Kai Horstmannshoff

Kai Horstmannshoff

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Head of Customer Success
Île-de-France, France

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Résumé

Jobs verified_user 0% verified
  • Heidi
    Head of Customer Success
    Heidi
    Apr 2026 - Current (6 months)
  • Aircall
    Senior Director of Customer Success, Account Management and GTM Engineering
    Aircall
    Jul 2023 - Apr 2026 (2 years 10 months)
    Leading 30 CSMs and Account Managers, 4 first-line managers, and 2 Team Leads across four offices.

    I'm responsible for improving net retention in a client portfolio of 100 million ARR and leading post-sales service and expansion across all customer segments. My mandate is equally commercial and operational:

    Commercially, I'm in charge of all net revenue outcomes, upsells and cross-sells across our European markets. Key responsibilities include maintaining and improving NRR outcomes, growing accounts through standardised expansion motions, and increasing consumption-based revenue by driving adoption of Aircalls AI product suite (AI Agents). To unlock additional cross-sell wins, I created an Account Management function f
  • Aircall
    Director of Customer Success and Key Accounts
    Aircall
    Jan 2022 - Jul 2023 (1 year 7 months)
    Leading a team of 25 CSMs + 4 first-line managers. Responsible for improving net retention in a client portfolio of 80 mio ARR.

    In this role, I continued to lead renewal and expansion efforts across all customer segments in our European, Middle Eastern, and Latin American markets. I oversaw the creation of a target operating model for large enterprise accounts and hired new CSMs to service this segment. The motion successfully increased service levels, ensured systematic account mapping, speedy escalations of technical issues and limitations, early detection of renewal risk, and significantly increased GRR performance and the number of multiyear contracts signed by my team.
  • Aircall
    Head of Customer Success
    Aircall
    Jan 2021 - Feb 2022 (1 year 2 months)
    Leading a team of 20 CSMs + 4 first-line managers. Responsible for improving net retention in a client portfolio of 70 million ARR.

    Took charge of all post-sales motions to improve retention and expansion across customer segments (Digital, SMB, Midmarket). Led the team through a time of transition and hypergrowth and scaled our European Success Team from 10 to 20 CSMs. Hired new team members, set up new team rituals and meeting types (forecast calls, pipeline reviews, retrospective sessions, play-by-play call reviews), and mentored a group of 3 new first-line managers. As a hands-on leader, I led de-escalation calls, renewal and expansion negotiations on a weekly basis, worked alongside my team and trained new joiners on the job.
  • Aircall
    Senior Manager, Customer Success
    Aircall
    Feb 2020 - Jan 2021 (1 year)
    Built and coached a team of 8 CSMs and improved performance and efficiency across Aircalls SMB and Midmarket segments.

    Hired and coached a group of eight Customer Success Managers, implemented process optimisation, automated customer communication and standardized playbooks to increase net retention across a client portfolio of SMB and mid-market accounts. Improved employee NPS by 10%, increased account coverage from 66% to 100%, met and significantly over-achieved assigned renewal and upsell quotas consistently. Rolled out optimized process in our success software Totango and Salesforce, created a pooled model of Digital CSMs handling our SMB account segment, and built out the tool stack for the function (Totango, Salesforce, F
  • Hootsuite
    Senior Manager, Customer Success
    Hootsuite
    Apr 2019 - Mar 2020 (1 year)
    In this position, I built out a Customer Success function across three European offices and grew it from 1 to 13 team members in order to manage and grow a client portfolio of 25mio ARR. I hired and coached each team member to achieve ambitious retention and upsell targets, worked on compensation plans and created and optimized process and tooling to improve the performance of the team. I worked with product dev, product marketing, revenue operations, support, business development, and sales teams to build out and optimize a tech-touch service model that allowed us to successfully service and upsell customers at scale and grew the ARR and account number handled by each account manager by 30% while maintaining and overachieving NRR targets.
  • Hootsuite
    Manager, Customer Success
    Hootsuite
    Nov 2016 - Apr 2019 (2 years 6 months)
  • Hootsuite
    Manager, Commercial Customer Success
    Hootsuite
    Apr 2016 - Nov 2016 (8 months)
    As a result of sustained success in my previous role, I was promoted to Manager level. The key focus of my role shifted towards improvement of our sales, onboarding and renewal process, with particular focus on SMB and mid-market business. Key initiatives driven by me include lead flow optimization initiatives, creation of automation procedures and email campaigns to increase quality of onboarding experience for clients and reduce churn, design of a scalable upsell/cross-sell process and an improved account monitoring process to identify accounts at risk. As part of my role I continued to interact directly with key German and English accounts, and to operate across a large number of teams (Demand Gen, Email, Community, Content, Marketing, B
  • Hootsuite
    Onboarding Specialist
    Hootsuite
    Sep 2015 - Apr 2016 (8 months)
    Key focus of this role was to offer onboarding services, setup and ongoing training for Hootsuite customers in the German and English speaking markets in order to drive product adoption, reduce churn, and foster upsells. In my role I consulted a wide array of customers and helped them match their business needs with Hootsuite's product offerings. Monitoring account health, passing information between customer base and developer team, and proactive identification of upsell opportunities were daily tasks.

    On top of these tasks I led a team of 5 onboarding specialists that managed our main European SMB markets. My responsibility as team lead was to critically evaluate the efficiency of existing onboarding procedures, improve and mon
  • Google
    Onboarding Specialist (via TVO)
    Google
    Apr 2014 - Jul 2015 (1 year 4 months)
    Started as a contractor employed via TVO and helped partners from the art industry use the tools, platforms and technologies that Google developed to digitize and promote their collections, develop websites, obtain interior Street Views, set up mobile apps, upload metadata, and tell their stories in online exhibits. I onboarded new partners and trained them in our platform and services, organized and created webinars to train project partners, analyzed user metrics and monitored partner site traffic. I worked within and later helped to lead an international team of 7 onboarding specialists. I participated the execution of complex marketing launches by helping to coordinate tasks across different teams (Tech Support, Engineers, Street View,
  • Freie Universität Berlin
    PhD and Lecturer
    Freie Universität Berlin
    Oct 2011 - May 2015 (3 years 8 months)
    I completed a PhD thesis about contemporary architecture at Free University Berlin. Thesis was completed within the minimum allocated timeframe, summa cum laude. During my PhD program I held public talks in English and German, taught and planned undergraduate classes in which I explained technical concepts in a non-technical manner, wrote articles, coached students to improve their writing and presentation skills, edited and proofread articles for popular and academic journals and organized, obtained funds and planned the budget for a big international conference (50 speakers) for my department.
Education verified_user 0% verified
  • Freie Universität Berlin
    Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Cultural Studies
    Freie Universität Berlin
    Jan 2011 - Jan 2015 (4 years 1 month)
    Thesis submitted and graded "Summa cum Laude", unpublished
  • University of Oxford
    Master of Arts (M.A, History of Art
    University of Oxford
    Jan 2010 - Jan 2011 (1 year 1 month)
  • UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
    Bachelor of Arts (B.A, History and Philosophy
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
    Jan 2008 - Jan 2009 (1 year 1 month)
    Fulbright Scholarship
  • Freie Universität Berlin
    Bachelor of Arts (B.A, Cultural Studies
    Freie Universität Berlin
    Jan 2006 - Jan 2009 (3 years 1 month)
Projects (professional or personal) verified_user 0% verified
  • G
    Google Cultural Institute
    May 2014 - Current (12 years 5 months)
    Google has partnered with hundreds of museums, cultural institutions, and archives to host the world’s cultural treasures online on the Cultural Institute website: www.google.com/culturalinstitute

    Visitors can search for or browse artworks, landmarks and world heritage sites, as well as digital exhibitions that tell the stories behind the archives of cultural institutions across the globe.
Awards verified_user 0% verified
  • I
    Fulbright Scholarship
    Issued by Fulbright Commission
    With the support of the United States government and through binational partnerships with foreign governments, the Fulbright Scholarship Program sponsors U.S. and foreign participants for exchanges in all areas of endeavour, including the sciences, business, academe, public service, government, and the arts and continues to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.
  • I
    Ernst Reuter Scholarship
    Issued by Freie Universität Berlin
    Candidates cannot apply for an Ernst Reuter scholarship themselves. Instead, each year the top tier of all applications submitted by Freie Universität students who are trying to secure scholarships under the various study abroad programs offered at the university receive the chance, following the normal selection process, to participate in a second critical competition to select the best of the best. Factors in this stage of the process include the student’s subject-specific interests and academic performance, the intended study project, and career prospects, along with other considerations, such as the candidate’s personality and level of preparation to study abroad.
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