executives, and users, lifecycle milestones such as adoption stickiness by month six and business-value realization by month nine, documented ownership of each touchpoint across teams, and embedded proactive risk detection.

• It attributes figures to named sources—71% of churn occurring post-go-live, and losing an executive sponsor raising churn risk by 2.3x, cited to Gainsight, TSIA, and Totango—and links the design to expansion signals through CSQL tracking.
• For an engagement centered on journey and metrics design, where benchmark citations carry weight, Gaspar's material is more directly usable than Blum's argumentative posts.

The posts present frameworks and third-party benchmarks rather than a first-person argument about CS's standing in the business.

• They don't make the case for repositioning CS or reworking its scorecard around expansion revenue, the campaign's core decision.
• The companion post covers AI adoption in daily life and CS workflows, an adjacent rather than central topic for CS leadership.
• A workshop built on Gaspar's material would focus on journey design and benchmark literacy, not the executive influence and expansion-metric change the buyer wants.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The two posts develop a consistent argument: every CSM is a change agent who helps customers break old habits, uses influence rather than authority to align departments without direct control, treats measurable value realization rather than mere adoption as the goal, and acts as a human champion during customers' wider digital transformation.

• The second post cites Gartner's figure that over 70% of digital transformation initiatives miss expectations for lack of change management.
• If the buyer's problem is adoption resistance inside customer organizations, this material maps more closely to it than Blum's.

The two posts develop one theme—the CSM as change agent—and rely on a single Gartner statistic.

• They don't address how CS wins executive influence or shifts its own measurement toward expansion revenue, the decision a campaign aimed at CFOs turns on.
• An engagement built on Ravichandran's material would produce a customer-side adoption and change program, not a CS leadership repositioning engagement.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2