Customer Success Manager, Payroll - Emerging Accounts

Fourth is the world’s largest and fastest-growing global leader of end-to-end restaurant and hospitality management technology solutions. We pride ourselves on delivering a world-class SaaS experience for our clients by building long-term partnerships starting from the first phone call. We know our recipe for success at Fourth is our amazing team... and that starts with hiring the right people! 

Interested in joining our smart, fun, and talented team?

Position Overview

The Customer Success Manager, Payroll owns adoption, retention, and expansion for Fourth’s large and medium-sized Payroll and PEO accounts — a smaller, higher-complexity portfolio than the general Emerging CSM book. These accounts carry more regulatory exposure, higher payroll run complexity, and greater churn cost per account, so the role trades volume for depth: fewer accounts, deeper payroll/PEO domain expertise, and tighter coordination with Payroll Operations, Tax, and Benefits.

This is a specialist track within the CSM level, not a step up the management ladder — scope, financial authority, and outcomes ownership match the standard CSM tier. What differs is domain: this CSM must be able to distinguish Payroll, PEO, Tax, and Benefits issues correctly, know when something is compliance-critical, and route it through the right channel before it becomes a churn event.

Primary Responsibilities

Customer & Portfolio Ownership

• Own an assigned portfolio of ~75–125 large and medium-sized Payroll and PEO accounts across the customer lifecycle — onboarding through renewal.

• Define the value moment for each account in payroll-specific terms — first clean payroll run, accurate tax setup, on-time filing, compliant benefits enrollment — and track progress against that objective, not generic usage volume.

• Partner with Payroll Operations, Tax, and Benefits teams (not a generic Services team) to monitor onboarding progress and ensure customers hit payroll-specific adoption milestones quickly.

• Monitor payroll accuracy rate and filing timeliness as leading indicators — payroll errors in the first 90 days are a high-signal predictor of churn for this segment.

• Correctly distinguish Payroll, PEO, Tax, and Benefits issues when triaging customer concerns, and flag anything compliance-critical immediately per the 24-hour escalation SLA — compliance-critical items require Compliance Lead and Legal sign-off before any resolution, not CSM judgment call.

Financial & Commercial Scope

• No signing, pricing, or discount authority. The CSM does not negotiate contract terms or approve concessions.

• Identify and flag expansion opportunities and renewal risk to the CSM Manager or Sales/Account Management for commercial follow-through.

• Flag PEO at-risk accounts with elevated urgency: PEO churn remediation is an active company-level dependency before PEO acquisition can scale, so PEO retention signal on this portfolio carries outsized weight.

Outcomes Owned

• Payroll accuracy rate within portfolio.

• Time to first clean/successful payroll run.

• Filing and compliance timeliness.

• PEO account retention within portfolio.

• SLA adherence (24-hour triage) and CSAT.

Process, Data & AI Fluency

• Identify trends in payroll/PEO-specific customer challenges and suggest improvements to process, documentation, and automation.

• Use AI-enabled adoption and health-scoring tools tuned to payroll-specific signals (payroll accuracy, filing timeliness) to surface risk and expansion signal earlier.

• Maintain accurate, current records in Salesforce (primary CRM), and Zendesk/NetSuite as needed.

• Work cross-functionally with Payroll Operations, Tax, Benefits, Support, and Sales; operate independently with minimal day-to-day supervision.

Key Skills and Competencies

• 1–3+ years of experience in customer success or account management specifically with payroll, PEO, or HCM accounts — general SaaS CS experience alone is not a substitute.

• Working understanding of Payroll and/or PEO fundamentals — wage/hour basics, tax filing cadence, benefits administration — sufficient to distinguish Payroll, PEO, Tax, and Benefits issues correctly when triaging.

• Experience supporting large or medium-sized accounts (higher complexity, lower volume) rather than pure high-volume SMB motion.

• Comfortable operating under compliance-critical escalation protocols — knows what requires Compliance/Legal sign-off versus what can be resolved directly.

• Proficiency in Salesforce; familiarity with Zendesk and NetSuite is a plus.

• Comfortable using AI-enabled CS/adoption tooling (health scoring, workflow automation) as part of daily account management.

• Exceptional written/verbal communication; able to explain payroll and compliance topics clearly to non-technical customer stakeholders.

• Data-driven mindset for interpreting payroll accuracy and filing-timeliness metrics against each customer’s stated objective.

Measures of Success

• Payroll accuracy rate trend within portfolio.

• Time to first clean payroll run.

• Filing/compliance timeliness.

• PEO account retention rate.

• SLA adherence and CSAT.

Fourth Benefits

Unlimited PTO!
Medical, Dental, Vision Insurance!

401k Match!

Parental Leave

Laptop and equipment.

Remote employment limited to: AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MS, NC, NE, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA, & WA

Our Story

In July 2019, Fourth joined forces with HotSchedules to become the global leader in end-to-end restaurant and hospitality management technology solutions. Together, the merged company now represents the world’s largest and only provider of end-to-end restaurant and hospitality management solutions for customers across the globe and of all sizes—from a single location or franchisee restaurant to a global restaurant or hotel chain. The combined company’s complete software-as-service (SaaS) solution suite, including scheduling, time & attendance, applicant tracking, training, inventory management/procurement, HR/benefits, and payroll services, now serves customers in 120,000 locations worldwide and is supported by a dedicated, unified team across offices in the US, UK, Bulgaria, China, Australia, and UAE. 

Fourth is an Equal Opportunity Employer

All qualified applicants will receive consideration without discrimination because of sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, race, color, age, national origin, military status, religion, or disability or any other legally protected status.