Last week, I attended the fourth annual ChurnZero conference, ZERO-IN (formerly Big RYG), in Washington, DC, and the energy and inspiration are still resonating. For those unfamiliar, ChurnZero is a customer success (CS) platform, technology designed to allow CS teams to understand customer behavior, predict their needs, and proactively offer solutions that deliver customer value and lead to retention, growth, and advocacy. The conference brings together CS industry leaders and executives to network, share, and evolve CS strategies and best practices. With a mix of keynotes, workshops, and breakout sessions, it’s a valuable resource for anyone involved, directly or indirectly, in customer success.

AI, Scaling Through Digital, And Customer Success ROI Are In The Crosshairs

This was my second time attending, and I remain impressed at the intentionality of the agenda as well as the list of speakers. There were founders, executives, and notable CS leaders sharing practical — and actionable — advice along with their personal experiences, aimed at setting CS professionals up for long-term success. Here are three key topics I zeroed in on:

  • Inspire with AI. Multiple sessions covered how CS, CX, and revenue leaders should move beyond AI use cases that lack value and instead use AI to drive strategy, scaling the impact across their existing customer base. A few other sessions discussed how to determine the right balance between AI efficiency and how to maintain a human touch in customer interactions. This is all timely and super-relevant. Over the next few years, CS professionals must be willing to examine how customer engagement will evolve, and how with more advanced AI capabilities they’ll need to adjust their strategy to be able to respond to customer needs appropriately.
  • Innovate through digital. These sessions were standing room only, and that’s no surprise given how CS leaders have been tasked to “do more with less” and the fact that customers both want and expect digital engagement. Sessions focused on important topics such as assessing your digital CS maturity to understand where there are gaps, benchmarking your digital CS program against industry standards, and learning steps to improve. Another session highlighted how to harness both digital and human approaches to ensure harmony between the two, providing customer success managers with more time for more strategic and less repetitive work to deliver better results. If you’re a CS leader and need to reduce your cost to serve and increase internal efficiency gains, this should be a priority on your agenda.
  • Influence the C-suite. Speakers emphasized that CS leaders must influence leadership and investors with a compelling story by leveraging customer insights to highlight the CS team’s achievements and future needs, as well as to demonstrate how CS protects existing revenue. We also heard from multiple executives that investors want to hear more about the customer. As Bill Wagner, former president and CEO of LogMeIn and current board member of ChurnZero, explained, “Boards love hearing customer insights, and they’re not hearing them enough.” These sessions were insightful, but it does beg the question of why CS still needs to prove its legitimacy and earn a seat at the executive table.

Assess The State Of Your Customer Success Strategy

2025 will be a pivotal year for CS, and what better time than planning season to revisit your CS strategy and ensure that it is sound? CS leaders should ask and answer key questions about team purpose, strategic alignment, and measuring progress against these. They should also review their technology/data readiness, advance customer journey/lifecycle management practices, and improve budget/capacity planning.

Forrester can help. Clients can access our Customer Success Strategy Assessment (subscription required) and score themselves against six key strategic areas. In addition, this assessment can help you outline a plan to improve your CS capabilities and deliver a strategy that will save you time, money, frustration, or perhaps a bit of all three — so take it today and endeavor to make your CS strategy more impactful.