In a conversation about the changes brought on by the advent of the SaaS business model, veteran CS exec LeeRon Yahalomi made an apt comment. “We moved from upfront license deals to recurring revenue, but kept operating like the product was still the software and the customer was lucky to have it. That is why Customer Success got bolted on instead of built in.” The ever increasing penetration of AI is bringing even more challenges to the profession as virtual agents take over the repetitive low impact tasks formerly done by generalist CSMs. The handwriting is on the wall: the role of bolted-on CS groups can be done faster and cheaper by ai resources. LeeRon went on to note “When everyone can generate features, demos, and noise at scale, the only thing that actually holds value is whether the customer gets an outcome they can feel, measure, and defend internally. The product is not the code. The product is the result. Until companies run like that is true, Customer Success will keep being treated like support for a strategy problem.” This is a very uncomfortable truth. What does it mean to us as a profession?
The Hard Reality
Every powerful technology requires an investment in learning in order to obtain the desired increase in productivity and profitability. Today, as in the past, the burden is largely on the customer/user to do that learning. The shift to the income-stream model, however, forced technology vendors and others to the realization that this scenario wasn’t safe, that churn is deadly and customers that don’t achieve their desired outcomes leave. In response, vendors adopted a range of measures, some technological, and some organizational. Helpful features were added to the technology so that the user had immediate access to assistance when barriers were encountered. Customer Success groups and their component departments (Onboarding, Training, Support) were chartered to encourage adoption and to resolve issues. While these measures provide some benefit, they are ultimately not scalable, and even when replaced by agentic resources that do their tasks faster, the fundamental challenge remains. If we’re to sell actual outcomes, Customer Realized Value, the underlying technology itself has to guarantee delivery.
Designing for Product as Outcomes
What will it take in order to make the technology itself responsible for customer success? SaaStr’s Jason Lemkin wrote that “We want to talk to our apps.” Such an app will have to have the capabilities for accurately listening, understanding, and effectively responding so that the message gets across and the outcome necessarily follows.
To create such app, at the beginning, you have to thoroughly understand the customers capabilities/limitations, their desires, and why they want them. This domain expertise should have been a requirement for every CS department from day one. It’s an absolute for the redesign initiative. No AI is going to give you that insight. No hotshot coder’s ‘killer app” will cover the absence of it. A knowledgeable human is indispensable to the effort, and that requirement will not go away, for humans and business is ever changing.
This initiative is a redefinition of what your product actually is at its heart. Your true product is the outcomes the technology enables.
The Continuing Customer Success Group
So what does all this mean for the future of Customer Success as a profession? We have to realize that what we bring to the table is the in-depth and detailed knowledge of the customer and of their outcome desires. We have to use that knowledge in two directions, to guide the customers and the company. We have to align to what we should have been all along: a built-in, indispensable role from design to delivery. If you would like to get a sense of what that might look like in your company, let’s talk.
