Customer Success Manager SMB (German speaking) at Pleo · Lisbon

ABOUT PLEO Messy spend management is tricky business. And tedious processes are a lose-lose situation for all involved, not just finance. At Pleo, we're changing that. We build spend solutions that make managing money seamless, empowering, and surprisingly effective for finance teams and employees alike - with a vision to help all businesses ‘go beyond’. The word ‘Pleo’ actually means ‘more than you’d expect’, and living by that mantra has been the secret to our success over the last 10 years. Now, we’re at a pivotal moment in our journey; every move we make has a direct impact on our 40,000+ customers, our business, and our collective success. We need people who take pride in uncovering customer needs, who turn complex problems into simple solutions, challenge the way things are done (respectfully), and always aim high. With great ambitions driving us forward, we can’t say we’ve got this whole thing figured out. And frankly, that’s half the fun! What we can say is that we’re a driven, progressive, and, importantly, a kind bunch of 850+ people from over 100 nationalities, all committed to delivering the future of business spending, together. ABOUT THE ROLE We’re looking for a Customer Success Manager, SMB to join our Customer Experience team at Pleo. In this role, you’ll manage a portfolio of SMB customers, helping them realise value, improve adoption, reduce risk, and identify opportunities to deepen their engagement with Pleo over time. This role is ideal for a Customer Success professional who is ready to move beyond purely transactional customer motions and take on greater ownership of customer health, retention, and account planning. You should be comfortable managing a portfolio that blends digital engagement with relationship-based customer management, depending on customer size, maturity, and needs. You will play an important role in helping customers get the right level of support and strategic guidance at the right time, while working closely with cross-functional teams to improve customer outcomes and maintain strong portfolio performance. WHO YOU’LL BE WORKING WITH AND REPORTING TO You’ll report to our Manager of Customer Success SMB and work closely with teams across Support, Onboarding, Product, Sales, RevOps, Marketing, and Operations. You’ll partner with internal stakeholders to ensure customers receive coordinated support, strong lifecycle engagement, and a connected experience across onboarding, adoption, renewal, and growth moments. WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING As a Customer Success Manager SMB you will: - Own a portfolio of high-value SMB customers with accountability for customer health, retention support, adoption, and engagement quality. - Retain customers at risk outside of your portfolio based on a case by case assignment - Build strong customer relationships across operational and decision-making stakeholders, serving as a trusted and responsive partner. - Guide customers through key lifecycle moments including onboarding, adoption, value realisation, renewals, and growth opportunities. - Drive proactive customer engagement through a mix of digital motions, structured outreach, business reviews, and relationship-based interactions. - Monitor customer health and engagement signals to identify customers at risk and take action early. - Support churn prediction and prevention efforts by tracking account signals, running risk reviews, and building mitigation plans with internal partners. - Maintain forecast visibility across your portfolio including renewals, growth opportunities, customer risk, and key milestones. - Create and manage customer success plans and account action plans that align to customer goals, lifecycle stage, and business needs. - Partner cross-functionally with Support, Product, Sales, and Operations to resolve customer issues, remove blockers, and improve outcomes. - Help identify growth opportunities through stronger adoption, broader use cases, stakeholder engagement, and customer advocacy. - Lead clear, professional customer communication across both strategic and day-to-day interactions. - Keep CRM and customer records current and accurate with strong operational discipline around notes, risks, actions, and forecasting. - Contribute feedback and insight that helps strengthen customer plays, portfolio management, and overall Customer Success effectiveness. You can expect to work across a tech environment that includes CRM, customer success platforms, support tooling, BI/reporting tools, workflow tools, and collaboration platforms. Examples: Hubspot, Vitally, Zendesk, Looker/Tableau/Power BI, Jira/Asana, and Slack. WHAT YOU BRING You’ll thrive in this role if you have: - 3–5 years of experience in Customer Success, Account Management, or a similar customer-facing role in SaaS, fintech, or technology environments. - Experience managing a portfolio of customers with responsibility for retention support, adoption, customer health, and relationship management. - Strong customer communication skills with the ability to lead clear, professional, and credible conversations. - Experience with churn prediction and prevention basics including risk identification, health tracking, and proactive customer follow-up. - Comfort managing forecasts and account visibility across renewals, risk, and customer engagement. - Strong relationship management skills with the ability to build trust and maintain momentum across multiple stakeholders. - Experience using digital and relationship-based customer engagement motions depending on customer need and account value. - Strong organisational and execution skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities across a portfolio. - A customer- and outcome-focused mindset with the ability to connect customer needs to product value and next steps. - Strong cross-functional collaboration skills and the ability to work effectively with Sales, Support, Product, RevOps, and Operations. - A data-aware mindset with the ability to interpret customer signals, trends, and account health indicators. NICE TO HAVE - Experience in fintech, spend management, payments, or financial operations - Experience with renewal support, success planning, or account management - Familiarity with health scoring, risk reviews, or lifecycle engagement programs - Exposure to digital customer engagement, webinars, education content, or scaled motions - Background in Customer Support or another customer-facing operational role WHY IS THIS ROLE A GOOD FIT FOR YOU This role is a good fit for you if: - You enjoy working with customers across both digital and relationship-led motions. - You are strong at balancing customer care, portfolio discipline, and business outcomes. - You like identifying risk early and building practical plans to keep customers on track. - You want to deepen your experience in forecasting, account planning, and proactive retention management. This role is not a good fit for you if: - You are looking for a purely transactional, low-accountability customer role. - You strongly prefer only enterprise-level strategic accounts or only scaled digital-only portfolios. - You are uncomfortable managing risk, renewals, and account forecasting. - You do not enjoy working across multiple stakeholders and internal teams. - You are looking for a people-management role at this stage. HOW YOU’LL DEVELOP IN THIS ROLE In your first 1 months at Pleo, you’ll: - Learn the product, customer journey, portfolio expectations, and segment priorities. - Build a view of your customers, including health, renewal timing, opportunities, and risks. - Establish strong working rhythms with internal partners and begin building relationships with customer stakeholders. - Start improving visibility into account plans, customer actions, and risk signals. In your first 3 months, you’ll: - Manage your portfolio with stronger confidence and consistency. - Improve proactive engagement across risk management, renewal readiness, and adioption. - Deliver better forecast visibility and stronger account discipline. - Become a trusted point of contact for your customers and internal teams supporting them. In your first 12 months, you’ll: - Build a well-managed portfolio with stronger customer engagement, clearer success plans, and better risk visibility. - Deliver measurable progress in adoption, retention support, and growth opportunity identification. - Improve the consistency and quality of your forecasting, account planning, and customer communication. - Build a strong foundation for progression into more senior or strategic Customer Success responsibilities. THE LOCATION Please note: We can hire on a hybrid or in-person set-up in any of the locations listed on the advert but you will need to be physically based in the country of your choice with a valid right to work. We are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role in any of the listed locations. SHOW ME THE BENEFITS. - Your own Pleo card (no more out-of-pocket spending!) - Lunch is on us for your work days - enjoy catered meals or receive a lunch allowance based on your local office - Comprehensive private healthcare - depending on your location, coverage options include Vitality, Alan or Médis - We offer 25 days of holiday + your public holidays - For our Team, we offer both hybrid and fully remote working options - Option to purchase 5 additional days of holiday through a salary sacrifice - We use MyndUp to give our employees access to free mental health and well-being support with great success so far - Paid parental leave - we want to make sure that we're supportive of families and help you feel that you don't have to compromise your family due to work THE INTERVIEW PROCESS We want to ensure you are set-up for success and understand what will be expected of you. If your application is successful, our interview process is as follows: 1. Intro call: A 30-minute chat with our Talent Partner to discuss the role and your background. 2. Hiring manager Interview: A 45-minute call with the Hiring manager to dig deeper into skills and experience. 3. The Pleo Challenge: A fun task to work on and present in a 1-hour team interview. Transparency is important to us so we also wanted to share some insights about what we’re looking for in applications to ensure you can set yourself up for success! Some of the key reasons why previous candidates didn’t make it past the application screening stage include: - CV writing and content: we receive a lot of CVs, and many of them are AI-generated. We love seeing people leverage AI—it’s a big focus for us internally too—but without human intervention, these CVs can sometimes become generic and fail to show a candidate in the best light. What we're really looking for is the specific details of real impact that only you know from your previous experience. A top tip from us is to use the “Achieved X, as measured by Y, by doing Z” formula (credit: Laszlo Bock, ~2014) to give a really clear picture of what you’ve worked on. A final note: including links to your previous companies' websites is a huge help and allows us to truly understand your background! - Application care: every single application we receive is reviewed by a human (yes, hundreds of them) because we believe that candidates' efforts should be matched by an equal level of human care. This means that we expect a similar level of attention put into your application. Read and answer the application questions carefully, they make a huge difference in our decision-making process. - Profile to role fit: highlight most important aspects of the role, points that might get misunderstood, any specific industry requirements etc. ABOUT YOUR APPLICATION - English first. Since it's our company language, please submit your application in English. You’ll be using it a lot if you join us. - A fair look for everyone. Our talent team reads every single application to ensure the process is fair. To keep things running smoothly, we only accept applications through our system—our support team can’t pass on calls or emails. - Diversity drives us. We can only reach our goals if our team reflects the world around us. That starts with you hitting apply, even if you don't tick every single box. We encourage people from all backgrounds and experiences to join us. - Interview at your best. We want you to feel comfortable throughout the process. If you have any accessibility requirements or need a specific format, email belonging@pleo.io. We’ll design a process that works for you. - Your data is safe. When you apply, we process your personal data as a data processor. For more information on how Pleo processes personal data, read our Privacy Policy here https://www.pleo.io/en/legal. - Applying for multiple roles? Nothing is stopping you, and we assess every role independently. However, we do look for alignment, so make sure you can explain why your interest and experience are right for each specific role. - Reapplying. If you’re applying for the same role again, please wait six months from your last decision before hitting submit.