I went to Gainsight's Pulse event. Here's what I've learned

Gainsights' annual industry event, Pulse Europe, happened just this week in Amsterdam. It was two days long and packed with content, where attendees could hear and learn about Gainsights' products, roadmaps, and how they see the world of CS evolving—with AI.

I picked this conference because I wanted to connect with peers, clients, and some old friends, and it was lovely to see so many familiar faces. Arriving on day 1 felt like planning to go on a few blind dates for us - we knew each other from LinkedIn but never met in person, and, for most attendees, it was their first Pulse event.

We all quickly discovered that we face the same challenges in CS: dealing with an increased number of tasks, the difficulty of connecting the dots, and how to demonstrate ROI. Pulse was an event where I deeply connected with many folks and gained a powerful sense of community: here to stay, to help and support.

The best time to work in CS

As many companies still tighten their budgets, Customer Success teams are at the forefront of this change, increasingly held accountable for revenue and driving efficiency. This is a big shift, and it comes with many changes and opportunities.

We are now entering a time when a career in Customer Success has never been so compelling.

As a CSM, you have a unique opportunity to foster strong relationships with your clients and drive significant business growth through contract renewals and expansion.

By adopting a win-win approach, we can transform our interactions and uncover new commercial opportunities. We should stop putting ourselves in those two buckets of farmers and hunters—we are much more than this. Seeing our role through this lens, we can proactively identify ways to add value, ensuring that clients see us as a trusted partner rather than just a vendor, and money will follow.

Bringing a mindset of openness is crucial to walk this path of change.

1. Learn the language of finance and how to communicate the value of the business value, outcomes, and opportunities - be prepared to produce and discuss bottom-line data in a way that leadership is used to.
2. Learn from Sales—Taking a commercial approach to customer relationships and qualifying and closing opportunities for CSMs requires training. Investing in sales training can be beneficial, as can talking to your best salespeople and shadowing their practices.
3. Prepare for questions. If you take on accountability for revenue, you will be challenged when it comes to reporting time. You will be asked about your growth strategy. Prepare your story of success and have a plan—questions are expected and will let you grow.

Human-First AI

Pulse's motto was Human-First AI. This basically means using AI technology to remove blockers, find blindspots, and outsource unwanted work. This allows us to focus more on our connections with humans: clients and colleagues. This will drive trust, and deeper connections will help us thrive commercially.

I quite like this approach. It positions AI as a tool to help make processes more efficient and invites us to think about how we can refocus our attention on what we love as Customer Success folks: building connections.

Revenue Operations as a connective tissue

Often our go-to-market functions operate in a silo. Aligning teams is important for customer success as part of the system.

We can achieve this by having RevOps operate as the connective tissue. They help align customer data, engagement channels, and systems and streamline the customer outcome journey for retention and growth.

They are instrumental in preparing data and connecting their sources so AI can work to its best in forecasting churn and expansion.

New leaders to the front

I listened to a few sessions about leadership at the conference, and all of them mentioned a need for a change in mindset.

As AI progresses in our world, leaders need to be more emotionally intelligent and self-aware than ever before. Having this mindset enables them to facilitate and accelerate this path of change in CS, removing fear and blockers and helping to picture the win-win attitude.

CS Leaders are at the forefront of returning to the executive table with compelling growth stories. Embracing EI, starting to implement AI solutions to achieve quick efficiency wins right now, and embracing GTM system thinking are all key.

AI is a system

It was impressive to see Gainsights' product rage showcasing how AI can help create better email outreach and follow-up meetings and provide a revenue forecasting system.

AI will enable us to build dashboards on first- and third-party data that collect our customers' responses, behaviours, and impressions and, with some machine learning, help us pinpoint the source of issues faster.

We need to think about data as data systems and how we can connect them with AI, and we need help from our RevOps, legal and finance teams to collaborate with us on this journey.

TL;NR

Gainsight's Pulse Europe event in Amsterdam focused on the evolving role of Customer Success (CS) and the integration of AI. With tight budgets, CS teams are increasingly tasked with driving revenue and efficiency, prompting Customer Success Managers to build strong client relationships and adopt a proactive approach. The event emphasized a "Human-First-AI" philosophy, advocating for AI to streamline tasks while enhancing human connections. Leadership discussions highlighted the need for emotional intelligence in adapting to AI changes. Gainsight showcased tools for improving outreach and revenue forecasting, underscoring the importance of data alignment and cross-team collaboration.

Please DM me if you have any questions, or let me know your thoughts on Pulse 2024 below in the comments.