Vanessa and Speaker B break down how AI reshapes customer success by tier. Under $50K needs pure digital; $50K-$150K is hybrid; above $150K gets human CSMs. AI extends these ranges and frees top talent to focus on high-touch accounts where CEOs still want real people.
Chapters
I was just going to say, I think my answer to that at a high level was I do think when we think about SMB, long tail, I think that's where we're really, really going to see AI have a huge impact. And I think a lot of our CS talent is really going to move upmarket. I also think with AI, we're going to be able to do something that I don't think we've done really well. Slack ideated a lot in this space, which is meet customers where they're at. Like, how can we actually understand where customers really just want and need AI and they don't need a human so that we can reallocate maybe smaller, more efficient resources and the customers actually do need our help? And I think the one thing that was on my mind that I think, you know, John just got at was CIOs and CEOs are not going to want to interact with an AI bot in the next 3 to 5 years. They're still going to want to interact with a human who understands their business, who has empathy for their pain points, who can tell them how other CEOs and other CIOs like them in their industry are handling these problems. I think that's all going to be really, really human. So I see us starting to focus and move and shift all upmarket on that. While we do some of the enablement and all of that and low, long tail, be more AI.
One thing actually I'd love to add, just build on to what Vanessa said. So just put like some very specific numbers on it. If you're building a customer success business and your annual spend from your customers is under $50K, there is no chance that you'll be able to build a sustainable business unless it's purely digital for CSM, right? So if you're trying to build, if your average selling price on an annual basis winds up being between $50K and $150K, you need a hybrid model. You need sort of like digital support and some, you know, reactive engagement from a CSM. At $150K plus, you get to have enough spend and ratios to really build a high-touch model. Now, what does AI add into this mix? It makes all those things better. Your digital experiences become better. Maybe you can stretch it from $50K to $100K. Your scaled experiences become better. You can go from maybe up to $250K. And increase the quality of those engagements at the same time. At the top end, you provide scale and support from all these tools to allow customers to run at higher ratios and better. And the aggregate effect is your customers get people engagement when they need to, that engagement quality is higher, and you can hire more, and you can be more efficient at the use of your people resources. And ultimately, when you add those things up, that's how you sort of lever up the impact that a CS organization can have by covering more customers, more revenue, with actually the same number of people.
