Exclusive Interview: Lara Barnes, SVP Customer Success & Renewals at Sitecore
I'm thrilled to share my conversation with Lara Barnes, Senior Vice President of Customer Success and Renewals at Sitecore.
With a wealth of experience spanning roles at Oracle, Facebook, and Sitecore, Lara offers massive insights into building and leading successful customer success teams.
Thank you, Lara, for sharing your story with us at The CS Café!
The stage is yours!
P.S. Have a unique career story to share? I'm always on the lookout for exceptional experiences to feature. If you think your journey could inspire our community, feel free to submit your story using this quick form. While I can't feature everyone, I carefully review each submission to bring the most impactful insights to my readers.
PART 1/2
Career Journey and Evolution of Customer Success
Your Professional Journey
Q: Can you tell us about your career leading up to your role as Senior Vice President of Customer Success and Renewals at Sitecore?
I started at Sitecore 7 years ago and built the organization from scratch, I was the first Customer Success Manager (CSM).
I needed to set the strategy along with the budget and work out who we would service first as we scaled.
We built the CS team and the entire Operations team globally to 75 people across 3 regions, APJ, AMER, and EMEA.
I also was given the remit to build a Renewals team globally managing €180M in renewals a year—so significant volumes quarterly.
I took the team through a perpetual to SaaS transition and built a Value Realization Framework to drive outcomes with Telemetry tracking.
I carried out a Customer Lifecycle Project across 12 departments to align our Customer Journey, the moments that matter to enhance our Customer Experience.
We built an incredible ethos and culture.
Early Career Foundations and Adaptability
Q: Throughout your career, from your roles at Oracle and Facebook to your latest position at Sitecore, how have the core principles of customer success evolved, and what consistent approaches have you relied on despite rapid changes in the digital landscape?
Customer Success is all about the customer.
As a leader, you represent the Customer in the organization.
So it is important to ensure the experience they have enables success planning, achievement of their goals, and value realization, so that they feel gaining outcomes for their business and the renewal is a non-event.
It’s changed not in what we do but how we do it. It’s become more refined in driving outcomes, which is the right direction.
However, Customer Success as a department is continuously under scrutiny for not being a cost base but driving additional revenue streams for cross-sell upsell.
This is easy when you have a product that is easy to implement and user experience is fluid.
As we move into product-led growth with Product teams becoming more accountable for the renewal, the ability to cross-sell and upsell - the whole customer lifecycle and accountability for the customer comes to life.
It always needs to be end-to-end management.
"Customer Success is all about the customer. As a leader, you represent the Customer in the organization."
Strategic Vision and Leadership
Q: As a leader in customer success and renewals, how do you balance having a long-term strategic vision with meeting the immediate needs of your clients?
It’s about setting goals at the beginning of the year and sticking to these goals, despite the roadblocks and the incoming fire drills.
It’s about consistently providing overviews to the team on how you are doing against the goals quarterly to track your progress.
So that everyone can see what’s possible, and how they are contributing is making a difference to the overall goal.
It’s amazing what you can achieve when everyone is pointing in the right direction.
Building and Sustaining Customer Relationships
Q: Can you share a specific example where using a creative approach to customer success significantly impacted renewals or customer loyalty in your previous roles?
Creating a Value Realization Framework with Telemetry tracking helped us identify what success looked like with the product and how we can guide our customers to achieving those goals.
It was a tangible output to show outcome-based customer success activity which made it easier for the renewal discussion as value was seen.
Data-Driven Customer Success
Q: Given your experience with data-focused products at Oracle Marketing Cloud, how do you use data analytics and insights to drive customer success strategies at Sitecore?
Data is key to your success.
Not just to show how your customers are performing or not and predicting renewal outcomes, but also to identify where things need attention and fixing in the customer journey to make that experience a better one.
It helped me justify headcount too.
When we could show investment in CSMs was more cost-effective than adding more Account Executives (AEs) to the business.
To learn more about leveraging data in customer success, check out my quick guide on Top SaaS Metrics And KPIs".
Cross-Functional Collaboration and Career Development
Q: How do you encourage collaboration between the customer success team and other departments, such as sales and product development, to ensure a cohesive customer experience?
Understanding the whole picture for the customer and running the customer lifecycle project created such momentum as multiple departments were bringing their expertise.
The customer journey became such a focus that we even had Customer workshops run by the People & Culture team to see how we could enhance our focus and goals culturally.
Ensuring that there is a clear RACI* and end-to-end tracking to understand who has responsibility for the customer at any point in the customer cycle gives clarity.
*RACI stands for “Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed”. It’s a responsibility assignment matrix used in project management to clarify roles and responsibilities)
Discover more strategies for effective collaboration in my guide on CS Product Teamwork Tips.
Challenges and Future of Customer Success
Q: Reflecting on your career, what has been the most challenging aspect of leading customer success teams, and how have you innovated to address this challenge?
One of the most challenging times was after Covid when new business started to dry up and costs started to escalate.
We needed to let some of the team go. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.
I had brought these people in and they were part of our culture and what we had built.
As a leader, there are difficult situations that need to be managed and I also then needed to take the remaining team through to achieve our targets.
It’s not that you agree with what’s happening but you are there to lead under all circumstances and do the right thing by the people you manage.
The Future of Customer Success
Q: With the evolution of digital experience platforms and the growing importance of personalized customer interactions, what do you see as the future of customer success, and how should CS pros prepare?
The future is “more efficiency” with AI.
It’s not going to replace relationships and setting outcomes but it will allow you to track your customers’ activity and predict risk quicker.
AI will:
know your product well.
allow you to understand your customers better than you.
answer questions faster than you and will recognize patterns more accurately than you.
help you be more effective in managing relationships
allow you to do less and achieve more.
The success of a CSM is tied to the value they bring.
So AI will be a game changer in how we understand, interact with customers, and predict needs.
CSMs should be embracing it and using Gemini, ChatGPT, and other platforms to help them understand their customers better.
However, Outcomes over Outputs.
It will shift the perspective of outcomes—customers will be able to achieve more value.
"The future is more efficiency with AI. It's not going to replace relationships and setting outcomes, but it will allow you to track your customers' activity and predict risk quicker."
Explore more about the role of AI in my article on AI-Powered Customer Success.
Access More Exclusive Insights from Lara
Intrigued by Lara's story?
There's so much more to discover!
Level up your customer success strategies with Lara's expert insights and transform your approach to driving business growth.
In Part 2 of our interview, Lara shares:
Her strategic vision for customer success and how it drives business growth
Insights on leveraging data analytics for proactive customer engagement
Thoughts on the future of customer success and the role of AI
How to build and nurture high-performing global customer success teams
Strategies for balancing revenue growth with customer satisfaction
The Value Realization Framework that transformed Sitecore's customer success approach
Tips for navigating the transition from on-premise to SaaS models
How to foster cross-departmental collaboration for a seamless customer journey
Advice on staying ahead of industry trends and future-proofing your career
Her personal leadership philosophy and lessons for aspiring CS leaders
Upgrade to premium now and get exclusive access to Part 2 of my interview with Lara, plus all of my other member-only content!
As a Premium subscriber, you’ll not only get access to my interview with Lara but also:
✅ Exclusive Interviews with CS Leaders: Gain insider knowledge you won't find anywhere else.
✅ Full Archive Access: Over 350+ articles without paywalls, and growing every week!
✅ AI Productivity Power-Ups: Cutting-edge tools to boost your efficiency.
✅ Premium Member Resources: Actionable templates, frameworks, and guides.
✅ NEW: CS Café Slack Community—Network with fellow CS professionals.
What My Subscribers Say
“The CS Café Newsletter is the quintessential resource for all things Customer Success. The material resourced and curated by Hakan is always current and actionable for all CS organizations.” - Kevin Herrholtz, VP of Client Success, AddShoppers
“I upgraded to The CS Café Premium to access your exclusive content and learn from you. I find your content very valuable” - Tasneem Nomanbhai, Customer Success Manager, Digital Marketing
Don't miss out on learning directly from leaders in Customer Success.
Upgrade to premium now and get instant access to my exclusive content that will transform your customer success strategies and career.
Part 2/2
[Exclusive to my Premium subscribers below this line]