How This Ex-CRO Is Making CS Impossible to Ignore ft. Manish Chawla (PowerSchool)

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Customer Success doesn’t become mission-critical because you say it is. It becomes mission-critical when it owns revenue.

In this episode of Unchurned, Josh Schachter sits down with Manish Chawla, CCO at PowerSchool, to talk about what it actually takes to make CS essential — to customers and to the company.

Manish doesn’t come from traditional CS. He’s been a CRO. A GM. He learned that the only truth that matters is what the customer believes.

Now he’s applying that lens to CS.

At PowerSchool, CSMs don’t just manage relationships. They carry GRR and expansion targets. AI isn’t a premium add-on — it’s table stakes. And cost-to-serve must go down while customer experience goes up.

This isn’t theory. It’s operational.

If Customer Success isn’t tied directly to profit, it risks becoming optional. And optional doesn’t survive.

This episode is for operators who want CS at the revenue table — not watching from the sidelines.

--- Timestamps 0:00 - Preview & Introduction 1:25 - Meet Manish Chawla & Overview of PowerSchool 3:35 - From consulting to CRO to CCO 6:13 - Why execution matters more than strategy 8:35 - Bringing a commercial mindset to Customer Success 10:52 - Should CSMs carry revenue? (GRR & expansion targets) 16:20 - Making CS mission-critical inside the company 17:42 - Cost-to-serve: Driving efficiency without hurting CX 18:50 - Scaling through digital CS. partner & ecosystems 21:25 - Designing CS for K-12 and vertical SaaS 28:30 - AI is table stakes (and customers won’t pay extra) 30:51 - Using AI internally to increase productivity 32:25 - Building a CS engineering team 35:45 - Becoming essential to customers

--- What You’ll Learn * Why CSMs carry GRR and expansion targets — not just NPS * Why AI is table stakes (and why customers won’t pay extra for it) * How to lower cost-to-serve without lowering experience * How to tie CS directly to the CEO’s revenue equation * Why vertical SaaS demands deep domain fluency in CS hiring * How to position the CSM as the COO to the AE’s CEO

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--- Where to Find the Guests Manish's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manishchawla1/

--- Where to Find Josh: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/ Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/