In this episode of Mastering CS: Candid Leader Insights, Irina Cismas sits down with Dominik Nenicka, Customer Success Team Lead at Resistant AI, a company helping businesses detect and prevent fraud and financial crime.
Dominik shares how his background in sales and account management shaped his approach to leading CS, why fraud-focused customer success demands a different kind of relationship-building, and how a fast-scaling company learns to restructure its CS function without losing sight of customer value.
He explains how Resistant separates CS from account management and why that distinction matters, how to prove value when success means nothing visibly happens, and what it really takes to hire and grow a CS team in a compliance-heavy, rapidly evolving industry.
What You’ll Learn
- Why Dominik moved from sales and account management into customer success leadership
- How Resistant structures CS and account management as two distinct but complementary functions
- Why usage metrics can be misleading in fraud prevention — and what to measure instead
- How to build trust and extract real information from clients in security-sensitive industries
- What changes structurally in a CS team when a company doubles revenue year over year
- What skills matter most when hiring CSMs for complex, compliance-driven products
Key Insights & Takeaways
- Delivering on promises is the foundation. Before renewals or expansions can happen, CS must ensure the company solves exactly what it committed to solving for the customer.
- CS and account management serve different purposes. Keeping them separate lets CS focus on value delivery and act as the voice of the customer, while AM focuses on growth and expansion opportunities.
- Usage data alone can mislead. In fraud prevention, a few high-value catches with low document volume can far outweigh high usage with poor outcomes. Context always matters.
- Relationships unlock real information. Especially in security-sensitive industries, face-to-face interactions build the trust needed to surface honest problems — and deliver real help.
- CS structure must evolve with the company. As a company scales, the team structure that worked at 20 people won’t work at 200. Adapting proactively is a strategic CS responsibility.
- Ownership trumps domain expertise in hiring. Fraud knowledge can be learned quickly; the ability to take accountability for complex, ambiguous problems cannot.
Podcast transcript
Intro
Irina (0:04 – 0:27)
Welcome to Mastering CS: Candid Leader Insights, the podcast where we dive into the world of customer success with industry leaders. I’m your host, Irina Cismas, and today I’m joined by Dominik Nenicka, Customer Success Team Lead at Resistant AI, a company that helps businesses detect and prevent fraud and financial crime. Dominik, I’m really happy to have you here.
Thanks for joining.
Dominik (0:28 – 0:32)
Thank you very much for the introduction, Irina, and thank you for having me.
Irina (0:33 – 0:43)
As I know, you didn’t start out in customer success. What actually pulled you into this role instead of sales or account management?
From Sales and Account Management to CS Leadership
Dominik (0:44 – 1:23)
I didn’t. That’s actually true. I see that you did your research, which is great.
So I’ve been through sales and account management and currently I’m leading the CS department. What led me there is I’ve always enjoyed the more long term relationships with the customers and really driving the impact not only for the customers, but for the company itself, which I think customer success department is the perfect one to be actually able to deliver on both sides and drive the business and drive the impact for the customers as well.
Irina (1:25 – 1:33)
I’m curious, what does great customer success actually mean for you? What are you actually responsible for?
What Customer Success Means at Resistant
Dominik (1:35 – 2:44)
It means a lot of things in my particular world. Like number one is delivering on the promises that we’ve made to the customers.
So we work in a typical bow tie setup that many of the other business leaders working in the GPM will be familiar with. And as we all know, there are a lot of promises being made during the sales cycle and so on. There is this typical problem of a healthy conflict between the sales and the post sales.
Can we deliver on what’s been promised? But we have to ensure that we are promising what we can deliver. And that we deliver it and we solve the problems that we’ve committed to solve for the customers.
So that’s the number one thing that our customer success department is responsible for. The benefit of that is the renewals and expansions, which is the desired outcome of every business, but doesn’t happen without the first thing, which is delivering on the promises and really fixing the problems that we committed to the customer.
Irina (2:44 – 3:14)
I know that you oversized the CS team, but also the account management. And in some organizations, the roles do have a huge overlap. So I’m curious in your case, why do you have two roles, and how are those distributed?
How are the responsibilities split between management and customer success?
Why Resistant Separates CS and Account Management
Dominik (3:15 – 5:02)
That’s a really good question. And it’s a question that we get a lot from our new joiners because they might be familiar with a different setup in the post sales. But for us, in our particular case, I don’t say that for everybody.
For us, this seems to be working really well. And there are a couple of reasons for that. We want customer success, not only to be the face of our company for the customer, but we also want them to be the voice of the customer that communicates all the information inside of our company.
And it helps us to influence the product, the focus of the company, the direction we’re going. And we find it very beneficial when the customer success department is not really distracted by only focusing on expansions and growth and solving more problems for the customer, but really focused on what the customer is paying us for directly and already. On the other hand, we have account management because our product and fraud for the companies is a big topic and it can impact the companies from several different angles.
And we want to have a function that is dedicated to discovering those other impacts that fraud can have on the companies, which results in growing our software or usability of our software within our customers’ organization. But these are two slightly different roles with different goals and different targets. They work very much hand in hand because they work with the same customers.
But we find it very beneficial to have distinction and serve customers this way.
Irina (5:03 – 5:35)
You mentioned at the beginning that some of the problems that we encounter in the sales journey is the fact that we have a misalignment into what was promised initially by sales and what we actually deliver along the journey. So I’m curious, how did you solve this challenge and how do you make sure that the sales team is aligned? What’s the process?
Keeping the Sales-to-CS Feedback Loop Intact
Dominik (5:36 – 7:11)
Yeah, I honestly think this is one of the most common problems for most SaaS organizations. I feel quite fortunate that this is not really an issue in our place, but you really have to be aware of this potential problem and really make sure that it doesn’t even arise. Because customer success is the first point of contact for all of our customers or most of our customers.
They get the first hand information from the customer world. What is happening with the new fraud? What are the new fraud typologies?
It might be the new regulations, it might be the new problems that our customers are facing. We have to ensure that this information is being fed right at the beginning, not even to the sales department, but to the marketing. So we are focusing our marketing on the problems that we know we can solve.
We then talk to the companies we know are within our ICP, which in our world might be evolving and changing based on the overall environment. And this is a never-ending process. And it’s extremely important to ensure that this feedback loop functions and it doesn’t stop.
If it breaks in one piece, like you might actually have some problems coming up down the line. Really, I would really emphasize awareness of this and making sure that the feedback is translated throughout the whole GTM structure.
Irina (7:13 – 7:32)
In typical SaaS, you can point to usage and say product usage and say it’s working. But in fraud, when things are going well, I assume nothing happens. So no news is good news.
How do you prove value then?
Proving Value When Success Means Nothing Happens
Dominik (7:34 – 9:19)
Yes, that’s really spot on. Usage can be a very helpful indicator. And very often, it might mean that you’re actually delivering more value to the customer.
But you definitely need more context than just seeing the production going up. That can actually burn you terribly. In fraud, our number one mission is to prevent fraud and detect fraudulent documents and transactions.
And whether we do it with 10,000 documents a month or 100 documents a month might not make that much difference in value that we deliver to the customer. I believe I can say that we’ve had cases where we have customers with quite a low production, but the impact of fraud is high value losses. Actually, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So it might be a couple of fraudulent documents that we managed to catch, we managed to reveal, and the value and ROI and everything is there, even though the usage is quite low. On the other hand, if somebody has got really high usage, but they maybe misplaced the software a little bit, or they don’t understand exactly how to use it, how to translate the results, it doesn’t really fit into the workflow. They might have a really high usage, but they might actually be missing out on a lot of value.
And that’s where the customer success comes in. And that’s what they need to ensure that these things happen. And we don’t overhaul anything just based on like nice looking production data.
Irina (9:20 – 9:32)
I want to stay on this line and ask you, what do people tend to over-measure in fraud-focused CS, and what do they usually underestimate?
What Gets Over-Measured and What Gets Missed
Dominik (9:33 – 10:54)
Yeah, so I’ll probably use my previous answer that overestimate, yeah, really a usage, because as I said, it might not mean that it delivers more value, it drives more impact. Okay. So that would probably be number one.
Okay. People tend to, maybe even businesses, tend to underestimate, is in my point of view, a relationship importance. And it’s even more important in security and fraud, because people might not feel to be as chatty about the problems that they’re suffering, and it’s got to do with fraud and security.
It’s not something that you will be sharing with everybody. And really building these relationships, and investing into these relationships, and making sure that you meet your clients, your top clients, your most important clients face-to-face, and you build this trust and relationship. That actually helps you to get the real information, and to get the information that then helps the customer, or gives you more chance to actually be able to provide more help to the customer.
So I think that’s what might be underestimated, and in the security business, it’s even more for sure.
Irina (10:55 – 11:10)
So do you deliver the standard and traditional QBRs as you do, or do you basically do it in a different way, the QBRs or face-to-face client meetings?
Dominik (11:11 – 12:30)
So, yeah, we really tend to organize those face-to-face. As you can imagine, in a scale-up, it is challenging, because we are a global company. We’ve got customers all around the globe.
So it is time-consuming, but it is time well-invested. So we try to ensure that we actually offer this opportunity to most of our, let’s say, medium and high-tier clients. And we really enjoy those, because as I said, you tend to get more information, which gives you a better chance to deliver more value to the customer.
And it also tends to be a slightly more pleasant experience, because we all sit in front of the screens all day. And human interaction is actually something that we enjoy, and we get a nice kick from, and so on. So we really try to engage this.
And the format of our QBRs, even in our organization, it can be very different based on what customer we’re dealing with and what industry are they in. Are they using our transaction or document product? We’ve got some standardization in this, but we actually tend to customize quite a lot when it comes to QBRs to ensure it’s not that robotic and it really fits the customer’s needs.
Irina (12:31 – 12:55)
I wouldn’t have expected that the customers in security are so willing to, not necessarily talk, so willing to meet and participate in your QBRs. I was under the impression that they are more transactional. No need to talk, just limit the things.
Dominik (12:57 – 13:34)
I understand that point of view, but from my experience, I’ve got experience from other startups that were not in security. I don’t really see much difference in people being willing to meet. My experience has been in both sides, really.
People enjoy it a lot of times. You need to make it as easy as possible for them, travel to their place or invite them over and make it a pleasant stay for them and things like this. But I feel like people really appreciate this and it doesn’t really matter which business you’re in.
Irina (13:34 – 13:58)
That’s a very good insight. And I’m glad that you shared it and proved that even in security and when you’re regulated industry, this is something that’s important. It’s a common thing between CS heads, between all the industries.
So I would say industry agnostic and company agnostic more or less.
Dominik (13:59 – 14:01)
For sure. Like it’s all humans.
Where Traditional CS Leaders Struggle in Compliance-Heavy Environments
Irina (14:02 – 14:10)
Indeed it is. Where do you see traditional CS leaders struggle when they move into risk heavy compliance driven products?
Dominik (14:12 – 15:44)
So it might actually be the complexity that you have to be able to absorb and translate into the customer’s world. Because you should be able to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and have the perception of things and think in a way, the customer things, what would be best for us if we were in the customer’s shoes. And in regulated industries, there’s even more complexity than maybe with some traditional softwares, because it tends to change a lot quickly.
There are a lot of AI regulations changing and coming up on a yearly basis. We don’t only work in the EU. We also work, as I said, across the globe in other regions.
So it might get very colorful and very complex for you. And it is changing very quickly. We probably never get to a point where we would know everything because by the time you get close to that, things change.
And even fraud itself evolves really quickly. I believe a lot of people watching this have got experience being targeted by scammers, fraudsters. And we all know it’s very different and far more sophisticated nowadays than it was even two years ago, five years ago.
So it’s all evolving really quickly. So you can’t stop with education and really translating all of this into what we can provide to the customers.
Irina (15:46 – 15:52)
What’s been one of the toughest strategic decisions that you’ve had to make as a CS leader? Yeah.
Dominik (15:55 – 17:23)
I would say that really building, because to give you a little bit of a background, or to give everybody a little bit of a background, like our company is doubling in revenue year over year, ever since it was started. So there is a lot of scaling that is happening. And the structure that you had in place two years ago might not be the best one for you at the moment and might not be the best one in two years’ time.
So just think to where your company sits at a given time and where the company wants to get. And being able to adopt the structure to your business needs, but also to your customer needs. Because you can’t prioritize one or the other.
It needs to come hand in hand, and you need to win on both sides. If you’re only going to have a win for your company, your customers are going to leave you. If you’re going to only be winning for the customers, your company is going to suffer and it’s never going to scale up.
So there needs to be this win-win, and it might be actually changing and evolving quickly. There’s decisions that come down to structure and things like that, which takes a lot of internal talks, takes some hiring and so on, which are usually challenging, but also interesting challenges.
Irina (17:24 – 17:26)
Now I have to dig that in.
Dominik (17:26 – 17:28)
Go for it.
Irina (17:29 – 18:13)
Because I’m curious. I know you guys have the luxury of doubling year over year. And as you mentioned, this had also impacted the CS team.
And it’s a good problem to have, I would say. And I want to ask you, what were the phases as the company was doubling year over year in terms of revenue? What did it mean milestone by milestone for the CS team?
What were the phases that you went through with the team? And most importantly, try to explain the reasoning why you took those decisions for our audience. Make your thinking visible to the audience.
Dominik (18:14 – 20:54)
I’ll try. In the first phase, the company didn’t even have a customer success department. It was a small company, up to 20 people, small revenue.
So a lot of co-founders were serving as customer success. And I think that’s natural for most of the startup. The customer success department was started, I believe, around four or five years ago.
So like year two of the company’s existence. And at the beginning, it was a lot of customization for the customers. A lot of adaption to the customer’s needs.
Because you might not have the exact direction of your company and your product, especially in the fast-paced evolving environment, which I mentioned before. So your customers might actually be one of the best ones that will help you to shape up the strategy. But you will find yourself pretty soon in a situation when you’re customizing everything for everyone.
And you have to take some decisions about the ICP and the direction that the product and the company is going to take. So I think that’s like where the real tough evolution of the CS kind of happens. Because everybody in the CS department would love to solve every problem for the customer.
By nature, they are people pleasers. They’re problem-solving-oriented people. So you would love to solve every single problem.
But we really need to know what problems we can solve. What problems it makes for the company it makes sense to focus on. And what problems or what solutions we can scale in terms of it’s not only a solution for one customer, but it’s a solution for the industry.
And that’s important to mention. So as you grow in time, you’re kind of shaping up all these focuses. You’re bringing more standardization and so on to build a very well-oiled machine.
We’re not there yet, to be completely honest. Because, as I said, we’re still in the scale-up phase. And I don’t think we exactly know what in five years’ time how it looks like.
I think we need to be able to adapt to the current market needs, current industry needs. And be able to take directions that will be the best for us and our customers.
Irina (20:55 – 21:03)
In order to succeed in your team, what skills are you searching for when you are recruiting and bringing new team members?
What It Takes to Succeed on the CS Team
Dominik (21:04 – 22:25)
It’s really important to have a strong sense of ownership. You’re given a task, you’re given an account, you’re given a problem to fix for the customer. And it might be very complex.
You might not have all the skill set to be able to do this, but it is your number one responsibility to do it. The company’s job is to provide you all the tools in order for you to be able to fix it. But that’s why I feel that customer success person is called a manager.
Even though they’re not managing people, they’re managing information, internal resources, customers. And it’s not always going to be served on a golden plate. Like, this is the solution, so you just put this into this.
And that means problem is fixed. There is a lot that you have to be able to take in account and kind of translate in the best possible solution for the customer. So definitely problem solving and sense of ownership and kind of reliability and trust.
I know you’ve been given a hard task and a hard problem to fix, but you’ve got my full confidence in yourself that you’re going to deliver what we promised to the customer.
What Fraud CS Teaches You About CS Everywhere
Irina (22:27 – 22:41)
You did not mention anything about industry-specific know-how. Isn’t it important? Or it is, but not?
Or is this something that it can be easily teached?
Dominik (22:42 – 24:11)
That’s a brilliant question. In customer success, to a certain degree, there’s definitely multiple roles within the company where we need to make sure we really have fraud experts in the field. In customer success, you’re able to learn this pretty quickly because you get engaged with a lot of customer conversations.
And as I said, we are very fortunate to get the information from multiple companies, multiple customers within the industry. So pretty fast, the people are able to build up the expertise in the field. When somebody is working for a bank as a fraud analyst, they only see one workflow.
There’s only one way they do things. They only see one fraud typology and so on. But we work with, let’s say, 50 of them at the same time.
So you get to learn a little bit from everyone. And pretty quickly, you should be able to provide the best possible solution to the customers when mixing all this knowledge and taking the best practices out of everything. So to a certain degree, the knowledge and expertise is certainly an advantage.
But it’s definitely nothing that couldn’t be taught. And with the pace that fraud is evolving, if you were an expert three years ago, you’re not an expert anymore.
Irina (24:12 – 24:23)
OK. Fair point. What has working in fraud taught you about customer success that actually applies beyond it?
Dominik (24:25 – 25:21)
I’ll probably get back to the relationships and getting people to open up. It’s not only I know like we drive it a lot towards fraud and being able to disclose maybe information. People like might feel like they don’t feel that comfortable with communicating.
But also opening up about what their roles, goals are, what are their personal targets within the company, relationships with the other stakeholders and so on. And that kind of I think that applies to other every SaaS, basically. So once you understand the customer’s company, but also, let’s say, your champion or other personas that you’re engaging with, it makes it a lot easier for you to be able to visualize what needs to be achieved in order to really deliver for them.
Irina (25:22 – 25:29)
If someone remembers just one idea from this conversation, what would you want that to be?
Dominik (25:31 – 26:02)
So I will say, invest in customer relationships. Invest in face to face interactions and building the trust. And use this to deliver more value and impact.
Because no customer is going to renew with you or expand with you just because they like you. But you can use this to actually deliver more and better for them.
Irina (26:03 – 26:13)
Dominik, thank you for the conversation. It was great hearing your perspective on how CS works in a very different kind of SaaS environment.
Dominik (26:15 – 26:17)
Thank you very much, Irina. It’s been a pleasure.
Irina (26:18 – 26:26)
To everyone listening, thanks for tuning. Until next time, stay curious, keep learning and mastering customer success.
