Manager, Customer Success, Strategic

About the role

As Manager, Customer Success - Strategic Segment, you will lead a high-impact team of Customer Success Managers responsible for Zillow's largest and most complex agent customers across our multi-product portfolio, including Showcase, Zillow Pro, and Follow Up Boss.

You will coach your team to develop trusted relationships with senior customer stakeholders, build strategic account plans, and connect Zillow's products to each customer's business priorities, operating model, and growth goals. You will establish the operating discipline needed to manage complex books of business while ensuring your team can adapt its approach to the unique needs of each Strategic customer.

You will also serve as a visible change leader and cross-functional partner, helping shape how Zillow supports its most valuable customers as our products, customer experience, and go-to-market strategy continue to evolve.

What You'll Do

• Lead and develop a team of Strategic Customer Success Managers supporting high-value, complex customers across Showcase, Zillow Pro, and Follow Up Boss, with accountability for adoption, customer value, retention, and expansion.
• Establish a consistent operating rhythm-including 1:1s, strategic account reviews, call listening, risk reviews, and portfolio inspections-that creates clear visibility into customer outcomes, account health, relationship strength, risks, and next steps.
• Coach CSMs to build and execute comprehensive account plans that connect customer priorities, business objectives, product utilization, stakeholder relationships, risks, and growth opportunities.
• Raise the quality of executive-level customer conversations by coaching value-driven discovery, business reviews, strategic recommendations, and clear alignment around measurable outcomes.
• Use Gong and other tools to identify patterns across customer conversations, provide specific and actionable feedback, and strengthen executive presence, discovery, multithreading, and follow-through.
• Ensure Strategic accounts have strong relationships across multiple levels of the customer organization, reducing reliance on a single point of contact and building durable executive sponsorship.
• Partner closely with Sales to align on account strategy, customer commitments, renewal risk, expansion opportunities, and ownership throughout the customer lifecycle.
• Coordinate across Support, Product, Marketing, Operations, and other cross-functional partners to resolve complex customer needs and deliver a cohesive, one-Zillow experience.
• Lead customer escalations with urgency and sound judgment, balancing immediate resolution with long-term relationship health, business impact, and internal scalability.
• Use performance trends, product utilization, customer outcomes, relationship signals, and program metrics to prioritize accounts, identify systemic barriers, and guide coaching and resource allocation.
• Translate insights from Strategic customers into clear themes and recommendations for Product, Sales, Marketing, and senior leadership.
• Hire, onboard, and develop high-performing talent while raising the bar for strategic thinking, ownership, prioritization, executive communication, and decision-making.
• Build leadership capability within the team by identifying emerging leaders, creating meaningful development opportunities, and maintaining a strong bench of future talent.
• Help define what excellent Strategic Customer Success looks like at Zillow by bringing a point of view, testing new approaches, learning quickly, and turning successful practices into scalable frameworks.
• Travel approximately 20% of the time for internal events, leadership meetings, customer visits, industry conferences, and other strategic engagements.

This role has been categorized as a Remote position. "Remote" employees do not have a permanent corporate office workplace and, instead, work from a physical location of their choice, which must be identified to the Company. U.S. employees may live in any of the 50 United States, with limited exceptions.

In California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $89,700.00 - $143,300.00 annually. This base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations.In Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia the standard base pay range for this role is $85,200.00 - $136,200.00 annually. The base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations.

In addition to a competitive base salary this position is also eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance and location. Actual amounts will vary depending on experience, performance and location. Employees in this role will not be paid below the salary threshold for exempt employees in the state where they reside.

Who you are

You are a people-first leader who builds trust quickly, sets a steady tone, and maintains high standards in complex and fast-moving environments. You create clear expectations and consistent operating rhythms while giving experienced CSMs the autonomy and coaching they need to lead sophisticated customer relationships.

You are comfortable working in ambiguity and making practical decisions without waiting for perfect information. You understand that Strategic Customer Success requires both structure and flexibility: a disciplined approach to account management paired with the judgment to adapt to each customer's business, stakeholders, and priorities.

You are an effective cross-functional leader who can align teams around a shared account strategy, navigate competing priorities, and communicate clearly with customers and internal executives.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in Customer Success, strategic account management, consultative sales, or a related customer-facing function within a recurring-revenue, subscription, software, or advertising business.
• 3+ years of people management experience leading Customer Success Managers, strategic account managers, sellers, or other customer-facing teams.
• Experience supporting Strategic, Enterprise, or similarly complex customers with multiple stakeholders, products, business units, or locations.
• Demonstrated success driving adoption, retention, customer value, and expansion through structured account planning and value-based customer engagement.
• Strong executive presence and the ability to coach others to communicate effectively with senior customer stakeholders.
• Experience building multithreaded customer relationships and navigating complex organizational structures, decision-making processes, and competing stakeholder priorities.
• Ability to connect multiple products and services into a cohesive customer strategy tied to measurable business outcomes.
• Experience leading through change, including new products, evolving customer programs, organizational transformation, integration work, or developing operating models.
• Strong analytical and decision-making discipline, with the ability to identify the metrics and signals that matter, prioritize the highest-impact opportunities, and make thoughtful tradeoffs.
• A proven coach who provides clear, behavior-based feedback, identifies root causes, and knows when to move from coaching into structured performance support.
• Strong cross-functional leadership skills, including the ability to align Sales, Product, Support, Marketing, and Operations around complex customer needs.
• Real estate industry experience is a plus but not required. You are curious about how customers operate their businesses and how Zillow's products influence productivity, pipeline, profitability, and growth.

Here at Zillow, we value the experience and perspective of candidates with non-traditional backgrounds. We encourage you to apply if you have transferable skills or related experience, even if you do not meet every requirement above.