Pulse 2023 opened today, and with it, the community of thousands of Customer Success (CS), Product, and Community professionals set in motion the next era of our industry: Digital Customer Success (DCS).
Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, took the stage to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Pulse and get fired up for the next decade, powered by generative AI, DCS, and—most importantly—all of you.
Pulse is always a special event, but today marked a powerful moment, coming together to envision a durable future for our industry … before the robots take over.
Why CS Needs to Evolve in 2023
Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, kicked off the opening keynote on a positive note, saying, “Our job in CS isn’t just about adoption, retention, and expansion. It’s about helping your customers understand how your company is evolving.”
In honor of the tenth anniversary of our Pulse conference, Mehta took a look back at where it all started. Customer Success has come a long way in the last 10 years: Customer Success has grown into a mission-critical discipline, with 97% of the companies we surveyed this year reporting that they have a Customer Success organization. The majority of organizations we surveyed hold CS responsible for Net Revenue Retention (NRR): the most important metric to thriving in this era of the SaaS economy.
But at this moment, our industry is at a crossroads.
Traditional, high-touch CS models have reached their limits, for a few reasons:
- Customer Success Managers (CSMs) are burning out as account ratios skyrocket.
- Customers are navigating a disjointed web of communications and digital experiences.
- Investors are questioning why higher CSM headcount doesn’t always lead to higher Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).
The bottom line is we need to become more efficient and evolve the way we drive Customer Success. CSMs everywhere are being told to do more with less. Geoffrey Moore, Speaker and Author of Crossing the Chasm, says we need to flip the script and “do less; accomplish more.”
That’s why Gainsight is giving CSMs superpowers with new products and features powered by generative AI, designed to arm CSMs the tools they need to efficiently and effectively scale Digital Customer Success with limited resources.
What’s Next: Digital Customer Success
The theme of Pulse 2023 is What’s Next? While there are endless opportunities for innovation on the road ahead, we already know the answer is Digital Customer Success.
“Let’s be real,” Mehta said, “SaaS is going through an existential crisis.” He continued, “When you think about having a growth mindset, part of it is admitting when you need to change.”
We need to reinvent ourselves for the new world we’re in. We need to give ourselves permission to reinvent—that’s what Pulse is all about. Digital Customer Success empowers us to reinvent our organizations around the customer, by reaching every user and giving them the guidance they need and the experience they deserve consistently.
Ultimately, all companies are already cobbling together some form of DCS, between webinars, self-service resources, Communities, and more … but the experience is far from cohesive. According to Mehta, “The truth is today, even though the technology has evolved, the customer experience has devolved.”
We have access to all of this:
But, for most B2B companies, the customer experience goes something like this:
Mehta continues, “We know this isn’t a technology problem. It’s a problem of people, strategy, and process.”
We have the tools we need to prepare our industry for the future. It’s just a matter of growing our Digital Customer Success maturity. And that’s exactly what we’re here to do this week at Pulse 2023.
To kick off the next evolution of Customer Success, Mehta made some exciting announcements.
Introducing Gainsight Digital Hub
Gainsight announced the solution: Digital Hub. The new product line will help drive self-service Digital Customer Success through a centralized community, knowledge center, and one-to-many engagements. The packages within this product line are also designed to work seamlessly with Gainsight’s existing products (Gainsight CS and Gainsight PX).
But that’s not all. Welcome to the stage, ChatGPT.
How Generative AI Will Help Us Be More Human
Another amazing announcement is Gainsight Horizon AI powered by ChatGPT, which we’ll unpack fully in tomorrow’s keynote.
Horizon AI is the underlying technology that powers every solution on the Gainsight platform—and it just got turbocharged by generative AI features built to drive value throughout the customer journey.
Automation is just the beginning, the most basic form of what AI can do for business software. What we’ve created with generative AI will help CSMs become more efficient, more effective, and more artful at crafting customer experiences.
Mehta says, “The end result of all this is we’re going to be in another era of CS. CS started as an artisanal thing. Now the science is going to allow us to spend more time on the art and less time doing all this manual stuff that isn’t high-value … Digital Customer Success is going to allow us to be more human. It’s going to allow us to bring the best of who we are to the best of our customers and leave the rest to the systems.”
Join the waitlist for our AI beta program here!
We’re excited to show you exactly how to make this happen. That’s why Tyler McNally, SVP of Customer Experience and CS Operations at Gainsight, along with Kellie Capote, CCO of Gainsight, announced the Digital Customer Success Playbook.
The Digital Customer Success Playbook
At Pulse 2022, we announced the Durable Growth Playbook. Today, we’re zeroing in on the most critical durable growth play for a down economy: Scale Through Digital. For CS teams today, digital tactics are the only way to scale.
In the Pulse 2023 opening keynote, McNally and Capote identified six specific ways to get started or scale your Digital CS program.
We’ve been working hard to evolve our Digital Customer Success methodologies, and partnering with industry-leading pioneers through our newly formed Digital Customer Success Advisory Board. Stay tuned for more on the Digital Customer Success Playbook.
Take Your Practice to the Power of Digital
Ready to build a durable future with Gainsight? Join us on June 15, 2023 for the second episode of our webinar series, Chef’s Kiss: Digital Customer Success Recipes and check out our centralized repository of Digital Customer Success resources.
