Is a Customer Success Manager Better Than a Project Manager

Career changers and recent graduates often ask me which is better for me - customer success or project management. Both can be lucrative careers and very rewarding in their own way. But depending on what you enjoy and your goals, one may make more sense for you.

I’ve recruited project managers and customer success managers for many different companies. This week I called up some of those individuals to ask them about their experiences and what they thought about which job was better. Here are some of the insights from those calls.

My goal is to give you information and different perspectives so you can decide for yourself which is better suited for your career goals.

What is a Customer Success Manager

While every company deploys customer success managers and project managers differently, I think it’s important to talk about how most companies use each role, starting with customer success professionals. Here’s what the day to day boils down to.

Customer success managers manage customer relationships after a sale is made. They usually take over the client relationship starting with onboarding and will stay with that customer through renewal.

Their job is to drive adoption of the product, understand the customer’s needs as they relate to using the product, and advocate for clients with other teams to obtain resolutions to problems and provide feedback for future features.

How Is Success Measured in This Job

The most common measurements of success for customer success managers are net logo retention and net revenue retention. In other words, don’t lose customers and increase the revenue from your customers.

What is a Project Manager

Again, not all project managers are deployed the same at every company, but here is a mainstream look at the job of many project managers.

Project managers manage all kinds of projects from capital improvements to change management. This is not a client-facing role, although they may interact with clients and vendors depending on the project.

Project managers are involved from project initiation to close-out. They develop strategies and monitor project risks, issues, and trigger events.

How is Success Measured in This Job

The most common measurements of success for project managers are how many projects were completed on time, how many were completed within scope, and how many were completed within quality.

How Are Customer Success Managers and Project Managers Similar

It may not be obvious, but many elements of these two roles are similar. Here are some similarities I’ve picked up on over the years as I’ve recruited for both. Surprisingly you can find quite a few project management skills used by customer success teams and vice versa.

Adoption

While it may be obvious that this is a critical part of a customer success manager’s job, many people overlook its importance in project management. Project managers are still tasked with the development and execution of user adoption. The difference is that many times project managers are working to help internal stakeholders adopt change management initiatives.

Consulting Aspect

Both roles have a strong consulting aspect to them. As a customer success manager csm, you’ll be consulting with customers. Your job is to identify their needs and show them how your product is solving those needs. You’ll monitor that progress and consult with them on ideas to help them meet their goals.

As a project manager, you’ll also do a lot of consulting, but most likely more on the implementation side of things vs the customer relationship. You’ll be consulting with executives and department heads to scope project plans, allocate resources, and establish timelines for milestone completions.

Empathy

Some of my peers disagree with me on this one. They’ll tell you customer success managers require a high degree of empathy to do their jobs, but not project managers. I disagree. The best project managers I’ve seen all have a high EQ and are empathetic.

That doesn’t mean they let people run amuck. Having a high level of empathy helps them come alongside team members, gain their trust, get their buy-in, and ultimately produce better results.

Flexibility

Both customer success managers and project managers have to live in the moment to some extent. Depending on the circumstances, you may wear multiple hats in both roles. You have to be flexible and have the ability to pivot into whatever needs your attention that day. There is no typical day in these jobs.

Leadership & Interpersonal Communication

Both of these jobs require a high degree of leadership and interpersonal communication skills. You may be using those skills with different stakeholders and audiences, but you’ll need them to succeed in either job.

You’ll need the ability to push back in the appropriate way, respond to situations with the appropriate level of drama, and persuade others that your course of action is in their best interest.

Differences Between Customer Success Managers and Project Managers

Stakeholders

While project managers may have some interactions with customers, they aren’t account managers in the sense customer success managers are. Customer success is a client-facing account management and sales role. Your job is to manage business relationships. Project managers, on the other hand, typically work with internal stakeholders to develop and execute a project.

If you enjoy working with customers, customer success may make more sense as a career path.

Detailed Understanding of Products

Customer success managers have to know their product, but the level of understanding and knowledge of a product is nowhere near what a project manager must know to be successful at their job. If you’re working on a technical product, project managers intimately understand how the product works, the interdependencies that exist between products and processes, and much more.

If you enjoy that level of nitty-gritty detailed knowledge, then project management may be right for you.

Management

While a customer success manager still has to manage customer expectations and results, they usually own their accounts and work. At the end of the day, your success mostly relies on your performance. Sure, you’ll need other teams to help you when there is an issue and you’ll need those internal relationships to get stuff done for your clients, but it’s much different than a project manager’s job.

As a project manager, you’ll be responsible for managing other people’s deadlines and keeping teams accountable. Project managers require a different level of negotiation and communication skills to get everyone to complete their tasks on time and within budget. For this role, much of your success is dependent on the organization and the teams you work with.

Travel

This may not be the case for every project manager job, but many require travel. I’ve never heard of a customer success manager having to travel for work on a regular basis. If you like to travel and your lifestyle allows for it, you may enjoy this aspect of a project manager job.

Career Entry Point

I’m going to be candid here because others may not. Landing a project manager job without prior experience in project management is rare. Most people start as a project associate, project coordinator, or project assistant. A project manager job is probably not going to be your entry point into this field.

On the other hand, I have seen people become customer success managers without prior experience in customer success. I’ve seen salespeople move directly into a customer success manager role. I’ve seen project managers become customer success managers. I’ve even seen teachers become customer success managers.

I’ve only seen one customer success manager ever move directly into a project manager job and that was an internal promotion with her company after they took several classes and obtained a certification on their own first.

If you’re thinking about what your point of entry is, know that there are probably a few jobs before project manager that you’ll need to do before reaching that job title.

Lifecycle & Customer Journey

Customer success managers and project managers operate at different parts of the product lifecycle. Customer success managers may provide input on what product to build next based on feedback from their accounts. Project managers aren’t involved in product ideation. They’re the execution guys and gals.

One person I talked to described it this way, “As a project manager you are accountable for the prioritization and building of a product. As a customer success manager, you are just the critic.”

Pressure

Both roles can be demanding at times, but one person I spoke with who has done both roles said there was much more pressure on him as a project manager. As a project manager, you’re responsible for keeping the project on time, and within budget, and that can be stressful when you’re working with a dozen other people who may have competing priorities beyond just your project.

Longevity

Many project managers are involved in implementations and then afterward move on to another project. They are only involved with their stakeholders for a short term. Customer success managers on the other hand, often stick with their clients for life and manage relationships for the long term.

Which Job Pays More, Customer Success or Project Management

Both jobs are good-paying jobs with roughly the same salary bands.

Across the US, the average customer success manager earns around $75,000 with top earners making around $115,000 per year (Payscale). Keep in mind that some customer success managers can also earn a lot more money from commissions based on their account’s performance. There’s also not as much variation in customer success jobs as there is with project management because most of these jobs are found in tech alone.

Project managers in the US typically make between $80,000 and $120,000 per year on average. That number can change drastically though based on industry. Unlike customer success, which is predominantly a tech job, project managers exist across almost every industry. You also won’t have the opportunity to make commissions on sales, but you may have a performance bonus.

When it comes to base salary, I find that there isn’t much difference between the two jobs.

Which Job Has More Opportunity

According to the BLS, customer success manager jobs are expected to grow at a 5% rate and project manager jobs at an 8% rate. But I don’t like to use BLS data to base my decisions on. So instead, I reviewed thousands of jobs on four of the major job boards to get the real picture. Here’s what I found.

In the past two weeks, I found 4,693 true, customer success manager job openings listed.

In that same time frame, I also found 13, 578 project manager job openings listed. That’s nearly 2.9x the number of openings.

When it comes to opportunity, project management seems to win.

Which Job Has More Opportunity for Advancement

Both customer success and project management offer structured career advancement opportunities. Although, in my experience (and that of the data based on job openings), there tends to be much more opportunity in project management.

Here is what a career path in each might look like.

Customer Success Manager Career Path

• Customer Success Associate

• Customer Success Manager

• Enterprise CSM

• Senior Customer Success Manager

• Manager of Customer Success

• Director of Customer Success

• VP of Customer Success

• Chief Customer Officer

Project Manager Career Path

• Project Coordinator

• Associate Project Manager

• Project Manager

• Senior Project Manager

• Director of Project Management

• VP of Operations

• Chief Operations Officer

As you can see, the career paths are very different in how they progress and where they end up. But both provide advancement opportunities.

Which Job Presents More Networking Opportunities

Both jobs will present you with networking opportunities if you seek them out; however, it seems that project managers may have a leg up on networking.

There are online communities for customer success managers to join; however, most of the active participants are either looking for a job or aspiring CSMs. There is no well-established professional association for customer success managers yet.

Project managers on the other hand can tap into the power of PMI, a well-established and credible association. Local chapters frequently hold events where you can rub elbows with fellow project managers and learn about the latest trends. Some chapters have better attendance than others, but you can find chapters in nearly every state including Alaska.

In my experience, project managers attend events because they need CPE (continuing professional development) credits to maintain their PMP certifications.

There are also numerous industry conferences you can attend.

When deciding which field will give you more networking opportunities, I tend to think it’s project management.

Degree Requirements for Customer Success Managers and Project Managers

Neither job “technically” requires a degree. I’ve placed people in customer success roles and project manager roles that didn’t have a degree. However, that is very rare. You can count on the overwhelming majority of your peers having a Bachelor's degree in both of these jobs.

While you may be able to get a job without a degree, it’s going to be really hard. And you better have a lot of previous experience in the field to make up for it.

Certifications Required for Customer Success Managers and Project Managers

Most customer success managers I know do not have a certification. Could it make you more competitive? Absolutely. Is it required? No.

Project managers on the other hand mostly have a certification. Many start with a CAPM and then go on to obtain their PMP. If you want to earn on the higher end of the pay scale for this job, you’ll want a certification.

Software Knowledge Required for Customer Success Managers and Project Managers

It’s rare that I have a hiring manager tell me that any particular software is required for either customer success or project management candidates. However, they almost always list it as a preferred qualification.

So what does that mean? It means if you’re in a competitive job market, knowing how to use certain software programs will benefit you.

If you’re looking for a customer success job, learning how to use common systems like Salesforce or Jira will benefit you.

If you’re looking for a project management job, learning to use common systems like Asana will benefit you.

When it comes to software knowledge, both jobs will prefer to hire people with particular knowledge.

Customer Success Manager vs. Project Manager - Which Is Better?

The answer will depend on your goals, your existing skills, and what you enjoy doing. I hope this article gave you some insights into both so you can begin to make an educated decision about which career may be better for you.

Is Customer Success Manager Better Than Project Manager Recommended Reading

Customer Success Manager Resume Guide

Project Manager Resume Guide (coming soon)

Is a Customer Success Associate Better than a Customer Success Manager (coming soon)

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Cole Sperry has been a recruiter and resume writer since 2015, working with tens of thousands of job seekers, and hundreds of employers. Today Cole runs a botique advisory firm consulting with dozens of recruiting firms and is the Managing Editor at OptimCareers.com.