The average customer success budget ranges from $110,500 to $667,250

At most SaaS companies, the line item for customer success budgets is dedicated to headcount. This is why on our annual survey of customer success leaders, we ask about “non-headcount budgets.”

This non-headcount approach is a technique for understanding how SaaS companies are investing in the needs of their customer success teams. In other words, this is the budget available for the tools and training customer success managers (CSM) need to continuously improve.

So how did non-headcount customer success budgets shake out in 2023? 

Across companies of all sizes, businesses invested an average of $260,120 on non-headcount customer success budgets in 2023. 

Below is the average breakout based on company size by revenue. Companies with:

• $500 million or more in revenue invested an average of $667,250 in customer success.
• $250-$499 million in revenue invested an average of $510,500 in customer success.
• $50-$249 million in revenue invested an average of $358,000 in customer success. 
• $5-$49M million in revenue invested an average of $219,250 in customer success.
• Less than $5 million in revenue invested an average of $110,500 in customer success.

As a percentage of revenue, most non-headcount customer success budgets range between 0.08% of revenue to 0.2%. The one exception is for smaller companies with less than $5 million in revenue, which is normal for newer companies or newly funded companies. 

This means many are below the industry benchmark of 0.05% of revenue. For customer success leaders building a business case for their budget in 2024, the delta between your budget and the industry benchmark is a compelling point: “Here’s what our budget looks like, and here’s the industry average, if you need us to do more, we need to cover that budget gap.” 

Download the full report—2023 Customer Success Leadership Study—for a more in-depth look at the customer success budgets and benchmarks. 

Featured image by Pawel Czerwinski