Anika Zubair (00:00.846)
Everyone is talking about AI. AI, AI, AI. The letters A and I are probably the most used letters in 2025. And I know for a fact it is the most used in customer success at the moment. Honestly, I have been talking about AI for years now. I have actually done multiple podcasts already on AI. One last year with

Alex and then one a few years ago with Jan Young. I will make sure to list them, but listen, AI, it's not going anywhere. Everyone is talking about it from LinkedIn posts to leadership meetings to your company wide meetings. Everywhere you turn, it's AI this and AI that, but let's get real for a second. What does it actually mean for you in

customer success and as a customer success professional with your boots on the ground AI is in the inbox it's in QBRs and it's in the middle of a renewal conversation and This episode is going to break that down because AI isn't some future tech reserved for product teams or a data scientist or analyst or anything like that just think of the smartphone that you're probably holding in your hand right now and

Maybe you're even listening to this podcast on your iPhone or Samsung smartphone. 20 years ago, that could have never have been imagined. Holding a little computer in your hands, that was just unheard of. I still remember the first time I got my smartphone and I was like, wow, so much at my fingertips. And it felt like we were moving light years ahead. And that is exactly where we find ourselves right now with AI.

We are living in the era of technology and AI is the latest chapter of this era that we're living through. AI has to be the most powerful tool that you can start using today to reclaim your time and drive revenue and build those stronger relationships with your customers. So today we are going to dive right in to talk about AI and the influence it has on customer success pros in 2025.

Anika Zubair (02:21.497)
So let's dig in. Hello, everyone. I'm your host, Anika Zuber, and welcome to the Customer Success Pro Podcast, your go-to space for real talk, expert advice, and actionable insights in the world of customer success. I'm a CS executive leader, award-winning strategist, CS coach, and customer success fanatic. I help CSMs and CS leaders build the skills and the confidence to become revenue-driving pros and scale world-class CS teams.

So whether you're brand new to CS or a seasoned leader, this podcast is here to support your growth. Because customer success isn't a destination, it's a journey. And I'm here to be your guide and navigate every step of your journey. So join me every Wednesday where you'll get fresh CS tips, tricks, and strategies you can actually use. Some weeks I'll share my own insights and best practices from working in CS over the last 13 years.

And once a month, I'll bring on expert guests to dive into the most relevant and pressing topics in customer success today. So if you're ready to level up, hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you tune in, and let's make your CS journey a little bit easier together.

Anika Zubair (03:44.473)
Right now, most CS pros that I talk to, are drowning in admin work. Heck, I know I am. Honestly, sometimes we spend so much of our day and so much of our week in admin. I mean, like writing customer summaries, prepping slides for QBRs, manually updating notes on your CRM or in the CS platform. And then let's not forget about drafting renewal emails or those emails to try to get a hold of those customers that are ghosting you.

and please don't even get me started on account onboarding plans or success plans. All of this sounding a little bit familiar to you. And just when you think everything feels urgent, you've spent your whole day being busy doing all of this busy work, but did it actually move the needle? Because honestly, that's not actually being strategic. And that's the problem CS pros are having. They are trained to be busy. If you think back on

CS a few years ago, maybe five years ago, actually it was 10 years ago when I was a CSN, and we were trained to be busy. We were trained to do it all, from onboarding calls to success plans to renewal conversations and the QBR deck. We literally had to be the hero. But let's be real, is that really the job you signed up for? Because honestly, being a hero,

That's just not going to be sustainable for you. And honestly, it's just not going to be a strategic advisor that your customer is looking for. And as we are speaking about AI, you didn't sign up to be an AI prompt engineer. Come on, let's be real. That's awesome if you are trying to up your prompt game. But being a CS pro doesn't mean becoming a prompt engineer. You signed up to be a strategic partner to your customer. But here's the hard truth.

don't embrace AI now, you're gonna fall behind compared to the CSMs that are embracing AI today. So let's talk about some of the common mistakes I see from CS pros when it comes to using AI. First of all, I have seen this mistake happen way too many times, but it's waiting for your company to create an AI policy. Now I get it, maybe a year ago, AI was pretty unknown.

Anika Zubair (06:07.352)
A lot of people were worried about the actual data that was going into these large language models and how it was being stored and used and if it was used ethically. I get it. A lot of companies have very strict AI policies. Heck, I know because I actually worked at a regulated bank. So I had to make sure that when we were using AI, it had to be on the side. Heck, I even convinced my CEO to bring in AI as a note taker to help with calls.

But here's the thing, you need to stop waiting for permission from your company to start using AI on the side. Now I'm not telling you to go and put proprietary information into ChatGBT or into Cloud or Gemini if your company forbids customer data to leave their servers. That makes sense, I get that. But there are so many other ways that you can be using AI to really up your CS game.

and it has nothing to do with the customer data. If you can use the customer data, that's great. But what I see happen time and time again, and the mistake that I wanna really call out, is people are waiting for permission to use AI, and that's just not gonna fly. We are halfway through 2025, and AI is here, it's here to stay, it's not going anywhere. So if you are not using AI for some sort of your side tasks or something along the lines to help you in customer success,

You are already behind and you need to start using it. Use the free version, use a paid version, whatever you feel comfortable with, start using it. And then as you start to get more comfortable with using AI, I need you to go and advocate for it internally to your company. It is the future. It is like saying going 10 years down the line and not getting on a Zoom call or using Slack. Those are features that we didn't even have 10, 15 years ago when I was starting in tech.

Heck, Slack didn't even exist then. But we adopted it and we started using that tool. And that is what you have to treat AI like. You have to go to your teens and really showcase how to use AI within the company before the company policy even becomes a thing. If you end up waiting for permission, you are going to be left behind. This is your career. You need to take ownership and you need to feel empowered and enabled to use AI. And that's why I say you definitely need to start using it.

Anika Zubair (08:33.858)
in your own free time and hopefully you can use it for admin tasks or any other tasks that are compliant with your company's AI policy. But please start using it because that is the number one mistake I see happening out there is everyone keeps using the excuse that, my company's policy says we can't use AI. That's a rubbish policy, first of all. But more importantly, that has to change and you have to be the change to see that happen as well.

All right, mistake number two that I see too many times and I talk to way too many CS leaders about is thinking that ChatGBT is only for writing emails. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that is literally the most basic way of using ChatGBT. It is so much more powerful. It can do so much more if you actually utilize it. It can summarize calls, of course. It can build account plans based on customer sentiment.

in a customer call, and it can even create a proactive risk framework if you know how to prompt it correctly. I have even won a customer back after they churned, thanks to my best business analyst that I like to call Ms. GBT, because let's be real, AI is a woman, because it can multitask like no one's business, but I was able to win back a customer by using all of the previous data that I had on this customer, along with a

tactical plan to move forward and help from AI resulted in me winning a customer back because I had a business strategist co-pilot that I like to call MissGBT. Now, if you're not using AI for all of these types of things, that is where you're going to end up falling on your own sword and you're going to end up falling behind as a customer success pro. You have to start using AI way more

than just your note taker and your email writer, because it's so much more powerful than just someone who takes notes for you or writes emails for you. All right, mistake number three that I'm seeing a lot recently is using generic prompts with no context. Now, I get it. AI is new and a lot of us are just not those prompt engineers. And honestly, I don't even consider myself a prompt engineer.

Anika Zubair (10:54.884)
But what I do consider myself is someone that is extremely curious and someone that wants to prompt AI correctly because I know the power behind AI and how much it can unlock for me when I truly use it correctly. But if you are just prompting it to say, summarize this call and write an email with three action steps, my gosh, yawn boring. That is so basic. And yes, that's a good starting point. Now I don't want to totally

say don't do that, that's a great start. But if you aren't using context, if you aren't using tone, or if you aren't telling AI what you need from this email follow up, you are leaving money on the table. What I want you to do instead is I want you to tell it, I need you to write a empathetic and warm email to a customer that has potential churn risk in August 2025. And I want you to use this call summary transcript

to be able to really outline their outcomes and the next steps of using our product so that they can see value. Please also include a checklist and a call to action in this email. Now that is a prompt. That is something that everyone is like, my gosh, how did you come up with that? Guess what? I came up with that in my head right now while recording this podcast because that is how I have trained myself to prompt AI. I give it context.

You cannot just keep giving it copy and paste prompts. I'm sorry to say it's just not gonna work. A prompt has to be about the tone. It has to be about the formatting that you're looking about. It has to give customer insight as to what you're hoping to achieve or the outcomes that you're hoping to get with that customer. If you aren't prompting correctly, AI is never gonna work for you. You basically need to train AI like a team member.

That means giving it the right tone, structure, and customer data if you can. Think about when you first were a leader and you hired your first hire. They didn't know the product. They didn't know the customers. Heck, they probably didn't even know the company culture or anything that they had to do. They all had to be trained on this. That is exactly what you have to do with AI. Treat it like your new team member. Treat it like a brand new CSM that you've hired to be on your team.

Anika Zubair (13:18.49)
How would you train a CSM? That is exactly how you need to start training AI. Now, the biggest mistake I see with AI is if you're using it wrong or if you're under-using it. And then you're wondering why it's not saving you time. I get it. AI is tons of fun. I also love prompting it to make cartoon versions of myself or do my groceries for me. But AI is the future, and it is here right now.

So the biggest mistake I see, honestly, is these prompts not doing it justice. You need to really think about how you are prompting AI. So what should a day look like for the AI-powered CS Pro? Let me walk you through a few real examples from my clients and my own business of how to use AI every single day.

Now, the first way you're going to use AI every single day is through discovery calls. Now, discovery calls are extremely important in customer success. If you've listened to any of my other podcasts, I talk about how important it is to continuously do discovery with your customers. And discovery is something that does not start and stop at any point of a customer journey. Of course, the sales teams are doing it. And I know that we do a lot of discovery in the very early days of customer success.

meaning onboarding, kickoff, the first few months of a customer being live with us. But discovery is something that you should be doing all the time, every month, every quarter, every half year, every year. It's just something that's ongoing. And the best way to use AI is using AI to analyze pre-call notes and then generate tailored discovery questions based on customers' ICP and their goals. Like this is so underutilized.

use a few of their previous call logs, whether it's Gong or Fathom or any other AI note taker that you are using, go take that transcript, put it into AI and prompt AI to say, hey, I am having a call with this customer to talk about upsells, to talk about renewals, to talk about the value that we've been delivering. And I want to make sure that I ask tailored discovery questions to secure a renewal early.

Anika Zubair (15:34.97)
Help me come up with 10 questions to ask this customer. my gosh, this could save up to 30 minutes per meeting when you are prepping discovery questions correctly and when your business analyst, aka ChatGBT, is doing it for you. So this is my favorite way to use AI, but there's so much more. The other way that I really enjoy using AI for is for the dreaded QBR prep.

Listen, you can either love it or hate it when it comes to QBRs, but preparation for any sort of business review with your client is a very heavy lift. Okay. When I was a CSM 10 years ago, I didn't have AI tools to help me prep. We barely even had playbooks or any standard slide decks to help prep. I would spend hours, or if not days, maybe sometimes even weeks preparing for a quarterly business review.

In the world that we live in now, that's just not sustainable as a customer success pro. We have so many things to do, so many customers in our portfolio that spending all those hours a day preparing for a QBR, it's just, it's not a good or strategic use of your time. So I like to use AI to feed in previous call notes, some important CRM fields, any product usage data into a single prompt, and I let AI

generate the agenda, the talking points, and even draft slides for me. If you have the paid version of ChatGBT, it does not use your data for its LLM, but you can also ask ChatGBT to say this is proprietary information and cannot be shared or stored. So if you aren't using a paid version of an AI tool and they are using your data to advance the learning model,

Just know you can prompt it to say this cannot be shared or stored and that should protect the data. So like I said, put in as much data as you can in regards to how the customer sentiment is going, how the calls have been going, what have they been sharing in their success plan, what has been working, what hasn't been working. Put all of that into a prompt and say, I need to now generate 10 slides that have a clear agenda for a business review with my client.

Anika Zubair (17:58.05)
and the outcome of this business review is to show value and increase revenue from this customer. You would be totally surprised at how much ChatGBT will do for you when it comes to QBR prep. That could be a minimum of two hours saved. And I'm saying minimal. Like, let's be real, that's probably a week's worth of stress saved. So I love using ChatGBT or AI to help prep for these

heavy, intensive meetings that we had as CS pros. All right, the next thing that I love using AI for is renewal forecasting. Now, I use ChatGBT to create templates that score renewals based on engagement, sentiment, and usage trends. I love this because when I first became a leader, predicting or forecasting in CS was like hoping to win the lottery. It really was unlikely.

that we got future forecasts right. Honestly, if I look back early in my CS career and my first leadership role, my forecasts were just everywhere. It was a hope and a prayer. And let's just say now with AI, we don't have to hope and pray anymore. You can start putting in data into the model and ask AI to forecast trends of exactly what your customers are or are not going to do. So who's likely to renew and who's likely to churn?

you now have a proactive RISC dashboard with zero spreadsheets. Now listen, I love a good spreadsheet, but how much time have we wasted in spreadsheets trying to build a forecast model in customer success? And let me just tell you, with AI, it is second. Honestly, the data analysis that AI can do, it is wild to me. Honestly, I love it. I love seeing it. Every single time I prompt it and I put in a prompt to analyze or

create a dashboard or to build a spreadsheet, I am blown away. And I absolutely love how we can have a risk dashboard or a renewals dashboard in a matter of minutes. It is so, powerful. Now, another way that I see AI use pretty commonly, and if you're not already doing this, this might be an easy way for you to get started with AI, but it's customer email follow ups.

Anika Zubair (20:17.194)
So instead of manually writing every recap to every call, AI can do it in 20 seconds, honestly. You will have to tweak, maybe personalize it a little bit based on your own touch and what you want to say, but it is so quick. We can now jump off a call and 30 seconds later, send a follow-up email to our customer. It is so easy. And that's at least another 10, 15 minutes back, if not up to an hour back of time for you.

Now, by the end of the week, you've saved probably 10 plus hours using AI in all the different ways that I've just listed out in this podcast. That's 10 hours to work on growth playbooks, expansion opportunities, or even stakeholder mapping for all your accounts. Now imagine doing that every week for a month. That's 40 hours. Honestly, that's a whole working week that you are saving across a month.

And this is why I say AI is so underutilized because it is something that can save us from being those busy bees CSMs. We need to be those strategic advisors and AI is what's gonna get us there. Okay, I'm gonna take a little break from the podcast because I'm about to share something very, very exciting. If you're loving this episode, then I have something just for you. In fact, you are the

very first person to hear about it. I have just launched a brand new guide called Train AI to be your revenue generating customer success co-pilot. This is the guide I wish I had when I started learning how to use AI in my CS rule. It includes step-by-step plans on how to actually train AI to help give you clear and concise answers.

This guide will help you for discovery calls, quarterly business reviews, renewal identification, stakeholder management, and so much more. This is going to be your secret weapon for dealing with customers and scaling your efforts with clarity and ease. Have you ever put a prompt into AI and got a generic response? Or maybe you have this great prompt you used, but then you went back and tried it again, but AI did not give you the same results.

Anika Zubair (22:37.94)
This is probably because you did not train your AI tool to understand your use case, who you are, your tone, and what you need it for. And that's exactly what this guide is going to do. It will help you build the foundations to train ChatGBT or any AI tool to align with your role as a CS Pro and your company. This guide is going to make ChatGBT your biggest ally and your best co-pilot.

And here's the best part. I haven't even posted about this on LinkedIn and I haven't even shared it with my newsletter subscribers. You, as my loyal podcast listeners, are going to be the very first people to get your hands on it. And because I appreciate you so much, I'm going to give you a 50 % off discount for this guide. All you have to do is use the code PODCAST50. So go to thecustomersuccesspro.com

forward slash resources and use the code podcast 50. That's podcast five zero. Just go to the customer success pro dot com forward slash resources and use the code podcast 50 and grab your AI guide today. Remember to use the code and know that this code is only going to last for a few weeks.

Trust me, your future self will thank you for downloading this guide and training AI to be your revenue success co-pilot. Now, let's get back to our episode. Okay, let me give you a metaphor on AI. Because I think it's so much easier to understand difficult tech things when I break it into simple terms that you and I probably encounter every single day. So I want you to imagine you're running a marathon.

But instead of running in sneakers or trainers, you're actually wearing flip-flops. Sure, you'll get there eventually. You'll finish the marathon, but it's going to be super painful. It's going to be inefficient, and you're going to be super exhausted by the end of it. AI is your pair of running shoes. It doesn't run the race for you, but it makes you faster, more efficient, and way more likely to win or beat your personal record in running.

Anika Zubair (25:02.804)
The question is, are you gonna keep running in those flip-flops while everyone else is sprinting past you in the newest running shoes? Or are you going to train your co-pilot and run smarter? All right, I love solo episodes because I love challenging you. And at this point of the podcast episode, I'm gonna dive into your weekly challenge. And I want you to take one task you're doing this week.

Something you repeat every week. It can be super simple. Don't overcomplicate it, but think of a task that you do every single week, multiple times a day. Maybe it's QBR prep. Maybe it's summarizing call notes into your CRM. Or maybe it's customer communications like emails. And I want you to try to use AI to complete it. Use ChatGBT, Claw, Gemini, whatever you prefer. If you don't know where to start, grab one of the prompts from my guide and plug it in.

but your job this week is simple. I want you to save at least 30 minutes by using AI. Then use that time to work on something more strategic, like book a value conversation with a customer or map out expansion goals. Do something that grows your customer's business and yours. Or maybe, just maybe, with that extra 30 minutes, take your lunch break that you keep skipping all week.

because you're doing call prep. I don't care what you use AI for, I just wanna save you some time. So let's quickly recap all the things that we talked about in today's podcast. First of all, we covered that AI isn't just for tech, coders, or analyst teams. It's for you, the customer success pro. We also talked about how most CS pros are wasting their time doing manual work that AI can handle.

I then jumped in to the real mistakes that we're making every single day when it comes to using AI, like waiting too long to use it or actually using it completely incorrectly. I then covered how important it is to use AI in a number of different ways that can save you up to 10 hours a week, that can free you up to drive real revenue and value and be more strategic. Now,

Anika Zubair (27:24.926)
I just want to remind you that your job isn't being replaced. It's being elevated. The AI powered CS Pro is already here and now it's your turn to make a move. If you're ready to train your AI into a co-pilot that will help you generate six figure revenue as a CSM, go and download my guide now. All you have to do is go to thecustomersuccesspro.com

and don't forget to use the code for 50 % off, which is Podcast 50. Thanks again for listening in to this week's episode and I'll see you next week for our next episode on customer success. Thanks for tuning in to the Customer Success Pro Podcast. I hope you picked up something valuable to take back to your team.

If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to me if you took just 10 seconds to leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more CS pros like yourself discover the show. And creating new episodes takes a lot of work. So leaving a nice review keeps me motivated to keep creating. And don't forget to hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcast episodes. I drop a new episode every Wednesday packed with practical tips.

And if you've got a topic you'd love for me to cover or want to be a guest on my show, send me a message. All the details are in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. And hey, if this episode helped you, share it with a fellow CSM or CS leader. Remember sharing is caring. Cheers to your CS journey and I'll catch you next week for our next episode.