The Essential Guide to

Leveraging AI as a Customer Success Manager

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a revolutionary technology that has transformed the world of business. Software as a service (SaaS) companies have taken the lead in AI adoption, updating their business models to account for the power of AI to increase productivity and drive profitability. And forward-thinking professionals across the tech sector have realized that AI enhances their ability to contribute—and advance their careers.

But because this new technology is such a game-changer, it has become difficult to differentiate between hype and reality when it comes to the role of AI in the workplace. Some have compared AI to the invention of fire or the wheel, while others fear that AI is going to take their jobs. The truth is, there is no need to make hyperbolic claims about AI—the real world impacts are already clear. AI has become table stakes for building efficient, sustainable SaaS organizations in today’s market.

In Customer Success (CS), the use of AI is growing fast. The recent State of AI in Customer Success Report from Gainsight found that 52% of CS orgs are using AI. But interestingly, AI is still primarily a “bottom-up” tool that employees are using for their own personal productivity. In most cases, CSMs are taking the initiative to learn how to use this valuable tool, rather than waiting for a mandate from on high.

That’s because AI empowers CSMs to enhance their efficiency and their impact so that they can craft more engaging and personalized customer experiences. It’s clear that AI is advancing the role of CS as a discipline—while raising expectations for individual CSMs.

At Gainsight, we champion a human-first approach to the adoption of AI. Customer relationships are at the heart of what CSMs do, so we want to use AI to enhance those human connections.  We have identified four key areas where AI drives human-led excellence in CS.

Eliminating Blind Spots

AI helps CSMs identify risks earlier by automatically tracking a much wider range of inputs and data than was possible before, looking at emails, support tickets, customer conversations, telemetry data, engagement, and more.

AI can even read and extract human emotions from customers, not just in one-on-one interactions but also in community, webinars, and office hours. That gives CSMs the ability to see and understand sentiment across the entire scope of the customer relationship.

AI can also discover unexpected correlations that previously would have required a data scientist analysis, which is going to give health scores a major makeover.

The result is that AI eliminates blind spots and becomes the eyes and ears of CSMs. They will be operating with deeper insights and emotional intelligence, which will ultimately lead to proactive rather than reactive customer success strategies.

Removing Grunt Work and Elevating Value

AI-powered automation—like AI-generated meeting summaries, writing assistance, and automated reports on customer health—significantly reduces the amount of time CSMs need to spend on manual administrative tasks, like data entry. AI also enables CSMs to create polished, CS-specific assets such as emails almost instantaneously.

All that extra time lets CSMs focus on more strategic objectives and deliver customer value. But it’s more than just an efficiency play. Conversational AI also helps CSMs better at mentally taxing strategic work. For example, a conversation with AI can help CSMs develop really incredible discovery questions going into a customer call.

And while AI has many impacts at a tactical level, it also helps overall CSM performance. A recent Gainsight survey found that CSMs who use AI are better at overcoming immediate challenges, extending their skill set, making better decisions, and feeling more confident in their roles. The overall result is that CSMs are empowered and impactful—AI is redefining the CSM role from task-juggler to strategic advisor.

Turning Every Teammate Into Your Best Teammate

Conversational AI has a number of team-building benefits.

Making tons of customer data easily accessible through AI, CS and other customer-facing teams can find answers from among shared knowledge quickly, providing better and quicker customer responses and value, as well as facilitating more impactful and meaningful internal relationships.

Conversational AI also drives continual learning and self-development, with AI as an expert coach. AI is a goldmine of information about a customer’s products, their business goals, their industries, and the roles and career stories of key customer contacts. It’s like having a strategic thinking partner who helps elevate every customer interaction.

And as AI-based tools like GPTs are incorporated into CS workflows over time, the cumulative expertise and knowledge will form a foundation of wisdom for other team members in the future.

Delivering a Better Customer Experience

Being a CSM is all about being customer-centric. AI has the power to enable CSMs to be more attentive to customers than ever before. By spending less time on mundane tasks they can be more attuned to customers during interactions.

But they will also be better prepared behind the scenes by utilizing the research capabilities of AI, gaining helpful industry knowledge about trends, industries, and business topics.

Conversational AI enables CSMs to zero in on specific customer details, saving them time and helping them deliver a more personalized customer experience.

AI also powers improved self-service for customers, who will be able to access more information through Community and other channels.

Whether a new user is learning ChatGPT or any other AI tool, the experience will be similar in that they are learning a brand new skill. Perhaps the biggest challenge for CSMs is that they need to create new use cases instead of following an existing playbook. In short, they need to become inventors. The good news is that we have identified a five-step development process that CSMs can follow on the path toward innovating with AI.

Ready for a real world example of AI in action? Using AI to handle a meeting can be a quick win for any CSM getting started with AI. After you do it once, you’ll never go back, and you’ll feel like a real AI pro.

The scenario: One of your hard-to-reach accounts has finally scheduled a business review—after a year! You have one day to prepare for the meeting. And renewal is right around the corner, so you need to follow up fast. Here’s how you can use AI to meet this challenge head on.

Preparation

Given the large amount of information about this customer, you could easily spend hours or even days reading through all relevant information. Instead, using AI, you can create a concise summary of a customer’s key milestones, risks, and goals using data from your company’s CS platform.

Your information sources include product usage data, customer health scores, and summaries of every interaction that has taken place between the customer and the company over the past year.

And because you assembled the information so quickly, you can send the report to your teammates and executives in advance of the meeting. Now, everyone on the internal team is aligned and ready to deliver an amazing customer experience.

During the meeting

The team assembles for a customer-centric meeting, during which AI enables you to avoid the distraction of note-taking. Your AI tool instantly summarizes the entire call and even performs a sentiment analysis of the customer’s voice to identify risk. But the best result is that you are present and effective during the meaning, conducting a meaningful conversation with a customer that truly adds value. You are really focused on asking the right questions and making sure you’re getting the information you need from the customer to build the relationship.

Follow-up

Instead of spending hours that night or during the following day creating a summary and follow-up communications, AI automation enables you to tackle this task in minutes. AI helps you to generate quick, accurate, and thorough emails for the customer that clearly outline next steps (recommended by the AI). You also send out AI-generated communications to internal stakeholders to gain alignment around customer health and status. Finally, AI automatically adds information about the call into your CS platform. The entire whole follow-up process has completely transformed.

Personalization

The impact of AI also goes beyond the meeting itself. Successful meetings with high-quality customer interactions help you build a deeper relationship with each of your customers. You have more time to customize your efforts to match the specifics of each of your customer’s journeys. And because you are not spending your days on manual follow-ups and finding answers for customers, you actually have time to schedule more face-to-face meetings.

Overcoming Barriers to AI Adoption

Change is always difficult, and despite the obvious advantages of AI, organizations seeking to adopt these technologies may encounter a number of barriers. As individual contributors, it may not be the responsibility of CSMs to overcome these barriers. But being aware of them should help CSMs navigate the changing landscape and help to standardize the use of of AI in CSM workflows.

Lack of internal expertise: Even though it is growing rapidly, AI is still a relatively immature technology. Companies see lack of experience and expertise as a barrier to broadscale adoption and value creation, which may block internal enablement. Training up CSMs on AI skills can help overcome this barrier.

Integration complexities: Integrating AI into existing processes is not always straightforward, especially for organizations that rely on legacy systems and processes. To successfully adopt AI, CS teams will need to work closely with IT partners along the way, so the more out-of-the-box capabilities they have the better.

Data privacy concerns: The majority of companies have not yet produced solid data compliance policies around AI, so CS—and other teams—are often nervous to formally roll out the use of a new technology, especially one that could use customer data without corporate approval. The good news is that security protocols for AI have already advanced by leaps and bounds.

Output reliability: AI relies on large language models (LLMs) and other data pools to function, which means that your AI tools are only as good as the data inputs that go into them. CSMs have to be able to trust the results of their AI, so thought and effort have to be put into ensuring that they have high-quality data.

Resistance from the team: Change management is hard and there is always resistance to change. AI requires CSMs to learn new skills and step outside their comfort zone. There may also be fears that AI is somehow a replacement for CSMs. While those fears are understandable, they are unfounded, and CSMs who embrace the change will thrive in the new AI world.

Ready to revolutionize your CS game? The AI revolution isn’t just knocking at the door – it’s already transformed how we work, think, and deliver value to our customers.

Throughout this guide, we’ve cut through the AI hype to give you the real deal:

• We’ve shown you how AI can be your secret weapon – spotting hidden opportunities, automating the mundane, and supercharging your team’s potential
• We’ve mapped out a crystal-clear path for AI mastery, proving that even complete beginners can become AI wizards
• We’ve armed you with practical AI skills and real-world examples that you can put to work tomorrow morning

But here’s the thing: AI isn’t just another tool in your toolkit—it’s your partner in creating exceptional customer experiences. Think of it as your personal CS multiplier, amplifying your expertise and intuition while freeing you to focus on what truly matters: building lasting customer relationships.

The future of CS isn’t about AI replacing CSMs—it’s about the CSMs who embrace AI outshining those who don’t. Your customers win with better service, your company wins with stronger relationships, and you win by becoming an irreplaceable force in customer success.

It is time to take that first step and transform from a CS professional to a CS innovator.

Welcome to the future of Customer Success—let’s make it extraordinary.