Manager of Customer Success

Key Responsibilities

1. Customer Insight & Success Management

• Own the Customer Success Plan for assigned key accounts, defining annual objectives, priority projects, innovation opportunities, key stakeholders, core pain points and improvement priorities.
• Manage the end-to-end cooperation journey from the customer's perspective: customer product/business analysis → market & competitive dynamics → pain point & opportunity identification → brief & latent demand → innovative solution integration & confirmation → development & validation → mass production & delivery → feedback & continuous innovation.
• Continuously monitor changes in the customer's market, key categories, channels and consumer preferences, as well as the customer's business performance, product portfolio and strategic priorities, to anticipate future opportunity windows.
• Establish a customer health mechanism to track project status, satisfaction, delivery performance, quality risks, innovation activity, cooperation depth and key relationship changes.

2. Customer Market & Competitive Intelligence

• Continuously track the size, growth, trends, channel shifts and consumer preferences of the customer's target market and key categories, and generate actionable market insights for account management.
• Systematically monitor new product launches, core categories, price bands, formula/packaging innovations, selling propositions and launch timelines of the customer's competitors, to identify competitive pressures and white-space opportunities.
• Translate market and competitive changes into a customer opportunity map — defining which categories to enter, which products to upgrade, and which innovations to advance for pre-development — and align regularly with Sales, Marketing and R&D teams.

3. Customer Innovation & Product Opportunity Management

• Deeply understand the customer's brand positioning, category strategy, product roadmap, target consumers and innovation needs for the next 6–24 months, and continuously identify product opportunities.
• Build an annual Innovation Pipeline / Product Opportunity Map for each customer, managed by brand, category, launch window, commercial potential and technology maturity.
• Collaborate with Marketing, R&D, Packaging and Innovation teams to integrate market trends, competitive changes and internal capabilities into innovation solutions that are understandable, decision-ready and executable for customers.
• Drive proactive pre-development (Pre-DEV) innovation instead of only reacting to customer briefs; prepare formulas, packaging, processes, claims, costing and supply chain solutions in advance for key accounts.
• Track conversion rates across the full flow: Proposal → Sampling → Project → Nomination → SOP, and continuously improve return on innovation investment.

4. Customer Brief Translation

• Translate customers' explicit briefs and latent needs into clear, executable internal development requirements, ensuring aligned understanding across commercial, product, technical, regulatory, quality, packaging and supply chain teams.
• Clarify mandatory requirements, success criteria, target cost, launch timeline, target market, regulatory requirements, competitive benchmarks and the customer's actual decision logic during brief clarification.
• When a customer does not have a fully formed brief, proactively lead opportunity definition and concept development based on market, competition, consumer pain points and the customer's product portfolio.
• Drive feasibility assessment before formal project kickoff, identifying risks related to formula, packaging, process, quality, cost, capacity, regulation and lead time, to improve front-end definition quality.

5. New Product Development Success Assurance

• Serve as the customer-side representative for project success, participating in and overseeing the full lifecycle of key innovation projects from initiation to mass production.
• Work with Project Managers to define key milestones and gate reviews, clarifying inputs, outputs, owners, deadlines, risks and customer confirmation points for each phase.
• Focus on sample quality, formula stability, packaging compatibility, manufacturing feasibility, test validation, cost changes, regulatory requirements and mass production consistency.
• Ensure commitments made in the development phase are fully realized in mass production, mitigating the risk of "sample success but mass production failure" or "front-end promises that cannot be delivered downstream".

6. Customer Issue & Risk Closure

• Oversee and follow up on major quality, delivery, development, communication and service issues that impact customer experience.
• Coordinate QA, PM, SCM, Factory, R&D and other teams to promptly conduct fact-finding, root cause analysis, implement interim and long-term corrective actions, and develop customer communication plans.
• Maintain a customer risk register and escalation mechanism, and escalate major risks in a timely manner to ensure transparent information and timely decision-making.
• Drive lessons learned from issues to be documented in knowledge bases, SOPs, product design standards and future projects, to reduce recurrence.

7. Cross-functional Account Collaboration Mechanism

• Participate in or lead Account Business Squads for key accounts, aligning functions including Sales, Marketing, R&D, Packaging, PM, QA, SCM, Factory and Finance.
• Establish structured recurring mechanisms: customer project risk reviews, Innovation Pipeline reviews, key project milestone reviews, account business reviews, and ad-hoc meetings for critical issues.
• Clarify cross-functional responsibilities and drive alignment on key matters, reducing information silos, redundant communication and ambiguous internal accountability.
• Act as a bridge and organizer between customers and internal resources, without replacing functional department responsibilities, to ensure customer goals are collectively achieved by the organization.

8. Voice of Customer & Continuous Improvement

• Systematically collect Voice of Customer (VOC), including formal feedback, meeting inputs, project reviews, complaints, compliments, unmet needs and latent demands.
• Conduct customer satisfaction and pain point analysis, identify top issues impacting customer experience, and drive internal improvement initiatives.
• Publish regular Customer Success Reviews to update management on account health, innovation opportunities, risks, competitive changes and resource requirements.
• Drive continuous optimization of processes, organization, products and services through customer reviews, and establish replicable best practices.

9. Data & AI-enabled Customer Success

• Maintain key data on customers, projects, products, innovation opportunities, market competition and feedback, ensuring complete, accurate and traceable data in CRM, project systems and customer master data.
• Identify customer innovation preferences, project bottlenecks, risk patterns, product opportunities, conversion rates and service efficiency through data analysis.
• Participate in the development of customer knowledge bases, product knowledge bases and AI tools, to enable more intelligent customer demand matching, product recommendation, competitive scanning, risk warning and project review.
• Consolidate information scattered across emails, meetings, chats and project records into organizational assets, to improve customer management and innovation replication capabilities. Qualifications Education & Academic Background
• Bachelor's degree or above.
• Preferred majors: Cosmetic Science, Chemistry, Materials Science, Applied Chemistry, Bioengineering, Packaging Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Supply Chain, Marketing, International Trade, Business Administration and related fields.
• Candidates with backgrounds in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics or Business Analytics, paired with strong understanding of beauty products, consumers and business, are also highly considered.
• Composite capabilities in product understanding, customer insight, project execution and data analysis are valued more than single-specialty expertise. Experience Requirements
• Minimum 5 years of experience in cosmetics, FMCG, ODM/OEM, brand side, packaging, R&D or related industries.
• Prior experience in Customer Success, Key Account Management, Product Development, Project Management, Innovation Marketing, Technical Sales or Product Management is preferred.
• Experience with the full new product lifecycle — from market/consumer insight, brief, development, validation to mass production and launch — is highly preferred.
• Basic understanding of cross-functional logic across formula, packaging, regulation, quality, cost and supply chain.
• Experience with international accounts or cross-cultural collaboration is preferred; proficiency in English as a working language is preferred.