How To Leverage The Potential Of AI In Customer Success

How To Leverage The Potential Of AI In Customer Success

In one of my previous articles I envisioned the state of Customer Success in the year 2041. The future looks bright for our community, but in fact the future is happening right now.

Salesforce.com’s annual Dreamforce conference is taking place in the San Francisco Bay Area even as I write these words, creating the perfect setting for a topic that underlies all my earlier predictions. You see, while the future of Customer Success will definitely include Automation, Virtual Reality (VR), and The Internet of Things (IoT), the thread linking all of these advancements together is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

There are three developments in AI taking place at Dreamforce that stand out in particular:

  1. Apttus is set to demonstrate Max, an intelligent agent that will help salespeople accelerate business processes and close deals faster.
  2. Salesforce will introduce the world to its AI solution Einstein, which promises to leverage the company’s wealth of information on its clients around the world.
  3. Finally, IBM has Watson, which is being used to advance research in dozens of disciplines across science and business.  

In this article I will discuss how AI can both help and hinder Customer Success. All new technologies present the possibility of a double-edged sword, and we have never been faced with a blade quite as sharp as AI. On this note I'd like to share a quote from my earlier article, which is now even more appropriate:

Though the thread of Artificial Intelligence (AI) runs through all my predictions, I  do not want us to outsource empathy, compassion, and understanding to machines. Technology grants us the means to advance the evolution of the entire human race, but it is no substitute for authentic human connection.

AI can help us distill enormous quantities of data into actionable patterns. AI can help fill in our blind spots and help us engage clients with greater confidence. But even then… you still need discipline and the guts to address unspoken concerns, the 'elephant in the room.' AI has many benefits for Customer Success, but we must also be careful of its perils.

Benefits of AI to Customer Success

Many descriptions of the Sales Process have it all wrong. The dichotomy between Hunters and Farmers doesn't exist. (Seriously, who wants to feel as though they're being hunted?) Even my previous assertion that members of your team are Gardeners, creating the conditions in which your clients can grow and thrive, is only part of the story. Sales sets the stage for Customer Success, and if we're not Hunters, Farmers, or Gardeners, then what are we?

Customer Success actually has a lot more in common with Dating than it does with the labels above. You're getting to know each other and working together so that you can solve something that neither of you could do alone. Something so incredible that it takes a deeper understanding of the goals and needs that motivate your actions. Something that can't be forced, something that you want to flourish over time.

In this context, think of AI as the confidante of Customer Success. The sensitive friend that knows the person you want to date and is full of helpful suggestions and recommendations. The matchmaker that will go out of his way to see you two succeed.

Here's a more concrete example of AI's potential in a SaaS context: Currently, Customer Success Management platforms such as Gainsight will notify you if your champion leaves Company A and takes a new job with Company B. An event like this represents a risk factor for churn in Company A and a new Sales Opportunity for Company B.

But what if AI could predict this transition and work with you to manage the former and celebrate the latter? It's quite realistic, in the not-too-distant future, to expect AI to lay the groundwork for nurturing a new champion even before the current champion has left their role, by identifying patterns in usage among other users and the relationships that the current champion has built within their own organization.

On the same note, what if, when this champion arrives at their new job at Company B they find a small gift waiting for them, sent on your behalf yet orchestrated by AI? Notifications like Gainsight's draw their data from Social Media, yet AI can parse dozens of personal preferences to find exactly the right one to evoke joy and express gratitude when your champion changes their career.

Events like this happens hundreds of times of day in the world of Customer Success. For a Customer Success Manager to invest hours of time on one client by trying to act as their concierge, they must ignore dozens of other customers. AI absorb the brunt of the data crunching while Customer Success Managers get back to what they do best: managing this data to build strong relationships.

Customer Success is authenticity in action. It is the creation of genuine relationships with the intention of advancing another’s goals within a recurring revenue business model. At its height, Customer Success is selfless and timely, and AI can help with both. 

Potential Negative Aspects of AI in Customer Success:

The examples I just described are the tip of the iceberg. The extent to which AI can help Customer Success Managers build thriving relationships is only limited by our imagination.

And yet...

Technology in general, and AI in particular, is no substitute for human connection. The main ways in which AI poses a threat to Customer Success, then, fall into two main types:

Resistance to the Potential of AI

You may feel comfortable as a Customer Success Manager checking dashboards for patterns in your clients' usage of your product. You may feel at ease preparing for QBRs and leading live demonstrations. And that's totally fine, except that the quality of these and many other tasks can be improved and enhanced by AI. As resources such as Max, Einstein, and Watson evolve, one of the most significant obstacles to a parallel evolution in Customer Success are those organizations that fail to grasp AI's importance. AI can help us to predict and avert many of the ‘fire alarm’ crises that threaten to derail Customer Success programs every day… but only if we learn the vocabulary of this new technology and embrace it.

Over-reliance On AI

Just as there will be some organizations that resist AI - even for the tasks for which it is designed - others will rush headlong into this new territory without a map or even a compass.

The moment we let AI manage all communications with our customers is the moment those relationships will suffer an irreversible breach of trust. As Max, Einstein, and Watson take stage at Dreamforce this week, remember that they are not yet mature enough to sit in the driver’s seat. This also reminds me of a point made by Rafi Offenbacher in one of his earlier articles, "Bad CSMs (Customer Success Managers) constantly want to be told what to do." Whether you're waiting on AI, your Director, or your Client to tell you what's next, it's all the same: you've fallen into reactionary mode, which is the opposite of Customer Success. It’s no accident that Gainsight named its Automated Communications Product CoPilot. Customer Success works best when we create synergy with the actions of algorithms and AI.

AI can help fill in our blind spots... but only to the extent that we recognize AI has blind spots of its own. By its very nature, AI is constantly learning and coming closer to human reasoning and understanding… but it still has a long way to go.


It’s not only that current AI systems aren’t prepared to interact with clients without guidance from Customer Success Managers. It’s also the fact that many clients aren’t ready to deal solely with AI. We can tie this back to the spectrum of High Touch – Medium Touch – Tech Touch clients introduced in the book Customer Success. The key principle here is that clients with a relatively low Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) can be supported in large part by products such as Gainsight’s CoPilot. The types of challenges these clients face are simply not complex enough to warrant AI: one Customer Success Manager can monitor and measure thousands of these Tech Touch Accounts as long as they are sensitive to the specific triggers associated with various stages of their clients’ journey.

But the converse is most definitely not true – if the challenges faced by Tech Touch clients are not complex enough to justify AI, then the challenges faced by High Touch clients are too critical to delegate to AI. There will always be some level of churn within your portfolio of Tech Touch clients; learn from it so that you can offer a better experience for your remaining clients (and so that you can refine your image of your ideal customer).

Yet when a High Touch client churns, that represents a significant blow to a company’s morale, time, and bottom line. It's still too early to imagine AI managing every aspect of a business partnership, especially since concepts like 'value' and 'trust' are specific to every interaction.

As we witness the dawn of a new era in AI for Customer Success, you have to wonder: can AI such as Max, Einstein, and Watson form genuine relationships with humans?

Our discussion of Tech Touch and High Touch clients belies the fact that all our relationships are Person-to-Person. As a co-pilot to our work in Customer Success, AI can help us make connections that we would never have grasped in a million years. But as the sole decision maker in our work to help clients succeed, AI isn’t ready yet.

But we are.

We are more than capable of improving ourselves to build better, stronger, more fruitful relationships. Our work demands it, our clients demand it… and our world demands it.

Customer Success is evolving every day, and AI can offer us an incredible opportunity to steer this evolution in a direction which benefits our work and our entire species. With the right approach, AI won't conquer Customer Success or the human race... it will give us wings.

Jason Noble

Global Leader in Customer Success | Driving Revenue Growth & Innovation | Advisor, Mentor, Speaker & Podcaster | Bridging The Gaps Between Technology & Customer Excellence

6y

Great article Andrew, thanks for posting. Some really exciting and practical examples and areas where good AI is really going to make an impact for Customer Success.

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Vinay Chandra

Product leader... metrics driven customer obsessed driving business transformations with AI & digital innovations.

7y

Yes agree with you Andrew... "AI will give us wings". Also, people use AI synonymously with Chatbots, which is not true. Therefore, I have articulated "Why Chatbots?" on our website at http://decipherbuild.com/why-chatbots/, wherein I have shared information that explains that Chatbots with AI in conversational UI vs Chatbot Apps which is little use of AI. But both AI and Chatbots do give us wings, as you rightly pointed out.

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Jeff Roy

CEO Excalibur Insurance Group, Protection Specialist ,Speaker, Innovator

7y

Great article Andrew. Love the term High touch, Medium touch and tech touch. The idea of using AI to purchase gifts for new staff members is amazing. In the insurance industry I see us building an evolutionary process. First a navigator then over time as more and more questions come in and machine learning is applied it gets smarter and become and advisor. I have built an entry level navigator on my website now www.eigroup.ca We are in the process of building and branding it over time. I think a key thing is how you connect the AI chat bot to your brand and give it some human flavor to connect with your clients.

Sue Nabeth Moore

Customer Success Advisor l Top 100 Customer Success Strategist l Coach l Entrepreneur l Speaker l Community Builder l Mentor

7y

A great article Andrew Rhodes. It strikes the right balance between AI and human intelligence.

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Protik M.

Chief Operating Officer (COO) focused on Data Driven Reliable and Accurate Generative AI Solutions,Venture Funded| Former Co-Founder/CRO with Successful Exit to Bain Capital

7y

Adding George Szundi,given they are at the intersection of AI and CS

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