Situation
At a B2B tech company, Customer Success operated largely downstream from Product. Product teams were building the next generation of AI-powered customer experiences, while Customer Success focused on support and adoption for products already in market.
AI was changing that model. As agents became capable of taking on routine activities, Customer Success offering managers had an opportunity to shift human capacity toward higher-value work: translating customer insights into better offerings and experiences.
Doing so required a much tighter connection with product owners and delivery teams. Customer needed to inform what was built next, while Success teams needed to co-design service offerings so they were ready when new products launched. Leadership needed to bring Customer Success upstream and equip the organization to become an active part of the company’s innovation engine.
Action
Keenan Reid designed a new operating and capability model for Customer Success offering owners, redefining the organization’s capabilities, roles, activities, and tools. And, establishing how Customer Success could move from an adoption function to an innovation engine.
As part of this work, we:
- Identified the critical activities necessary for Frontier Success innovation, shifting the role to shape what customers would need next
- Identified work that could move to agent workers, shifting human time back to customer insight and innovation
- Built a Frontier Success capability model with the skills and experiences Customer Success offering managers will need to operate effectively
- Recommended specific connections needed between Product and Customer Success teams
- Developed a pilot to test the model
Results
Customer Success leadership gained a practical blueprint for xxx around the customer experience.
- An Operating Model for Frontier Success strategy. Defined how Customer Success could use AI to reduce lower-value work, create capacity for innovation and turn customer insight into an input to product and offering strategy.
- A Frontier Success capability map. Identified the capabilities, skills and experiences Success teams would need as AI changed both the customer experience and the role humans play in delivering it.
- A practical path forward. Recommended a co-development pilot that would bring Success into roadmap planning from the start and directly pair Product and Customer Success owners on live work.
