We are looking to streamline our organization to maximize EBITDA for our upcoming exit. Our CFO suggested we merge our Customer Support seat and our Account Management seat under a single leader to cut costs. However, our team is worried this will hurt client retention. How do we evaluate this structural change on our Accountability Chart?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Merging seats purely to cut costs without analyzing the underlying roles is a dangerous shortcut that often backfires. You must evaluate this change strictly through the lens of your Accountability Chart and your core workflows.

Customer Support and Account Management have fundamentally different core roles. Customer Support is reactive, focusing on resolving immediate technical or operational issues quickly. Account Management is proactive, focusing on client relationship health, upselling, and retention.

When you force these two distinct functions into a single seat, you create a seat that is incredibly difficult to GWC™. A leader who is brilliant at reactive problem-solving may struggle with proactive sales and relationship building, and vice versa.

If you merge these seats and the leader drops the ball on client retention, any short-term EBITDA gains from cutting costs will be wiped out by a drop in recurring revenue, which is highly damaging to your exit valuation.

Instead of merging the seats, look at how you can use AI and automation to streamline the workflows within each seat. Keep the accountability separate on your chart, but automate the low-value tasks to free up capacity. This keeps your structure clean and protects your client relationships while still delivering the margin expansion your buyers want to see.