Adopting new solutions involves more than sitting through a few training modules—and this is particularly true for Customer Success (CS). In fact, much of the work to make the switch successful happens before companies even sign a contract. CS teams need to evaluate their needs, prepare their employees, and figure out their goals once the new platform is adopted.
Integrating AI into your tech stack is no different. The nuances and sheer power of AI means that teams often need to do more preparation to ensure they’re ready to make the change. How and why your company wants to use AI will affect how diligently you need to prepare, but there are a few universal strategies for making sure your team can hit the ground running.
Here are the most important skills and trainings to start with to get the most out of your AI tools for CS teams:
1. Start With AI Literacy
Unlike other innovations, especially in the SaaS space, most of us had an idea about what AI was and what it might do before it became a reality. We’d seen movies or read books about what might happen when computers take over our jobs. Whether or not those fears were based in fact, people still feel them.
As a first step to prepare your CS teams for AI tools, start with what it is, how it will help them, and, maybe most importantly, what it won’t do. AI tools, whether they’re generative AI tools or AI agents, will get more powerful the more your organization uses them. If CS teams are slow to adopt a given AI tool, or not educated enough about how they should use it, you won’t see an ROI on your investment.
Give employees an overview of how AI will fit into their current playbooks. Explain the best ways to train an AI model to work for the outcomes that are tied to your business goals. Teach them how to ask and refine their queries to get the best insights possible. Starting with general training aimed at improving AI literacy will increase buy-in and customer success.
2. Improve Data Hygiene
The value of AI insights ties directly to the data hygiene of your organization. Data organization doesn’t need to be perfect. However, the best way to ensure long-term success and sustainability is to implement best practices for keeping data clean, consistent, and accurate. Use the months before investing in AI tools to create a system for tracking, organizing, and sharing data so it is second nature by the time you’re officially onboarded.
This is also a great time to consolidate performance metrics your entire organization tracks. Ideally, the data you track can be used across functions and tie directly to various business goals. There will be unique data for each individual team, but the more data that can be applied universally, across the customer journey, the better.
3. Train for Decision-Making
One of the major benefits of AI is how the tools can make decisions and automate processes for your CS team. Instead of being bogged down by tedious tasks, CS teams can let AI take the reins and create the best customer experience while they focus on more fulfilling work. Showing Customer Success Managers (CSMs) how AI can help them make decisions quickly is a critical way to garner favor early in the AI adoption process.
Set aside time to hear from CSMs about what processes they’d most love automated. Ask them how they make their strategic decisions and how they would do it differently if they could. Check their answers against the business goals, and the engagements that customers want most. With all that information, leadership will be able to create a custom roadmap for how your team will use AI. Managing expectations (and excitement) is the key to success.
4. Cultivate Creativity for Innovation
Despite knowing about AI for decades at this point, in the business world, we are only at the beginning. In the next few years, the technology will grow and evolve to add value in ways we may not even know yet. As such, training CS teams to think of AI as a creativity tool is a way to set your company up for success in the future.
This doesn’t mean relying on AI to do creative work. But training AI to think of new strategies to engage customers could bring answers your teams may not have thought about otherwise. Encourage CS teams to think of ways to use AI to collaborate with outside teams, or even your larger community. AI platforms may not have the capabilities just yet, but the practice of creatively implementing AI tools will pay off in the near future.
5. Tie Processes to Business Goals
Most of all, tie all the work your team does with AI to your larger business goals. CS teams are particularly pressed by leadership to prove that they are more than a cost center. If AI can automatically update the larger team on the ways CS is adding value, converting upsells, and reducing churn, they will face much less pushback.
Identify the business goals that executives are most focused on, and figure out how to tie AI strategies to those metrics, specifically. Work with outside teams on how CSMs can collaborate to move the needle on their KPIs. Ensure that if there is a value your CS team is adding, it is accounted for and shared broadly.
Get Started With Staircase AI
Now is the time to invest in AI. With Staircase AI, your CS team can run more efficiently and help your company achieve its biggest goals. Contact us today to learn more.
