Customer Success Skills In The Age Of AI

AI is beginning to remake the world around us.

You're already dangerously close to becoming a luddite if you're a developer who sniffily rejects AI. Those devs that continue to do so will soon be marginalised. You'll see them here and there: clinging to the idea that knowing how to speak the language is more valuable than being able to write the story.

It's tough for them because for a while speaking the language was what made devs into gatekeepers. Not going to be true for much longer yet it's hard to let go.

It's going to be a mistake to think like those devs whatever field you are in.

This week sees the general public launch of OpenAI's Agent (previously Operator). Now your AI can order your groceries, which admittedly, well yawn. But as with LLM progress over the last two years soon it will be genuinely and scarily competent.

AI is on the march. It's not slowing down. It's not about to grind to a halt. Agent is just the latest incremental step. One of many yet to come.

What then does this mean for customer success and more particularly CSMs? This AI march?

Well, good news and bad news.

If you're a diligent, hard working, process driven CSM who sits behind an email address or a customer support / success platform you're in trouble. Won't be that long before AI does what you do better than you do.

Sorry. That was the bad news.

So, what's the good news?

The good news is that way of working is only one customer success operating model and really it's more customer support than customer success. If you're an actual bona fide customer facing CSM, meaning you actually engage your customers in conversation, understand them and their business and then have to persuade them to do the things that you know are good for them? Well, then you're in luck.

Why?

Because the ability to do those things is going to be at a premium. At Success Methods we work with the lovely people at Learnerbly and they recently sent over a list of their most 'in demand' courses. ⬇️

That's edited a bit for brevity and repitition (sorry guys 😍) but essentially that's what they sent over. And it should not be a surprise. These are the skills that AI won't replace for a good while. And they are still the skills you need to navigate the workplace, the customer and your key stakeholders.

To their list we'd add, for customer success professionals of course but more broadly for anyone who is customer facing, the following:

  1. Understanding the outcomes you provide for your customers
  2. Understanding the value those outcomes deliver to your customers
  3. Understanding how to demonstrate that you are in fact delivering that value to your customers
  4. Understanding how to identify and get in front of the customer stakeholders who most need to understand 1, 2 and 3.

Naturally all of this always was important and the best CSMs always embodied these skills.

Now?

It's time to double down on this stuff: to focus on these skills wherever you are, whatever you do.

You can start with a simple matrix. Ask yourself for each of these - what's my proficiency out of 10 versus the best person I know?

Then you can answer the following:

Then figure out this: how big is the payback for me if I get better in each of these skills?

Maybe I'm already great at decision making but honing that skill a bit would still have a huge payoff. Or maybe I'm truly bad at emotional intelligence and developing that (yes - you can) just a little is where the big gains are to be had.

We're all unique.

We all have strengths and we all have areas we can develop.

Go figure out where you'll get the biggest payback and get to work.

Get good, you don't even have to be great, at most of these and AI will be left in your wake.

Ignore them at your peril.

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