As a recruitment partner to North American tech companies, we’ve had the opportunity to talk with hundreds of high-growth start-up and scale-up leaders about their experiences, aspirations, motivations, and of course…. their compensation strategies!
When establishing a target compensation range for a new search, clients always ask us “What are you seeing in the market right now for a role like this?”. Since we’re having these conversations regularly, we thought we would pull back the curtains and share some insights to help you create a competitive compensation package. Alternatively, if you’re on the hunt for your next challenge, we hope you’ll find this data to be useful in the negotiation process.
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We’ve seen a high demand for Customer Experience leaders recently so we thought we’d dive into a Customer Experience Snapshot! We unpack the landscape of CX compensation, tracing the journey from Customer Success Managers (CSMs) to Vice Presidents (VPs) across various seniorities.
Customer Experience roles, from CSMs to VPs, are pivotal in guiding and retaining customers. They lead teams, innovate in customer engagement, and have a significant impact on both customer and product strategy. Their responsibilities can span pre-sales, onboarding, account management, and support, ensuring customers find continuous value.
Below, we have included salary distribution data across seniorities from CSMs and Sr. CSMs, Leads and Managers, Head of and Director, and VP.
This data represents volunteered current compensation summaries from IC CSM to VP Customer Experience in SaaS start-up or scale-up companies across Canada.
In summary, the vertical charts below account for the average compensation by level, including base salary and bonus.
"Why does the average compensation for a VP of Customer Experience exceed the salary distribution's 75th percentile?". Great question, brilliant and curious reader! A 75th percentile can be lower than the average for a dataset, and is a very revealing and information-packed statistic.
How can that be? With outliers that can skew the data upwards! In this case, our survey reported a VP of CX earning $550k OTE (if you're reading this - well done! Your earnings have provided us with intriguing data analysis opportunities). Although we considered excluding this outlier, we found it to be a compelling and perhaps aspirational datapoint to acknowledge.
Wage growth! Since our last CX Snapshot in 2019, average total compensation at the VP Level increased by a staggering 44.5% from our last snapshot in 2019: from $182K to $263K, outlier included.
Of our candidate sample, the average bonus across all levels is 18.5% of their base salary. Bonus percentages were reported fairly even across all levels.
Among CX professionals, 57% hold equity or preferred stock in their organizations, slightly above the all-function average of 54%. This trend intensifies at the executive level, with 72% of VP-level individuals reporting equity ownership, in contrast to just 25% of individual contributors (ICs).
In March 2024, we embarked on our first-ever Salary Snapshot Survey, to enrich our collection of salary information and offer compelling insights. Below, we share some of the key findings.
Our survey saw a balanced participation from male and female CX professionals; however, females were found to earn 8.6% less on average.
Given that our respondents are engaged with us as a search firm in some capacity, we recognize a potential bias in our data. Nonetheless, it offers valuable insights:
Our snapshots provide valuable and current insights, derived from a select sample of individuals with verified and noteworthy experience in successful Canadian companies. This data, gathered from our recent searches and our newly launched Salary Survey, offers a more focused and relevant perspective than standard salary surveys.
In the dynamic landscape of employment, salary data transparency acts as a transformative force benefiting both employers and job seekers alike. For employers, it provides a strategic advantage by aligning compensation packages with industry benchmarks, fostering equity, and enhancing recruitment appeal. Job seekers, armed with this knowledge, navigate their careers more strategically, negotiate effectively, and make informed decisions, contributing to a more open, fair, and empowered job market.
We believe that our Salary Snapshots are an effective delivery method for this data with our 4 T’s model:
Targeted: Specializing in the tech and innovation industry, our data reflects the compensation landscape of tech companies, making it directly relevant to your world.
Timely: Unlike traditional reports with multi-year lags, our 2023 salary data is up-to-date, providing you with the latest insights.
Trustworthy: Unlike free crowdsourced data, our information comes from one-on-one conversations with candidates actively involved in searches for our clients, ensuring reliability and accuracy.
Trim: We're agile and focused, offering a concise snapshot of current compensation trends, avoiding lengthy reports while retaining all the essential contextual information and analysis.
Please share this, or any of our other Salary Snapshots with your network!
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Created and published in March 2024