![Podcast cover for "[Un]Churned," hosted by CS Leader Josh Schachter, featuring two men against a dark background with blue and pink vertical lines and the Gainsight Podcast Network logo.](data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB2aWV3Qm94PSIwIDAgMTIwMCA2NzUiIHdpZHRoPSIxMjAwIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjY3NSIgeG1sbnM9Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cudzMub3JnLzIwMDAvc3ZnIj48L3N2Zz4=)
The traditional Customer Success (CS) model was built for a different era of software companies.
The shift to usage-based pricing, the rise of non-technical users, and the rapid expansion of AI tools are forcing CS leaders to rethink the fundamentals: who owns what, how teams are structured, and what “delivering value” actually means now.
Replit CRO Ghazi Masood is building post-sales from scratch at one of the fastest-growing companies in the AI space, going from $2M to $150M in revenue in under a year, with a target of $1B by year’s end. On a recent episode of [Un]Churned, he shared exactly how he’s doing it. Here are five lessons CS leaders can take from his playbook.
TL;DR: As AI reshapes go-to-market, the traditional CSM model that’s segmented by function, built for seat-based pricing, and focused on reactive account management is being replaced. The new model consolidates post-sales ownership, pairs relationship managers with technical depth, and requires CS teams to continuously bring new use cases to customers rather than wait for renewal conversations.
1. Should CSMs own onboarding, retention, and expansion, or should one role cover all three?
Most CS orgs divide post-sales work across CSMs, renewal managers, and expansion AEs. Ghazi collapsed those into a single role he calls a “product advocate.” This person is responsible for onboarding, retention, and expansion.
His logic is that in a usage-based model, the lines between those motions blur. A customer who isn’t getting value won’t renew. A customer who is getting value will expand naturally. Splitting those responsibilities across three roles creates handoff risk and dilutes accountability.
The Takeaway: Audit where handoffs are happening in your post-sales motion. If a customer touches three different people between onboarding and renewal, ask whether that’s serving the customer or your org chart.
2. Do post-sales teams need dedicated technical resources to drive adoption?
Product advocates at Replit don’t work alone. Each is paired with a field engineer who covers technical depth both pre- and post-sale. The engineer handles the “how do I build this” questions, while the advocate handles the relationship, the business context, and the commercial outcome.
This pairing matters especially when your user base is non-technical. Ghazi’s team serves knowledge workers like finance analysts, HR directors, and RevOps managers, who aren’t coding experts and need enablement beyond basic support. A relationship owner without technical backup can only go so far.
The Takeaway: If your CS team is expected to drive adoption with non-technical users, make sure they have a technical resource they can pull in quickly. Whether that’s a shared sales engineer pool, a solutions consultant, or embedded field engineering, the pairing matters.
3. How do you scale a CS team without losing consistency or duplicating effort?
One of the most practical things Ghazi’s team built is a GTM catalog library. This shared repository of assets, tools, and use cases is organized by team function. Before anyone builds something new, they check the catalog. If it exists, they use it. If it doesn’t, they build it and add it.
When everyone on a growing team can build their own tools, you could easily end up with four versions of the same dashboard. Replit’s catalog creates visibility and prevents duplicated efforts.
For CS leaders, the parallel is a use case playbook by customer segment or persona. If your product advocates are responsible for continuously surfacing new value, they need a library of “what to bring next” organized by role, industry, or maturity stage.
The Takeaway: Prioritize building a living use-case library. It shortens ramp time, creates consistency, and gives your team something concrete to bring to every customer conversation.
4. How does using your own product make your CS team more effective?
RevOps vibe-coded their own forecasting tool using the Replit platform. It’s a key part of their daily work and has changed the way they speak to customers about their own product.
When a product advocate says, “We built our own account health dashboard on this platform last week,” it’s a strong proof point. Working in their own product also keeps the Replit team up to date on what it can do, which is important given how quickly Replit’s platform changes.
CS teams that regularly use their own product from the customer’s seat catch things that dashboards don’t surface. They find the friction points before customers do and can discover use cases the product team hasn’t documented yet. Best of all, when they’re in front of a customer, they’re drawing on experience rather than talking points.
The Takeaway: Build a habit of getting into your product outside of customer-facing moments. That might mean running your own team workflows through it, stress-testing new features before they roll out, or setting aside time to explore the product the way a new user would. The teams that know the product best are the ones that never stopped being curious about it.
5. What should CS leaders prioritize when hiring for an AI-first team?
When Ghazi was asked what makes a candidate stand out, his answer wasn’t tenure or a polished track record. It was passion for the product and the ability to communicate the “art of the possible” to a customer.
In a world where most software is easy to demo, genuine product enthusiasm is a differentiator. A CS professional who is excited about what their product and AI capabilities enable, and can make a customer feel that possibility, will outperform someone running the renewal playbook on autopilot.
This is especially relevant as CS teams are asked to help customers navigate AI adoption. That requires curiosity, conviction, and the ability to meet customers where they are. You can teach the process. It’s the passion that’s harder to teach.
The Takeaway: Revisit your hiring criteria. If your interview process is still weighted toward years of experience and industry knowledge, consider adding a product scenario: ask candidates to walk you through what they’d go build first, and why. The answer will tell you a lot.
Go Deeper With [Un]Churned
Ghazi Masood joined Josh Schachter on the [Un]Churned podcast to discuss how he’s building Replit’s GTM organization for the AI era. The conversation covers usage-based pricing strategy, post-sales structure for non-technical users, enterprise security and governance, and his take on competitive threats from Cursor and Claude Code.
Listen to “Episode 179. Why Replit’s CRO is Hiring 200 GTM People in 12 Months ft. Ghazi Masood” on your favorite podcast platform, or watch the full conversation here. Subscribe to the Unchurned Substack for weekly insights on how CS leaders are navigating the AI era and reimagining retention.
