PostHog Handbook Library / Growth

409 words. Estimated reading time: 2 min.

# CSM + TAM rules of engagement

Some accounts have both a CSM and a TAM. The point is depth: two people sharing the load so each can focus on what they're best at, and the customer gets a better experience than one person stretched across everything.

Both roles have a real relationship with the customer. Both are in the Slack channel. Both know what's happening on the account. The difference is _focus_, not ownership.

The customer should never have to figure out who to contact. They reach out to either person, and PostHog sorts it out internally.

### What each role focuses on

#### CSM

- Operational health and health score monitoring
- Support escalation and follow-through
- Credit usage optimization
- Onboarding, training, getting new users set up
- Renewal process end-to-end
- Day-to-day responsiveness
- Health of the technical implementation
- Surface cross-sell signals from product usage and conversations to TAM

#### TAM

- Cross-sell strategy and execution
- Credit discount negotiation and deal structuring for new credit purchases, invoicing
- Use case discovery, mapping products to problems
- Multi-threading into new teams and stakeholders
- Account planning (quarterly in Vitally)
- Stakeholder management

#### Both

- General customer questions (whoever sees it first)
- Implementation reviews
- Retention. TAMs are not off the hook here. Understanding health and usage is a prerequisite for cross-selling, not work that gets delegated.

### What good looks like

- Customer reaches out to either person and gets a fast, informed response. They never think about who to contact.
- Both go deeper on their focus area than either could alone
- Customer knows both people, trusts both, feels like they have a team
- Neither person is surprised by what the other communicated
- Both are visible in Slack, not just when they need something
- Both are aligned on the current state of the customer, risks, opportunities and what their counterpart is working on.
- TAM and CSM alignment on the account happens in public, not DMs

### What bad looks like

- Customer gets told "that's not my area, let me get [other person]"
- Customer only hears from the TAM when PostHog wants to sell something
- Customer gets asked "how are things going?" by both people in the same week
- CSM discusses pricing without knowing the TAM had a deal in play
- TAM sends a cross-sell email without knowing the customer filed 3 support tickets yesterday
- Neither person responds because each assumed the other would
- TAM checks out on health because "the CSM handles that now"
- Customer has to explain the same thing twice

Canonical URL: https://posthog.com/handbook/growth/sales/csm-tam-overlay-coverage

GitHub source: contents/handbook/growth/sales/csm-tam-overlay-coverage.md

Content hash: `dd1cfa05768f5a03`