As a member of the leadership team, Spencer is responsible for Sublime Security’s post-sales customer journey. His career has been committed to fostering deep customer partnerships by hiring, coaching, and mentoring high-performance individuals.
Here is Spencer sharing insights, ideas, and perspectives from his journey in CS.
That CSMs can't or aren't technical.
I’d argue that the very best CSMs, especially those aiming for more strategic or principal levels, really need to be technical. Having the ability to pick up on the fundamental technical problems that customers experience, articulate those problems, and then reach a solution – while bringing in the right technical SMEs, at the right time – is key.
This is something that is often missed in many organizations.
I've always been CS-adjacent for much of my career. I cut my teeth in solutions architecture and professional services. What drew me to CS is my love for working with customers. It's fun consulting, understanding their problems, working through those problems together, and finding those eureka moments.
I excel at joining all of the aspects that come with driving customer satisfaction and naturally grew into a leadership role.
Our investment in CS is driven by our commitment to customer satisfaction, historically measured by net dollar retention. While it may not be about acquiring new sales or new business, it's still a sales-oriented metric. This is what drives value and what senior leadership demands from the organization.
I agree with many experts in the field that AI isn't at a point where it can replace CS teams – at least not yet.
However, it can certainly make CSMs more effective. AI can help them focus on more strategic tasks rather than mundane admin work. For instance, automating call notes and interaction updates will free up time for CSMs to concentrate on outcomes that matter.
I think it's a bit early to tell how technology will shape this. We’re still figuring out the best use cases for AI. Many businesses are trying to find that "killer" enterprise use case.
There will be innovations and job opportunities created by this wave of AI – it is an exciting time to be in tech.
For me, a lot of it is about finding the perfect intersection between Customer Success and AI. We're looking for practical enterprise applications that make sense and enhance efficiency without losing the human touch in interactions.
We're exploring force multipliers that can make our team more effective, allowing them to do more within their current roles.
Ironically, AI could make things more human-centric. By automating routine tasks, we might end up with more opportunities for meaningful human interaction.
Trying to use AI to completely replace human responsibility, to me, is a fool's errand. I wouldn’t want to be a customer of a company that tries to deploy such a strategy for Customer Success.
