The SaaS industry is evolving-and fast. With business continuing to boom and competition heating up, SaaS companies of every size are doubling down on their customer experience (CX) investments.

Customer-facing roles are some of the most visible roles in a SaaS company. These are the individuals interfacing with customers every day, and using persuasion, problem-solving, and communication skills to actively grow the business.

We're also seeing new specialized opportunities emerge within the traditional fields of sales, CX, and customer support. Depending on the company size (and resources available), you might find yourself 'wearing multiple hats' or in a narrowly-defined role that allows you to hone your skills.

To help you make sense of it all, we've put together a complete guide to eight customer-facing roles you'd come across in a typical mid-sized B2B SaaS company. We'll go through tasks, responsibilities, and tech literacy requirements before rounding off with some practical advice on landing a customer-facing SaaS job in 2023.

Here's what we'll cover today:

1. Why are customer-facing roles so important in SaaS?
2. A breakdown of customer-facing SaaS roles
• Sales
• Presales
• Professional Services
• Customer Success
• Customer Support
3. How do I know which customer-facing SaaS role is right for me?
4. How tech-literate do customer-facing SaaS roles need to be?
5. Round up

Sound good? Let's dive in!

The importance of keeping customers engaged might be obvious. Every company, industry, and sector knows that happy customers = increased revenue. So why is it such a big deal in SaaS?

Let's explain.

An increasing number of individuals and organizations rely on cloud-based software tools and applications to help them complete day-to-day tasks and run every aspect of their businesses. In recent years, demand has skyrocketed: The SaaS industry currently has an annual growth rate of 18%, projected to grow to $700 billion by 2030.

As SaaS products evolve, so do customers' needs and expectations. Customers today expect more than cookie-cutter features or generic packages: They want best-in-class, customizable software complete with personalized, on-demand support.

Unlike other business models, SaaS is all about providing long-term value to customers, who, in turn, can provide long-term value to the company. Think of it like a two-way gift that keeps on giving.

But as it turns out, acquiring and retaining customers is actually pretty hard.

The majority of SaaS is sold as a subscription, and as such customers are constantly evaluating how much value they're getting from a SaaS product; how the features stack up against competitors, how the product adapts to their changing needs, how much bang they're getting for their buck, etc.

To keep the money flowing, customers need to be continually convinced of the value they're getting. That's where customer-facing professionals come in.

Customer-facing teams in SaaS work cross-functionally with many department across the company;

Ensuring customers see a return on investment (ROI) with the products, Solving complex business problems through software solutions, and Obtaining invaluable insights that feed back into the product development process.

Above all, customer-facing SaaS teams are crucial for keeping churn (the rate at which SaaS customers cancel their subscriptions) to a minimum.

Now we've explored why customer experience is so crucial, let's look at the nine key customer-facing roles in SaaS (divided into the departments they sit in).

Move aside, Selling Sunset - it's all about selling SaaS.

SaaS and subscription-based products powered by the cloud are still a relatively new phenomenon, and have paved the way for a different sales cycle than one you might encounter selling traditional software. SaaS products are a long-term investment rather than a one-off purchase. SaaS customers also need to do their due diligence; making sure the product supports business processes, and checking the software is compliant and will protect their data in the cloud. In most cases, multiple decision-makers have a hand in approving the final purchase.

It's up to SaaS salespeople to keep customers engaged throughout a complex and competitive sales cycle; providing them with all the information they need to confidently sign a multi-year contract and enter into a business partnership. They need to be able to flawlessly distill product and industry knowledge, push the right features and benefits, and build trusting, long-lasting relationships.

Sales Development Representative

In today’s highly competitive world, first impressions are everything—and no one knows that better than sales development representatives (SDRs). SDRs are the first point of contact in the customer journey, who create—and nurture—sales opportunities. As entry-level salespeople, they’ll develop the vital customer-facing skills that'll prepare them for more senior roles, like account executive (more on this coming up!).

At its core, the role focuses on identifying and engaging sales-qualified leads on a one-to-one basis. This process is called sales prospecting, and involves developing relationships with new leads through outbound activities (like cold calling or emailing).

Tasks & responsibilities at a glance:

• Identifying and qualifying leads and passing them on to sales representatives
• Gathering sales data and conducting customer research
• Cold outreach to SQLs (cold calling, emailing, LinkedIn InMails, etc.)
• Guiding the decision-maker into a purchase 
• Educating leads on the product/solution
• Handling objections as they come up

In B2B SaaS, SDRs strategically hunt for qualified opportunities that they pass off to account executives (who then turn them into sales).

Account Executive

While SDRs are responsible for finding leads, account executives are the people who actually see a deal through to close. They sit as the vital link between the customer and the product—with responsibilities that sit at the intersection of sales, customer support, and business development. 

An account executive’s job is to build relationships with new and existing prospects, and act as a trusted business advisor. They pick up the baton from SDRs with the ultimate aim of bringing a deal to close. 

Account executives first qualify leads by understanding their potential to turn into actual customers based on needs, budget, and timeline. They then work to help customers understand how their SaaS product can help solve business problems and boost their revenue. 

Once they’ve got the info they need, they’ll facilitate multiple moving parts to bring a deal to close.

Account executives are also responsible for managing existing accounts: Keeping them up to date on new features and functionality, getting complex issues solved, and finding new sales opportunities to expand.

Tasks and responsibilities at a glance: 

• Develop long-term relationships with clients to build trust 
• Develop personalized sales strategies based on client insights
• Create tailored proposals and presentations that walk the client through the product (pricing models, tailored solutions, etc.)
• Nurture high-value leads through the sales and post-sales pipeline
• Come up with creative ways to generate leads

Presales Solutions Consultants

One hailed as a ‘nice to have,’ presales is becoming a popular (and valuable) addition to SaaS companies’ sales strategies. Presales specialists support account executives in helping the customer understand the product—and the value they’ll get from it. 

‘Presales’ is an umbrella discipline, which includes titles like Solutions Consultant, Solutions Engineer, and Sales Engineer. But no matter the title, all presales professionals in SaaS are largely responsible for the same thing: Helping account executives close deals by acting as software and technology experts, puzzle solvers, compelling storytellers, and business strategists to customers. 

Presales have one foot in sales, one foot in product, and eyes and ears on everything happening in the ecosystem around it.

Tasks and responsibilities at a glance:

• Acting as a comprehensive product expert in features and functionality
• Conducting business and technical discovery calls to map business requirements to software capabilities
• Carrying out engaging, persuasive product demonstrations
• Acting as a business and technology advisor to customers
• Partnering with product teams and partners to find software solutions to solve complex business problems

Solutions Architect

Solutions architects design the best software environment and solution for the customer. Like presales (and sometimes as part of presales), they act as a bridge between the technical and business sides of a customer evaluation. They work to understand customer business objectives, and create a technical plan for bringing the solution to life. 

The best solutions architects can anticipate needs before customers realize them—and then be proactive about addressing those needs when they arise. They’ll distill complex technical language in a way that's easy for clients to understand, and translate customer needs and business goals into actionable next steps. 

Tasks and responsibilities at a glance:

• Create out-of-the-box or custom software solutions 
• Mapping business objectives to software solutions
• Monitoring and auditing the performance of existing solutions 
• Carry out user research to identify potential points of friction
• Ideating on solution design through workshops with customer stakeholders

Professional Services

SaaS professional services organizations are designed to help ensure customers are getting the most out of the software they have just purchased and can provide customized solutions tailored to their specific needs. They're an in-house team made up of a number of different roles that see a customer take a customer from contract signed to ready to launch.

Customer Engagement Manager

Presales solutions consultants and solution architects help get a technical plan in place for a customer's future state with their SaaS solution. But post-sale, who's going to see all their hard work through to finish? Enter: the Customer Engagement Manager (CEM). 

CEMs are brought in to project manage customer implementations. They make sure all the technical milestones are being hit; workflows are configured, customizations are built, and onboarding is on-schedule and trending towards a go-live date. 

CEMs play a tactical role in ensuring that everything promised in the sales cycle takes shape; including a seamless onboarding, streamlined processes, and growth and retention. They coordinate implementation specialists, partners, and other customer stakeholders involved in the project.

Tasks and responsibilities at a glance:

• Anticipate and address customer problems 
• Gauge and respond to customer feedback 
• Consult customers on how to maximize their ROI with the product 
• Ensure the terms and conditions of the contract are met 
• Gather and feed back insights on customer expectations 
• Advocate for customer needs across the business
• Develop a deep understanding of each client's business and industry to assess their ongoing needs

Implementation Specialist

Presales professionals demonstrate how a future state using a SaaS solution could be. An implementation specialist brings that to life. 

Implementation specialists are responsible for working with clients to implement, train, and onboard them to the product on an organizational scale. This role sits on the more technical side, at the intersection of business, product, and operations. It serves two main purposes: Supporting customers and driving adoption throughout organizations.

Tasks and responsibilities at a glance:

• Installing and setting up new applications
• Creating bespoke onboarding plans
• Customizing the application based on client needs
• Onboarding clients through data migration
• Setting up integrations with the clients other systems
• Configuring the system to meet client needs 
• Scheduling ongoing training for new updates and features
• Diagnosing and troubleshooting unanticipated issues

Customer Success

SaaS customers sign up for tools and applications because they’re trying to solve a problem or reach a specific goal. It’s not enough for SaaS companies to simply provide the product: They also need to help the customers ‘find success’ and see ROI with said product. This is the sole focus of customer success teams, who sit as the crucial link between the customer and the product.

Customer Success Manager

More and more companies are catching on to customer success as a key growth driver. Customers who don’t achieve their desired outcomes are likely to take their business elsewhere—so it’s up to the customer success team to stop that from happening. A dedicated customer success team improves retention, maximizes customer lifetime value, and keeps churn low. 

A SaaS customer success manager is responsible for ensuring that customers are successful in using the software and achieving their goals. They provide guidance, education, and support to customers on how to best use the software, as well as helping troubleshoot any issues they may have. The customer success manager works closely with other departments such as sales and engineering in order to ensure that the customer's needs are met. They also track usage data to identify trends or areas of improvement.

Tasks and responsibilities at a glance:

• Develop strong, long-term relationships with existing customers to ensure satisfaction and loyalty.
• Help customers be successful in getting the most out of the features and services.
• Monitor customer feedback to make sure they're satisfied and happy with their experience.
• Act as an advocate for customers - help them troubleshoot any issues they may have or advise on better ways to use or implement the product.
• Identify areas where we can improve our product and services to help enhance the customer experience.

New software can take a while to get used to, and customers are bound to run into features they can’t seem to get the hang of. No one wants frustrated customers, so an airtight customer support strategy is a non-negotiable. 

While customer success professionals are proactive, customer support is reactive. Good customer support teams will remain on-hand for continued support; making sure customers feel empowered, educated, and looked after. One positive interaction with customer support could spell the difference between a customer leaving a one-star review and the same customer turning into a brand evangelist; so it’s safe to say customer support directly impacts overall business success.

Customer Support Agent/Technician

Customer support agents sit on the frontlines, interfacing with all kinds of customers as they respond to inquiries, solve issues, and help frustrated customers feel valued and respected.

Depending on the company and team size, some support agents may concentrate on accounts and payments issues, while others may be trained in technical troubleshooting, logs, and product expertise. In other companies, support agents truly run the gamut of assistance provided in helping customers use the software.

This role requires a high level of empathy and problem-solving. They’ll provide usage scenarios that can help customers solve their problems more effectively, and follow up with resources about best practices for further reading. 

And as support agents rise through the ranks, they have the opportunity to build highly technical knowledge and competence in areas like database management, system architecture, software development life cycle (SDLC), data encryption, and security protocols. 

Tasks and responsibilities at a glance:

• Work with customers to troubleshoot software issues  
• Create and track tickets on behalf of customers
• Communicate the root cause of the problem to customers
• Work closely with customer support agents to ensure problems get resolved quickly 
• Feed customer issues back to the product team to mitigate future problems
• Acknowledge pain points and put frustrated customers at ease 

Customer support agents are active across various channels; including phones, email, live chat, or social media. They’re also guardians of the knowledge base; able to locate and share educational resources that can answer customer questions.

Customer Experience Specialists

Have you ever explored a new tool, and been delighted by your overall experience—from clearly explained processes, to fast responses from customer support agents? This is the expert engineering of a customer experience (CX) specialist. 

CX is how your customers perceive every touchpoint with a product; from their very first interaction to onboarding with the product. It's the sum of all efforts to delight customers and make them love using a product.

SaaS CX specialists oversee a smooth, friction-free end-to-end customer experience. They make sure marketing teams are staying on top of their game and delivering engaging content through emails or blog posts; they help customer service reps handle calls efficiently to keep wait times to a minimum; and above all, they work across customer-facing teams to optimize customer processes.

Tasks and responsibilities at a glance:

• Advocate for customer-centricity across the business 
• Bridge the gap between customer-facing and product teams
• Map customer journeys to identify pain points and opportunities for better CX 
• Create innovative CX strategies that align with broader business goals
• Gather and present customer insights to stakeholders throughout the business

If you're looking to break into SaaS, and just so happen to be a gifted people-person, you might be wondering where you'd thrive across the SaaS customer service or sales landscape.

Naturally, it makes the most sense to pursue a career path that best aligns with your past experiences and transferable skills. But if your customer-facing experience is limited (or you're looking for a new challenge), here's a quick-fire guide to understanding which SaaS role might be right for you.

You're right for SaaS sales if you:

• Love to learn about new technologies and concepts
• Are great at fostering relationships
• Thrive in a fast-paced environment

You're right for SaaS presales or professional services if you:

• Have a knack for quickly learning new technology, software products and services
• Enjoy public speaking and teaching (or enabling) customers to successfully use software
• Want a role at the intersection of business and technology

You're right for SaaS customer success if you:

• Are persuasive, proactive, and confident
• Have experience building strong business cases
• Are analytical by nature, and love going beyond the surface to find multi-faceted solutions to complex problems

You're right for SaaS customer support if you:

• Are passionate about helping people
• Are skilled at conflict resolution
• Have a passion for learning and tinkering with software and all things internet

Customer-facing roles in SaaS focus on helping the customer understand the product and how it can help them achieve their goals. Sure, they'll get onboarded with the product internally-but how much product knowledge or technical skills (i.e. coding) are SaaS customer-facing professionals really expected to have?

What if you're amazing at customer service, but don't consider yourself a technical person? And what happens if the customer asks a technical question you don't know the answer to?

Tech literacy in customer-facing SaaS teams is a hot topic. Ultimately, how much customer-facing roles need to know about technical concepts depends on a few factors, including the nature of the product itself, and how technically-savvy the customers are.

Traditionally, salespeople could get away with a working understanding of the product and the key features and benefits related to the customer's everyday use. But SaaS salespeople are expected to be much more comfortable discussing technical concepts-especially when selling complex solutions to highly knowledgeable tech professionals who want to know how the product will fit into their existing stack.

Keeping up with technical conversations and answering technical questions is key to helping SaaS companies earn trust and respect.

That's not to say that you need a tech background to break into SaaS sales, but being tech savvy-or a fast learner-will undoubtedly help you in the long run.

On the other hand, customer support professionals are expected to have a much higher technical aptitude-and often come from technical backgrounds. To help customers get the most out of their continued use, they need an in-depth, up-to-date understanding of the product and the technology that powers it.

So, what about customer support?

Customer support is more of a mixed bag. Support technicians are techies by nature, whereas customer support agents and CX specialists will facilitate the answers rather than having the answers themselves.

The TL;DR? It's more important to talk tech, not code it. In sales and customer support, there's nothing you can't learn on the job-and there are a tonne of courses and resources out there to get you up to speed in no time.

Don't let your lack of technical background stop you from pursuing a customer-facing SaaS role!

And there we have it: A layman's guide to the ever-changing landscape of customer-facing SaaS teams. Well done for sticking with us to the end!

Gone are the days when customer-facing roles were seen as low-skilled or low-paid positions. Our understanding of the power of good CX has come a mighty long way, and today, customer-facing professionals hold some of the most strategic roles in SaaS organizations. You can have an exceptional product, and a genius marketing strategy-but it's the work of a talented customer-facing team that keeps the money coming in.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of every customer-facing role in SaaS-and the job titles, job descriptions, and responsibilities of each role look very different from company to company.

In a startup, for example, you might have one customer support agent who does the work of a customer service rep, technician, and CX specialist. On the other hand, a larger company might have an entire team dedicated to CX alone.

The good news? If you're considering segueing into a customer-facing SaaS role, there's never been a better time. CX in SaaS is growing, and customer-centric superstars have plenty of opportunities to stake their claims in the industry. One quick Indeed search of customer-facing jobs in SaaS should give you some idea of the sheer scale-and variety-of what's out there.