The No-BS CS Workload Audit (+ XLSX Kits You Can Ship)
Your best CSM didn’t “lose passion.” They carried more volume, more complexity, and less slack until the math broke.
Backfilling without an audit just pours a new hire into the same leaky bucket.
Run a workload audit first.
Prove where the work lives, redistribute it, and install guardrails. That’s how you protect renewals, quality, and team sanity.
The VSC Stack: What You Measure (And Why It Matters)
Volume (raw load)
Track how many emails each rep receives and sends over 90 days, plus their open backlog.
If someone consistently handles 30% more emails than the team average, they’re overloaded.
If their backlog keeps growing instead of shrinking, that’s chronic overflow.
Speed (pressure)
Look at how long it takes to send first responses, average reply times, and how often messages go out after normal hours.
Slow response times + frequent evening/weekend emails = time compression, not laziness.
Complexity (where burnout hides)
Count the tough stuff: threads that need lots of back-and-forth (4+ messages), escalations, and touches with your biggest or at-risk accounts.
Combine these into a Complexity Index so you can compare the real cognitive load across your team.
30 thorny enterprise issues burn out a rep faster than 50 password resets. Measure like it.
Burnout Signals You Can See In The Data
Uneven distribution
Same people always handling 30%+ more work than the team average.
Skill-based overload
Senior reps get pulled into every escalation and difficult customer situation.
Time compression
Late responses + high activity + constant after-hours work = zero breathing room.
No recovery time
Your team’s daily activity chart shows constant spikes with no quiet periods for deep work.
Rule of thumb: If someone shows 2+ of these patterns for more than 3 weeks, treat it as revenue risk, not just an HR issue.
Capacity Guardrails Leaders Actually Use
Set account ratios that match your reality:
SMB: 50–80 accounts per CSM
Mid-Market: 25–40 accounts per CSM
Enterprise: 10–20 accounts per CSM (or 6–12 if integrations are heavy)
Cap “complex” work at 8 concurrent threads per rep; overflow goes to a rotating complexity pod of senior CSMs.
Route new work to whoever has the lightest current load, not just a round-robin assignment.
Give executives monthly visibility with a one-page brief showing utilization, who’s carrying the hardest work, risk flags, and when you’ll need budget or scope changes to maintain quality.
In the premium section below, I give you the full playbook with proven formulas, templates, dashboard schema, 7-day rollout, and scripts to implement this in 7 days.
If you lead $50k–$500k ARR accounts and own renewals, this is your “do it now” guide.
→ Join hundreds of CS pros using these playbooks every week to stop burnout and protect revenue before risk shows up.
Real-world practical results, not theory BS:
“The CS Café is incredibly valuable! It gives a view on how and what to do next.” — Lara Barnes, SVP Customer Success
“The CS Café Newsletter is the ultimate resource for all things Customer Success. Always current and actionable.” — Kevin Herrholtz, VP Client Success, AddShoppers
🔐Implement The Workload Audit In 7 Days (Templates, Rules, And Scripts)
You don’t need a new tool. You need 90 days of exports, three formulas, and a clear routing policy.
Here’s the full kit: