The Customer Success Pro Podcast Building High-Performing CS Teams Without Playbooks with Courtney Balban
Dec 3, 2025
Courtney Balban, VP of Customer Success at Leadr, previously a therapist, shares her unique path to CS leadership. She emphasizes curiosity as a key to engaging customer conversations and building high-performing teams without rigid playbooks. Courtney discusses the importance of distinguishing between urgent tasks and impactful work, reframing discomfort as a learning opportunity, and coaching teams to dig deeper into customer needs. She also explores the balance of psychological safety and accountability in team dynamics, enhancing confidence and reducing turnover.
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Activity Versus Impact
- Distinguish activity from impact by asking if work solves root causes or only symptoms.
- Anchor every action to customer outcomes and business metrics to avoid the tyranny of the urgent.
Prioritize Leverage Work
- Look for leverage: prioritize work that creates compounding impact across customers.
- Ask whether a request meaningfully moves retention, expansion, or customer value before acting.
Train Judgment Before Playbooks
- Build CSMs' judgment before adding rigid playbooks so they can adapt in conversations.
- Use playbooks to enable thinking, not replace it; avoid making them crutches.