In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Jan Young, Principal Consultant for The Success League about AI and it’s effect on Customer Success.
ChatGPT has taken the world by storm and we are now all wondering how it will transform the Customer Success (CS) industry. For example, how will AI change the role of a CSM or will it even take CS jobs away? How can it help with customer retention? And what positive/ negative effects will it potentially have?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Jan Young, Principal Consultant for The Success League about AI and it’s effect on Customer Success.
ChatGPT has taken the world by storm and we are now all wondering how it will transform the Customer Success (CS) industry. For example, how will AI change the role of a CSM or will it even take CS jobs away? How can it help with customer retention? And what positive/ negative effects will it potentially have?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
Hello everyone. I'm your host, Anika Zuber, and welcome back to the next episode of the Customer Success Channel podcast, brought to you by Plan Hat, the Modern Customer platform. This podcast is created for anyone working in or interested in the customer success field. On this podcast, we will speak to leaders in the industry about their experiences and their definitions of customer success and get their advice and best practices on how to run ACS organization. Jan Young needs no introduction as she is top 25 and top 50 CS influencer, top 50 women leaders in customer success and top 100 CS strategist. Jen is a principal consultant at the Success League, and she specialized in helping heads of CS become VPs and get a seat at that exclusive executive table. In today's podcast, we are going to be chatting with Jan about the hottest topic in customer success in 2023, AI and its effects on customer success chat. G P T has taken the world by storm and what New world lies ahead for us with this new technology of artificial intelligence in SaaS and customer success. Welcome Jan to the podcast. I am so very excited to finally have you on here with us today. I know you well, you're a name that I would be very surprised if our listeners didn't know already. But for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know you, can you please tell us a little bit more about yourself and what it is you're doing and how you're working in the customer success, success space?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. I, I love technology. I love customer success. I love trying to help people, you know, improve themselves and the profession. And so, um, I think that, you know, when I was an individual contributor, I, uh, really approached it from that. You know, I, I, I wasn't even called a C S M I was called, it was sort of in the sales account management role, but we already brought in all of the major companies. And so from the very beginning I was post-sales and I just, I've always thought about the customer. I've always thought about that intersection between the customer and the company. So anything I can do to learn from others or to read or to, you know, think and, and you know, kind of come up with new approaches, like, uh, that's what I wanna do. And so I guess at, at the core you can call me a geek and<laugh>, otherwise, you know, I, you can call me a consultant or a coach or, you know, other things like that too.<laugh>,
Speaker 1:I think that the successfully should rebrand your title as like
Speaker 2:Geek, principal geek. Great. Yeah,
Speaker 1:I think we can all aspire to that. But, um, tell us a little bit more about the Success League and everything else that you're doing there and, and how you're helping different CS leaders and also organizations learn more about customer success.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. Um, so the Success League is a boutique customer success consultancy that has, uh, certifications for CSMs and CS leaders. The one for CS leaders is really actually very unique. It's 15 courses, all sort of like takeaways and things like that that are specific to being a CS leader. That's a big part of why I joined. I've been a solopreneur consultant actually though, since 2016 and been working with founders to help them think through their whole go-to-market motion. And so focusing on the post-sales motion is something I've been doing for the last couple of years. I've also done some interim VP of CS roles as part of that, a lot of coaching, uh, workshops and consulting as well. So it's really, you know, a a lot of different opportunities as I've been working with Success League. And um, and then I'm also always sort of thinking about how to build communities. So I've built out CS office hours starting something in, in, uh, Southern California, so Cal CX right now. So there's projects that I do on my own and uh, projects that I do with Success League and it's just, that's another thing I guess besides being a geek, if there's a way to create a community that I usually find it like I will, I'll create a community at the drop of a hat. So<laugh>, I love
Speaker 1:That. And it's so true to your core though, Jen. I love how you're being open and honest with us. Cause I just think of the community that you run for CS leaders as well. And I just think, yeah, Jan's always involved in any way that she can be, which is amazing and I love that. I
Speaker 2:Can't help it. It's addictive. I<laugh> I really can't help it<laugh>.
Speaker 1:That's so great to hear. Honestly, it's so great to hear. And I think the community and customer success is a big part of how the entire industry has been shaped is around a lot of everyone supporting each other as we navigate and figure out what the heck customer success means at every different organization. That being said, you've had a quite a stint in customer success. What inspired you to actually work in CS rather than going in a different direction with your career?
Speaker 2:Interestingly enough, so I, I wasn't even going to be in business. I broke up with a boyfriend in, in college cuz he was going to be a business major. And I knew we had nothing in common<laugh>, right? You know, I was going to be either a poet or a playwright or you know, this sort of thing. But, um, turns out because I was not independently wealthy, I needed a day job. And because I've always organized people and things and budgets and, and all those things, I was a project manager and this is before you really had to have a PMP and everything. So it was a way of getting into tech and, and so that's how I got into tech was project management. And then I went to business school cause I wanted to combine my love for the, the arts and, and how, uh, film and, and just content that represented our communities, our diverse communities would be more possible as on online content became more possible on demand content. And so my, my, the way I connected the two was, um, really I was very fo<laugh>. I was so focused. I went to business school, ironically in the end,<laugh>,
Speaker 1:I'm loving where this story's going by the way. I
Speaker 2:Was, I was so focused on demand content that that's all I ever talked about. I do get a little obsessive about things. That's all I ever talked about. To the point where in business school I was, I was nicknamed by someone as Jan on demand. Cause<laugh>. Yeah,
Speaker 1:That's great. I'm expecting the next piece of your content or anything else you're publishing is called Jan on Demand. And now that you've told me that you also were like an inspiring poet, I'm expecting like CS poetry
Speaker 2:Another Haiku or something. Well, luckily, luckily chat G p t is around, so I don't have to write the haiku's myself. But, um, yeah, so, so yeah, so then I went to business school. I ended up getting a job out at Paramount, which is how I ended up living in Los Angeles of all places. I'm originally from NoCal. I was never gonna live in SoCal. I moved to New York to not live in SoCal. I still have my 9 1 17 number. Like I was really, I mean, I was diehard New York. I became a New Yorker file when I was there and I used to make fun of them before I lived there. And so like, I was never going to leave New York. I moved to LA to work at Paramount, kept my cell number, was going to move back. But then, you know, once you're here, you know, like you're here and so you have a community, you build up, there's jobs that you do. And, and I found, uh, well I did marketing and I really appreciate marketing, but I also hate it for myself as a job. Like I just don't care. And so<laugh>, um,<laugh> after bringing, uh, ads to video on demand, another story which, you know, I hate ads, but I knew that folks needed to monetize. So like there were a lot of projects to do and it was very exciting at the time. And then all the consolidation of entertainment tech and entertainment generally just then that became sad and boring and, and I needed to leave it. Anybody thinks that Hollywood is glamorous. There's no glamor actually here that's all manufactured
Speaker 1:<laugh>. It's actually quite ugly. And I think it's really sad, like as a, a SoCal ex SoCal resident, born and raised, but I just think that everyone glamorizes Hollywood so much and it's actually quite ugly. Like every single time you visit it, I'm like, it's not that great guys. I think that like the, there's trash everywhere. The walk of fame is really underwhelming and like, you really don't see celebrities everywhere, no matter how much people think they see
Speaker 2:Everybody's in their cars or they're off in the hills or
Speaker 1:Like behind security or something. Like you're never gonna see them. So no,
Speaker 2:You see a lot more celebrities in New York than you see in la. But anyway, so all of that, and I never cared about that stuff anyway. I'm never, I'm not a name dropper. I do not care about dropping names. So yeah, I was always, I gravitated to being the geek behind all of that stuff. But even still the, the, the way that the industry was changing, I wanted something new and different. So that's how I got into emerging tech and really consulting around that. I was really focused on blockchain. But again, then with all the crypto stuff, I also don't care about the whole get rich quick schemes. And there's an element to that. So I wasn't so focused on blockchain. Uh, well I was, I was, and I tried to diversify blockchain actually. I, I organized a conference and some other things around that I really wanted, I want to diversify tech just generally. But anyway, that said really got into then, you know, ai, iot, if I had more science in my background, I would do more like quantum computing. I was really focused on blockchain. I was trying to diversify blockchain, right? To, to ensure, because you need diversified people, a diversity of people in any sort of tech in order to build the type of tools that really will benefit the, the communities and, and and, and basically just how we all use it, if you like, Silicon Valley was really, was, was an amazing place when everybody was there because of the way that everybody could focus and really just kind of go leaps and bounds in terms of the profession. But, and, and now some of that is sort of when everybody's dispersed, that's gone away, right? But at the same time, you still got a lot of group think and you've gotta get away from that group think, you know, you need to have diversified people in tech because otherwise the types of solutions you come up with are only for like a singular, you know, singular, you know, focus type of thing. We, and we don't need another productivity tool. We really don't. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But also then your market becomes way too saturated with the same buyer if you're only building tools and products for the same people. And I wanna actually dive a little bit deeper into a few things that you've said. You've already gotten me excited about our topic already. Um, you've already mentioned just chat G p T, which is a big part of what we're talking about. And ai, I think machine learning, there's just everything seems to be all the buzz right now and the geek in you I'm sure is gonna keep correcting me and adding to this conversation, which I'm excited to, but it is all the buzz right now. I cannot open any website or anything without someone talking about AI and chat C P t and that is what we're here to talk about today. And can you, in your own words, in the geek Jen, that you've just expressed to us, tell us what you're seeing right now happening in the CS world when it comes to AI and customer success.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm seeing a lot of hype is what I'm seeing. Yeah,<laugh>. Okay. So what happens in the same way that back, you know, with crypto, there was, you know, everybody was like, you know, back in 2017 all wanted to like buy anything, you know, or, or, or go back to even the early two thousands. All people had to do was add.com to the end of their name and boom, they were a billion dollar company, which, and they were, didn't even have a business model, right? So, so there's a lot of hype in tech and right now the hype is chat G B T, but, but why is that Now, first of all, AI's been around for a while as, as long as you've been saying Siri or in our household we say g and I can't say it out lo loud because everything will, everything
Speaker 1:Will start opinion at you. Yeah. I can't say the a word in my household cuz everything will will say looking at me<laugh>,
Speaker 2:Right? Right. So, so that's natural language processing, right? When my auto correct, which is, I always joke is never correct, is putting in dinner instead of the word sum. I don't know why it does that, but it does that all the time. But anyway, um, so when, when these things happen, that's all ai, right?
Speaker 1:It's around us all the time. It really is. And I think we're forgetting that. And like you just said, it's being hyped up right now in tech, which I think will transform the way we do things, which we'll get into. But it's just crazy how something that's been around, like you said for a while is, I don't wanna say it's scaremongering, but it is in some ways scare cuz everyone's like saying it's gonna replace our jobs and so on. And I just think that there's a lot more to it, but the hype is real<laugh>.
Speaker 2:So the the hype is real and, and sure. Some of the scare mon, okay, so, so there's a lot of different things and a lot of different types of ai. So the difference first between AI and machine learning. Machine learning is where the computer will look at patterns across a large, large amount of data and then say, here's some patterns I see. And then you, you do some things with those patterns, right? So that's machine learning. AI is when you are writing the code and you are saying if these parameters are met, then do x, it's like any other type of code kind of thing in, in some ways. But then there's, you know, whatever neural processing and, and things like that. But anyway, I won't get into all of the geekiness of that and I'm not an expert in it. I am very much a generalist in lots of things, and this is another thing I'm a generalist about. But all that to be said, then there's, there's these different types of ai, but it that we're already have integrated into our lives. So first of all, just understand AI has been here, it's not like chat G B T came and now, now AI's here. What's different about chat G B T is that, is is that it's working so well, frankly. And that's because they have a very large model. They took all of the internet up until 2021 and they trained it off of that, right? So all of a sudden now it has a lot of information and it's like, oh yeah, that, that's pretty good. The problem is, and this is what they call hallucinations or something, but, but basically the problem is, is when chat G B T doesn't know something, it'll just sort of smooth over it. You know, like you or I might, you know,<laugh> when we're like, oh, I don't really know, but I think it's this, I'm just gonna say it's this. Well that's what chat G B T is doing too. The problem is also like they have been able to train it to some degree, but then what you saw, what Microsoft being, what they were doing, and there was something in the news about like how, you know, a reporter was like, oh, you know, it said that I should leave my wife and, and that it had this alter ego name and all these things, right? Yeah. I don't know if you read any of that. Anyway, so, so like you can, if they don't have guardrails on it, right? Then what happens is it will, it doesn't know that it's gone to someplace that that would be weird, you know,<laugh> like, and so you do have to have guardrails on it because otherwise it's just going to execute. You know, like, like if you, if you had a program where technically it could hit the nuclear button, if certain thing steps went through, then it wouldn't, it doesn't know it, you know, it, it's a computer program, it's not a person, right? So if the the logicals next step is to hit the nuclear button, well then it would just do that. I'm not saying that that's set up to do that at all. I'm just saying that like, if there was something dangerous for it to do, it doesn't, if you don't give it the guardrails, it doesn't know that that's dangerous per se.
Speaker 1:For sure. And I think that that's where people are missing the AI bit of all of this is like, we still control it for now. I know there's lots of talk about it being smarter than humans and taking over certain things and the ways we do and how it'll grow and learn and be a powerful beast. But I think there is still the human element to everything we do. Like we were just talking about in our households, our IOTs, until we prompt them, they're not gonna do things that we tell it not to do basically. So I know that's gonna be very, very interesting to see how this transforms customer success, which is what we're here to talk about today, actually. And I'm so curious, as someone who's consulting and working with multiple businesses and involved in customer success in the way you are, what are some of the ways you think AI is gonna start to really transform how we do customer success?
Speaker 2:Well, and we can kind of go into it from the, from that, one of the things you just mentioned there is, is, is AI smarter than us? And what AI is able to do is, is like for us and our brains, our brains are amazing, right? Like our natural language processing that we do without even thinking, you know, without thinking about it, with just reacting in our brains, is still more advanced than what you can see. You know, it can be done in ai, but what AI is better at is comprehending, uh, mass amounts of data that is becomes overwhelming for us, right? So when you think about in these businesses that we're in these tech businesses and just how much data that we have at our available to us, all of the phone calls we do all of the Zoom calls, all of the emails, all of the ways in which our customers are using the product. When, when they're logging in, who's logging in, you know, on what type of device, what pages do they go to, what, you know, what, where do they get stuck, what are they doing? All of these kinds of things. How, how are, are they achieving their goals, et cetera. These, all these data points right now, that's too much for us to take in. So what do we do with our health scores? We say, well, the last time I talked to Joe, Joe was really happy. He just came back from vacation, things were good. Okay, this account is green, Joe is happy. Well, that's really too simplistic. You know, the fact that Joe just came back from vacation does not make that a green account, right?<laugh>, what really makes it a green account is what's happening. You know, are you multi-threaded? Do you have more than one contact at that company or is it only Joe? What kinds of conversations are happening across that organization with your organization, across your whole organization? How, how does, you know, how does that bubble up? What does that mean? You know, like where are your, um, if, if we're, and we should be thinking s strategically about these accounts. If you are a strategic customer success manager or strategic consultants, you want to think about, you know, across all of these different ways, are they using the product for the way, the way they should? Are they meeting their goals the way they should? You know, all of these, these things the way that we would expect by someone who has been using our product for one year. And by knowing what all of the other customers are doing, you know, similar to this type of customer at the one year point, right? Like what, where they should be in their customer journey, all of those things. Like all of these things. Ideally we would be incorporating into a cu um, you know, a customer health score, right? But we can't, you know, because how complicated is that, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think, uh, you're, you're bringing up something really great, which is the data, which is so critical to everything that we do day-to-day in customer success. Like you said, it's so much more than just an email that Joe just sent or a phone call that you had. There is so much more in the product usage and the feature usage in what's happening and what we expect him to be doing in let's say the one year or two year mark of using the product. So I do think data mixed with AI is what's gonna really transform customer success. And I think that that's what you're leading to as well. But there's lost still a lot of fear, I'd say out there around it, taking a CS jobs away, a CSMs job away. Do you agree? Like, do you think that it's going to, do you think it's gonna change the CSM job? What do you think about that?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say think about anything you're doing that is repetitive that doesn't require someone to think, that doesn't require critical thinking skills, anything like that is, is, yeah. I mean, you think about what robots do in warehouses, you know, or you know, that sort of thing versus when you have humans doing it, they're getting carpal tunnel and, and things like that, right? So like you, there are things you want robots to do instead of people because it actually damages us physically or mentally by doing these repetitive things. You think about, you know, if you were in, um, you know, automotive, you know, where they're putting, you know, cars together and stuff like that, you know, machines were replacing people in those circumstances because they're more effective, you know, they can carry big heavy items and put them together with, with greater precision than some someone who maybe they're tired from the night before and they forget to put that one bolt on or something like that, right? Machines can do those things, right? So when you think about should I use chat G B T to help me come up with a or, or really any sort of process that you might not just chat g p t, but, but any of these tools that can help you come up with better marketing campaigns to your customers to send them the right message at the right time to the right person with the right type of information where you can personalize it to that person. Yeah, why not? And then you can make the small changes to it. Like, you know, how was Tahiti because I, I wish we were all coming back from Tahiti, right? So like any of those things that can make you work more efficiently, then great, have it do those things, right? Because ultimately what you need to be doing is thinking more strategically. If you are not bringing a better strategy to this based upon what you know in terms of the humans you're working with and all of the data that you can analyze, then you are replaceable, right? We all, and that's, that's not just a C S M that's in, in any type of role that we have. You know, now you see at the grocery store, you, you know, Amazon is doing stores where you can walk out without going to the, to the register, you know, so yes. You know, anything that is a repetitive thing that otherwise, you know, that's why you have self-checkout. Like anything that is repetitive that you could do yourself then, then yes. That you can do with without, with a machine instead of someone else doing it. Like, you should expect that we all need to step up, that we all need to be more strategic, that we all need to be thinking critically about what we bring to the table. Because anything that is a repetitive motion, you should expect that at some point, that repetitive motion, if it's not something uniquely human, then it is something that sure could be figured out by a computer.
Speaker 1:Definitely. And I think that that's what's gonna transform our entire industry. And the role of customer success manager or leader, whatever your role is in CS or any role in the business, is that change that chat, G P T or AI brings to that repetitive motion that you're just saying, it's, you're ba you're able to take time to actually strategically think rather than do those motions. I'm just thinking even a few years ago when I was building out a CS team and within a CS tool and the templates that we were building, all of the email templates, if a customer is ghosting you, if it's time for renewal, if it's time for an upsell conversation, any of the triggers we were creating based on health scores, all of that had to be created. Some sort of language around that was from my CSMs and repeating that. And I'm just thinking even before we had CS tools out there that we do, which I'm, I'm glad we do. Back when I did CS in the early days, we had spreadsheets and just manual emails and like hopes and praise that we were like, okay, we have the right data at hand. But there's just so much that takes away from that now, and we have that ability to be strategic because hey, we don't have to sit there and write follow up emails or look back at our notes from a call or decide what the health score is based on our feeling because there's actually data now behind that powered with AI that's gonna be able to really help. So I completely agree on that and I totally think that it's gonna change the jobs, like you said, but it, I don't think it's gonna take anything away. No.
Speaker 2:It it should enable us to be better frankly. And, and we should want to lift, lift ourselves, lift the profession, lift our, our companies. The other thing too, I think is it's really going to enable our jobs to be easier in many ways. Like there's a lot of companies, they're using it to do the integrations, right? So those backend integrations that are real pain in the, you know, dairy a, dairy a do, um,<laugh> when you're trying to figure out which object in Salesforce or if you have like a custom field and all those kinds of things, like basically they'll, there's already starting to use natural language processing where you basically say, I wanna connect, you know, these fields and then it, it's smart enough to figure out how to do that and to set it up for you, right?
Speaker 1:Operational, like, like nightmare if you didn't have that already, like you, that's so much help already just there what you're just saying,
Speaker 2:Right? And so you, so there's things like that, or when you think about training now that we're on Zoom so much, there are ways in which, you know, it can, uh, identify sort of what emotions are being communicated and, and how you are expressing yourself, right? So now you can, there, there's um, there are programs out there that are available literally right now that are available that you can use and then it can be used as a training tool. So instead of somehow as a manager, you're going to listen to every gong call in the universe, which you can don't have time for, you're not going to do as a C S M. You can train yourself, you can get feedback from the AI about how you might do it better, and then if you wanna talk about it with your manager, you can either say, these are the ways I've improved. Or you can say, Hey, what do you think about this? The AI is suggesting I do this. I'm not sure it seems like I should do this other approach. Discuss it with your manager. You know what I mean? Because AI isn't always perfect and isn't always gonna come up with, you know, the only solution for something. There will still be things to discuss, but now you have a point in time and a part of a video to then show your manager and discuss with them. And you can be proactive as a C S M bringing that up to your manager even, right? I mean, it just, it it empowers people to do things differently to and to take that next step. There's, there's also other problems, but, but there's also a lot of ways in which it can empower us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I remember when I was A C S M too and like how many summary notes I had to take and even if I wanted to share something on Slack or teams, I would have to go back and look at my notes and then share it to the wider product team and like now you can highlight it and record it, like you said, and just share it off in that way. And it just makes your life so much easier. And you just shared a number of things that how different companies are doing different things with ai and as a consultant, you are working with quite a few companies and I'm wondering is there anything really cool or different that you've seen companies use AI in customer success? You mentioned the operations integrations piece. Is there anything else that a company or anything that you've heard has been done that's really unique? Because I'm hearing a lot about the emails, I'm hearing a lot about the like, uplift and like automation, but is there anything kind of unique out there right now with AI and cs?
Speaker 2:What I think is happening is everyone's trying to be unique right now. So there you have one company that's focusing on the backend integration, making that simple. You have another one that's saying, Hey, we can give you a better customer health score and suggest next steps and segmentation and all these things because we can analyze your, your data. We can, you know, another one is saying, we can train your CSMs because you know, we, we can, you know, show you what's happening emotionally and, and help you be smarter in terms of your eq. You know, you ha um, there are others that are saying, here are the highlights from your meeting and this is where things could be at risk. These are how you should organize your next steps. Here are some ways to follow up via email with your customer, right? So there's, there's all these different ways in which every company is trying to be unique right now, but in the end what's going to happen is all of that is going to be table stakes. It's going, they will need the, they'll need to integrate all of those things, all of it.
Speaker 1:And I think it's gonna affect all AI and chat, Q P T, whatever, everything within it. And machine learning is going to affect the entire organization, not just customer success, but, you know, we wanna talk about what's happening in the CS world on this podcast, but I think that it'll be interesting to see what's gonna happen in three, five years of how businesses are run and the efficiencies I would say, around business in general, not just in customer success, but as you said, it's gonna free up time for us to be more strategic, which I think is what really is the focus right now. But I think another thing that's relevant to talk about right now as we are in this economic slump, I'll call that I'll, I'll say it as that and tech, the tech world is trying to figure out and manage what's next when it comes to customer retention, possible churn, you know, just managing expectations in that way. Do you think AI will help with customer retention and churn? Will it help mitigate churn? What are your thoughts around that and how that might help?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, uh, so if you understand what's happening with your customer, first of all, you can, you can be more strategic with your customer if you understand where customer friction is, is taking place within your own product where they are stalling, you know, and where they are churning so that you can then go in and fix it and remove that customer friction, which is oftentimes with your product, sometimes with your training, all of those things can be more easily and more quickly identified when you, um, start to have ways to, well first of all, you have to start gathering that data. You have to start tracking, uh, just how long does it take, uh, any of our customers to get from point A to point B? And it can be small points, you know, just like do they, you know, take care of the integrations? You know, do they, um, provide the information they need to from their company? Is there some way that, you know, the heavy lift of all the data they need to gather from internally? Is there a way we can make that lift easier? You know, depending upon your product and your customer base, what sort of challenges you might have. You want to take a look at all of those things that are happening, you know, in the same way that we've taken this microscope to the pre-sales process and we've looked at marketing and sales, you know, ad nauseum, we need to start applying those same lessons and the, and the same sort of tools to the post-sales process because otherwise without that you don't have land and expand, you just have land and then that's a lot of extra costs because they never expanded, they never, you know, renewed. And so you really have a lot of sunk costs without the revenue, right? So the whole point is the expand. We need to start focusing on how to make that a smoother process for our products, uh, how that can be smoother with that for our processes, how that can be smoother and you know, and for relationship building as well. But the other thing that's kind of interesting too, and I haven't read the book yet, but I'm so intrigued, but basically there's this, um, sense that with ai, with all of the processes that can be automated and improved upon, they actually, by 2030 there's a prediction out there that 20% of the customers will be machines. And so if you think about that, that's, that's kind of weird, right? To even think of it that way. But if you think about it, if you have a self-driving car and the self-driving car needs to, um, it won't be getting gas, but it will be maybe getting charged electrically or something like that, right? And all of these different kinds of things then, like if you had solar panels that were charging, you know, batteries and these self-charging cars are gonna go by and get charged or maybe whatever, who knows how it'll happen, but, you know, eventually not, maybe not by 2030, but, but eventually like all of these different ways in which then the machine becomes a customer to the machine, which be, you know, eventually there's humans in there, but there are also machines that are all part of that ecosystem as well. So if you think that procurement is rough<laugh> and you feel like you're being commoditized by procurement, well then yeah, machine is going to go with whatever's the most efficient. And that's, that's an interesting way in which that marketplace sort of pans out and, and will develop as well there. There's also, I mean there al already, like on Amazon, there was a one of those stories about like a futuristic story where um, there are, there's a factory that still makes some sort of product and they have drones that are protecting it and stuff like that. Like it's just its own little ecosystem kind of thing, right? And, and the people are over on the side and they're not using the product at all. Like they're two separate sort of ecosystems,<laugh>. So that's kind of a weird future, but I, I don't know, I think we can avoid going there because we can imagine it, you know, going there. I think we can avoid some sort of dystopian future if, if we want to. But I do think that even if by 2030 if machines are going to be part of our customers, then how does that work? You know? And and how as if you are looking at that customer experience all the way from marketing and you know, sales and you know, uh, delivery, right? All the way through then if machines are part of that customer base, what does that mean for your business and how do you provide those services anyway? Don't, I don't know yet. I haven't read that book yet to start to imagine it, but I do think that um, already there are things I can imagine and I, and I think that it's time to start thinking a little differently about how we participate in it, how we create guardrails for it, but also how we take advantage of it and, and it's so important to get engaged in emerging technology when it's emerging, right? If we head back in the 1990s said, I don't wanna be a part of that scary interweb thing, you know, and what is that www stand for anyway? Like you would be missing out on everything. No,
Speaker 1:I completely agree. I also just think of like everything that I do today that's non like traditional and is in emerging tech, which is now normal tech by the way. For example, I don't actually carry any credit cards with me or any cash. Oh really? Because I tap my phone everywhere I go. I know that not a lot of places in the world do that, but in London, like FinTech is been around, it's something a lot of our banks here are neobanks, which means that they don't actually even have physical branches. I know America is really backwards on this and there's still checks, but we don't have that. And like everything we do is like either bank transport or we tap our phones and that, that was emerging tech a few years ago. In some parts of the world it is still emerging tech, but I couldn't imagine a world where I'm like, oh, I have to actually use my credit card and take out a physical card because no, I use my phone everywhere I go now because of Apple Pay. And so I just think that that's something I hopped on. But like you're saying, no one should be fearing what chat G P T should be bringing into the customer success world or the business world as a whole. I think it'll help tremendously with retention and the data points that we just talked about. I think it'll help with mitigating churn depending on your data that you just said. And I think that it'll change our jobs for the positive and give us that strategic outlook that we are so desperately craving cuz we're just doing so much admin. I remember as a C S M I would block out half days just for admin and there's just so much positivity around it and I think there's a lot of people who are fearful of it, which is fine. Change is hard. Change brings fear. Um, do you think that in your opinion, we've talked a lot about the positives. Is there any negatives the AI will have in like AI will have in CS world or, or anything that you think that might take away from what we know S cs today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's why I'm so passionate about diversifying tech. One of the, one of the things you see, um, is you know, the facial recognition, uh, now I think it's, it's a little better, but there was a whole period of time that basically if you had dark skin, didn't even, like it couldn't figure out if you were male or female<laugh>. Like it just like didn't have a way of dealing with it because all of the images that it was trained on were lighter-skinned people, right? So, so there's that. Um, if, if you have short hair versus long hair, you know, and now there are men and women who have both, you know, one or the other, both whatever. And so like that is something that sometimes it can get confused by, right? And so, so and why is that? It's because of the humans that are most likely in tech and doing the coding. You know, didn't think about that, didn't think about how they needed to train the models on these different things. They thought it was fine. You know, same sort of thing with, you know, the types of products that are uh, get funded, right? The reason why we need to diversify, you know, the investor class is because you know what they can imagine, you know, same reason why I was interested in, in entertainment being diversified and, and, and how it was distributed being diversified because we didn't used to always have stories that were as diverse. You know, think about when orange is a new black, when that came out, right? Like that was way different, you know, but that's because those stories hadn't been told before, right? And so, so there's a lot of things that do need to be thought about and modified, but only if we diversify who is in tech will we even think to ask those questions. You know, you also see how if there are countries and governments that um, you know, can use like facial recognition tech, which is part of AI to, you know, keep people separated and in a way and, and, and things like, you know, like, I'm not gonna get into specifics, but we already know from in the news all the things that that can happen with that. And um, and that's, you know, when it's not used for good, right? So when you're looking at how it can be applied to business, sure there are probably ways, you know, we could, we could use it for, for something that isn't um, for good, but that's also then why we should be supporting tech for good, you know, and, and trying to, um, educate ourselves about it as if you're scared of it. If you put your head in the sand, you know, then you would never have had a camera on your phone. You would still just be using a phone and, and I don't even know if you'd have a phone that would text, you know what I mean? Like, like think about it. Like you, you think about what we use our phones for now, you know, even. And so like there's no real point in putting your head in the sand, be educated, participate, contribute. If you don't like how, what direction it's going in, change it, move it towards good.
Speaker 1:We have the narrative at this point to control because we are using the tool. The tool is not using us at the end of the day. We are inputting data, we are inputting our questions into chat G P T or we are recording things that we choose to record. It's not forcing us to, we are choosing to do those things and what we do with all that data and how we ask it to slice and dice it, that is still in our control. So I don't think you're right. We shouldn't put our head in the sand and, and fear it.
Speaker 2:What we should do though is we need to request that. Like the laws like in Europe, the law is about, you know, where they have to ask us if with permission to sell our data. That's a really important law that that impacted the US right? And impacted everybody. Those things are important. So we, that's another way to contribute is to the policy as well.
Speaker 1:Definitely. So what do you think AI enabled customer success will look like in the next one to five years? We talked a lot about what's happening right now, but what do you think the future is
Speaker 2:In the near future? I think we'll just see more companies start to incorporate AI in some fashion and try to differentiate our themselves as we get further along. They will, it'll become table stakes, not just for CS tools, for every tool out there to incorporate it in some way. I think it will make coding easier in some ways because you can say I want code that will let me accomplish the following things and then it can build that, right? Like you won't have to go and and be a coder, you know, to, to build things. So I think in some ways we might see more entrepreneurs, uh, for smaller things like for the more complex tools we will need coders. But that's the thing is that the critical thinking skills, all of us need to start reading more of the business books, more of the um, you know, just sort of fictional books, you know, just more we should be reading more because we need to become critical thinkers because the way that we're going to be seeing all these tools advance, we as humans need to step up and think about how we're taking things to the next level, how we're going to contribute. So I think we'll see a big change in the tools and for that we'll need to step up and, and make ourselves better as well.
Speaker 1:Definitely. I think it'll be an interesting next few years on how AI chat p t everything kind of contributes and even our tools today and how AI is integrated in the tools we use today will look like. But we could keep chatting Jan forever and ever about this. Yes. But I do wanna bring us to the end of the conversation but also challenge you to our quickfire questions where I challenge all my guests to answer the next few questions in a sentence or less. Are you ready? Sure. Great. The first question is, what do you think is next for the CS industry other than chat? G P T? Cuz that's what we talked about.<laugh>,
Speaker 2:I think customer led growth and understanding its relationship to product led growth is, is where we're going next. And um, and it's how it not only transforms Cs, but how it will transform our companies.
Speaker 1:Which SaaS product can you not live without as a CS professional?
Speaker 2:Eh, LinkedIn<laugh>. Yeah,
Speaker 1:I I was about say I was like you, you're out there all the time. I would expect that.<laugh>, the next question I have is, what is your favorite CS learning resource
Speaker 2:Books?
Speaker 1:Anyone in particular that you're reading or one that you wanna call out?
Speaker 2:Well, my favorite right now is Brit Andreatta. She's talking about how neuroscience applies to business and, and so I quote from her a lot right now. Uh, I guess books and, and communities, how we share our ID ideas together and help each other.
Speaker 1:Awesome. And my last question is, who's inspiring you or whom do you think we should have next on this podcast?
Speaker 2:Have you had Sherry Shrek on yet?
Speaker 1:I have not, no.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, oh. And you know, did you have Aja May Ama sole or did you have Mike Lee or did you have um, Ralph Fit Murphy English?
Speaker 1:No, you are listing so many people. I need to talk to<laugh>. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, I have a long list actually. Yeah, no, there's so many people. Oh, and um, Cynthia Silva. Yeah, I can go on for days.
Speaker 1:Okay. I'll have to take you up on all those names. But thank you so much for sharing all of them. I really appreciate it and I really appreciate having you on the podcast as well. If any of our listeners have any other questions or wanna get in touch, what's the best way to reach you? LinkedIn. Awesome. I'll make sure to link you down in this show notes. Thank you so much, Jan, for your time and sharing all your knowledge and your geekiness with us on the topic of ai. I really appreciated it. Thank you for listening to the Customer Success Channel podcast today. We hope you learned something new to take back to your team and your company. If you found value in our podcast, please make sure to give us a positive review and make sure you subscribe to our channel as we release new podcasts every month. Also, if you have any topics that you would like me to discuss in the future or you would like to be a guest on the podcast, please feel free to reach out. All my contact details are in the show notes. Thanks again for listening and tune in next time for more on customer success.