Here's a compensation model I see all the time: CS team gets paid a base salary, maybe a small bonus tied to NPS or CSAT or some health score, and zero direct incentive tied to expansion revenue.
And then the same company wonders why their CSMs aren't driving expansion.
You built the incentive structure to optimize for the wrong thing. You're getting exactly what you paid for.
Compensation is the clearest signal you send about what you actually want from a function. Not what you say in the job description. Not what you talk about in team meetings. What you pay for.
If you pay your CS team to keep customers happy and reduce tickets, they will be very good at keeping customers happy and reducing tickets. They will not be good at identifying expansion opportunities, having commercial conversations, and moving ARR.
This isn't a character flaw. This is rational behavior. People optimize for the incentives in front of them.
What does a compensation model that produces expansion look like?
It has to tie meaningful dollars — not a token bonus, meaningful dollars — to expansion revenue. Not just retention. Not just health scores. Actual commercial outcomes: expansion ARR, net revenue retention above a threshold, renewal at or above current contract value.
It has to be structured so that the CSM has real influence over the number. You can't hold someone accountable for revenue they have no leverage over. The motion has to exist, the plays have to be defined, and the CSM has to have the authority and tools to run them.
And it has to be acknowledged at the leadership level that this is what the function is for. Not support with a nicer name. Revenue generation from the existing customer base.
The org change and the compensation change have to happen together. You can't pay for retention and then tell people to focus on expansion. You can't build the commercial motion without the incentive structure that makes people want to run it.
Fix the comp. The behavior changes.
Lincoln Murphy formally named and popularized Customer Success starting in 2010 and has spent 15 years connecting it to expansion revenue and commercial outcomes. Read The Premise.