If you only listen to sales, you will over-build for deals that never close. CS is where the repeated “can you connect to X” lives.
Mine the tickets
Tag every named tool in tickets, call notes, and lost-deal reasons. Count. The tool that showed up nine times is a partnership candidate. The tool that showed up once from a loud account is a deal problem.
Share the count with CS. They will keep tagging if they see you act on it.
After it ships, CS is the adoption engine
A listing nobody mentions in onboarding will sit at zero. Give CS the sentence, the setup time, and the help article. Ask them to name the integration in the first 30 days for customers who already use the partner.
Adoption is a CS motion with a partnerships owner. Not a blog post.
When CS wants everything
Same matrix. Pull, distribution, cost. CS does not get a private roadmap. They get a ranked list and a date. That is respect, not a brush-off.
Closed-lost as research
“We went with them because they already connect to Salesforce.” That sentence is a partnerships input. Log it. If it repeats, it is the next build or an honest gap you sell around.
A partner manager who never sits with CS is guessing. A partner manager who only sits with CS and never talks to a partner seller is building retention plumbing with no channel. You need both rooms.