Customer Success Manager SMB (German speaking)

About the role

We’re looking for a Customer Success Manager, SMB to join our Customer Experience team at Pleo. In this role, you’ll manage a portfolio of SMB customers, helping them realise value, improve adoption, reduce risk, and identify opportunities to deepen their engagement with Pleo over time.

This role is ideal for a Customer Success professional who is ready to move beyond purely transactional customer motions and take on greater ownership of customer health, retention, and account planning. You should be comfortable managing a portfolio that blends digital engagement with relationship-based customer management, depending on customer size, maturity, and needs.

You will play an important role in helping customers get the right level of support and strategic guidance at the right time, while working closely with cross-functional teams to improve customer outcomes and maintain strong portfolio performance.

Who you’ll be working with and reporting to You’ll report to our Manager of Customer Success SMB and work closely with teams across Support, Onboarding, Product, Sales, RevOps, Marketing, and Operations.

You’ll partner with internal stakeholders to ensure customers receive coordinated support, strong lifecycle engagement, and a connected experience across onboarding, adoption, renewal, and growth moments.

What you’ll be doing

As a Customer Success Manager SMB you will

• Own a portfolio of high-value SMB customers with accountability for customer health, retention support, adoption, and engagement quality.
• Retain customers at risk outside of your portfolio based on a case by case assignment
• Build strong customer relationships across operational and decision-making stakeholders, serving as a trusted and responsive partner.
• Guide customers through key lifecycle moments including onboarding, adoption, value realisation, renewals, and growth opportunities.
• Drive proactive customer engagement through a mix of digital motions, structured outreach, business reviews, and relationship-based interactions.
• Monitor customer health and engagement signals to identify customers at risk and take action early.
• Support churn prediction and prevention efforts by tracking account signals, running risk reviews, and building mitigation plans with internal partners.
• Maintain forecast visibility across your portfolio including renewals, growth opportunities, customer risk, and key milestones.
• Create and manage customer success plans and account action plans that align to customer goals, lifecycle stage, and business needs.
• Partner cross-functionally with Support, Product, Sales, and Operations to resolve customer issues, remove blockers, and improve outcomes.
• Help identify growth opportunities through stronger adoption, broader use cases, stakeholder engagement, and customer advocacy.
• Lead clear, professional customer communication across both strategic and day-to-day interactions.
• Keep CRM and customer records current and accurate with strong operational discipline around notes, risks, actions, and forecasting.
• Contribute feedback and insight that helps strengthen customer plays, portfolio management, and overall Customer Success effectiveness.

You can expect to work across a tech environment that includes CRM, customer success platforms, support tooling, BI/reporting tools, workflow tools, and collaboration platforms.

Examples: Hubspot, Vitally, Zendesk, Looker/Tableau/Power BI, Jira/Asana, and Slack.

What you bring

You’ll thrive in this role if you have

• 3–5 years of experience in Customer Success, Account Management, or a similar customer-facing role in SaaS, fintech, or technology environments.
• Experience managing a portfolio of customers with responsibility for retention support, adoption, customer health, and relationship management.
• Strong customer communication skills with the ability to lead clear, professional, and credible conversations.
• Experience with churn prediction and prevention basics including risk identification, health tracking, and proactive customer follow-up.
• Comfort managing forecasts and account visibility across renewals, risk, and customer engagement.
• Strong relationship management skills with the ability to build trust and maintain momentum across multiple stakeholders.
• Experience using digital and relationship-based customer engagement motions depending on customer need and account value.
• Strong organisational and execution skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities across a portfolio.
• A customer- and outcome-focused mindset with the ability to connect customer needs to product value and next steps.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills and the ability to work effectively with Sales, Support, Product, RevOps, and Operations.
• A data-aware mindset with the ability to interpret customer signals, trends, and account health indicators.

Nice to have

• Experience in fintech, spend management, payments, or financial operations
• Experience with renewal support, success planning, or account management
• Familiarity with health scoring, risk reviews, or lifecycle engagement programs
• Exposure to digital customer engagement, webinars, education content, or scaled motions
• Background in Customer Support or another customer-facing operational role

Why is this role a good fit for you

This role is a good fit for you if

• You enjoy working with customers across both digital and relationship-led motions.
• You are strong at balancing customer care, portfolio discipline, and business outcomes.
• You like identifying risk early and building practical plans to keep customers on track.
• You want to deepen your experience in forecasting, account planning, and proactive retention management.

This role is not a good fit for you if

• You are looking for a purely transactional, low-accountability customer role.
• You strongly prefer only enterprise-level strategic accounts or only scaled digital-only portfolios.
• You are uncomfortable managing risk, renewals, and account forecasting.
• You do not enjoy working across multiple stakeholders and internal teams.
• You are looking for a people-management role at this stage.

How you’ll develop in this role

In your first 1 months at Pleo, you’ll

• Learn the product, customer journey, portfolio expectations, and segment priorities.
• Build a view of your customers, including health, renewal timing, opportunities, and risks.
• Establish strong working rhythms with internal partners and begin building relationships with customer stakeholders.
• Start improving visibility into account plans, customer actions, and risk signals.

In your first 3 months, you’ll

• Manage your portfolio with stronger confidence and consistency.
• Improve proactive engagement across risk management, renewal readiness, and adioption.
• Deliver better forecast visibility and stronger account discipline.
• Become a trusted point of contact for your customers and internal teams supporting them.

In your first 12 months, you’ll

• Build a well-managed portfolio with stronger customer engagement, clearer success plans, and better risk visibility.
• Deliver measurable progress in adoption, retention support, and growth opportunity identification.
• Improve the consistency and quality of your forecasting, account planning, and customer communication.
• Build a strong foundation for progression into more senior or strategic Customer Success responsibilities.

The location

Please note: We can hire on a hybrid or in-person set-up in any of the locations listed on the advert but you will need to be physically based in the country of your choice with a valid right to work. We are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role in any of the listed locations.