2026 Creative Customer Success Leaders Award

Customer Success continues to evolve at remarkable speed, with AI, automation, and creative program design reshaping how teams deliver value. This year, to ensure the cleanest and most unbiased process yet, every submission was judged anonymously, without names, companies, or roles visible to the reviewers. Each story was evaluated four separate times across five criteria: Creativity and Originality, Customer Impact, Strategic Value and Approach, Business Results and Measurable Outcomes, and Personal Input.

From this process emerged 25 standout leaders, chosen purely on the strength of their ideas and the impact they delivered. These are the individuals whose creativity, strategy, and AI-powered innovation made a measurable difference in 2025 and set the tone for where Customer Success is heading next in 2026.

We are proud to present The 2026 Creative Customer Success Leaders Award, a celebration of the people redefining what customer-led impact looks like.

⭐️ Nate Alcorn | ZoomInfo

Transforming SMB Onboarding with the ZoomInfo Journey Portal

Nate Alcorn is the Manager of CX Operations at ZoomInfo, where he leads and collaborates on the design and evolution of the onboarding operations and digital experience frameworks that support customers at scale. Nate began his ZoomInfo career as a Customer Onboarding Manager, grounding his work in direct customer experience before moving into dedicated operations for onboarding and later into a broader CX Operations role. What began as a team of one has now grown into a dedicated CX Ops function, where Nate is grateful to work alongside talented colleagues who elevate and advance the work every day.

Nate partners closely with an exceptional senior leadership team whose clarity, support, and customer-first vision make transformative work possible. He also works hand-in-hand with Product, RevOps, Business Technology, Customer Marketing, and his teammates across CX Ops - all of whom share a commitment to building experiences that serve both ZoomInfo customers and the internal teams who depend on operational tools and systems to deliver them.

His work focuses on designing programs and processes that are scalable while staying human: automation where it accelerates value, and personal touch where it matters most. Nate led the strategy and cross-functional launch of ZoomInfo’s Digital Touch onboarding model and the ZoomInfo Journey Portal - initiatives that reflect CX’s belief in being customer-first not only for the organizations we serve, but equally for the internal users and partners who rely on the systems we build. Nate is based in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The challenge

ZoomInfo’s 90-day onboarding framework had been a reliable, high-quality model across all customer segments. As the company scaled, new patterns emerged in the data. SMB customers with simple, fast-moving use cases were not gaining additional value from extended, human-managed journeys. They needed faster access to guidance, clearer steps at key moments, and onboarding that adjusted to their goals. At the same time, the team was supporting onboarding volumes in the tens of thousands each year. Nate Alcorn recognized that the framework itself remained strong, but its down-market expression needed to evolve to match customer expectations and improve operational efficiency. The challenge was to modernize the experience without lowering the quality bar.

The creative solution

Nate led the design of Digital Touch, an onboarding model delivered through the ZoomInfo Journey Portal powered by EverAfter. He rebuilt manual steps into a dynamic, self-guided journey that adapts to each customer’s context. The solution included:

• Personalized onboarding plans driven by product mix, ACV, and user behavior.
• Automated milestone logic, status updates, and real-time sync with Salesforce.
• In-product prompts through Pendo that guide customers at the moment of need.
• Clear visibility into progress, enabling customers to move at their own pace.
• Human expertise reserved for strategic moments where it creates meaningful lift.

This architecture moved ZoomInfo from a high-touch model to a scalable digital journey that still feels structured and supported.

The Outcomes

The first 30 days delivered measurable results:

• 215 customers onboarded through Digital Touch, raising its share of new onboarding to 27% from 10–12%.
• Nearly 50% of customers engaged on day one, with 30% moving past the Kickoff milestone.
• Time to Kickoff decreased from days to hours.
• 250 onboarding-manager hours were redirected to complex enterprise accounts.
• Early customer behavior showed strong completion of technical milestones and consistent momentum across stages.

The program’s success led to the creation of a dedicated CX Digital Program Manager role to scale Nate’s vision across future onboarding segments.

⭐️ Tara Myles & Bernardo Chabert | Zendesk

Accelerating AI Adoption: How Zendesk Turned Complexity into Opportunity

The challenge

As Zendesk rapidly expanded its AI capabilities, Tara Myles and Bernardo recognized a growing gap. Customers were not adopting the new AI-driven features at the pace or depth the team expected, despite their strong potential for ROI and impact. The challenge was not a lack of value, but a barrier of knowledge, confidence, and resources. Tara and Bernardo saw a critical opportunity. If customers could better understand, evaluate, and integrate these AI solutions, they would unlock immediate operational gains and long-term strategic advantage. The initiative needed to elevate customer readiness, empower CSMs with a structured approach, and create a repeatable model that would improve adoption across Zendesk’s broader product suite.

The creative solution

They built a comprehensive adoption framework that combined segmentation, maturity modeling, assessment, and enablement. Key components included:

• Mapping AI features into cohorts based on vertical, operational priorities, and expected value.
• Defining five levels of adoption maturity from Basic to Expert to set clear customer pathways.
• Creating flexible assessments that CSMs could apply across all engagement models.
• Developing the Adoption Maturity Rolodex, a curated library of templates, content modules, and playbooks tailored to customer needs.
• Enabling CSMs through training, mentorship, office hours, and ongoing coaching.
• Integrating programmatic customer signals to help CSMs identify when customers are primed for adoption.
• Advancing future innovation through a GPT-powered assistant designed to automate assessments and generate tailored adoption plans.

Their work established a repeatable and scalable framework that equips teams and customers to activate AI value with confidence.

The Outcomes

Early impact demonstrated the strength of the framework:

• Up to 65% reduction in manual workload for participating customers.
• Up to 85% improvement in agent efficiency.
• Strong customer feedback citing clarity, confidence, and increased value realization.
• Greater CSM confidence and more strategic, consultative customer engagements.

Collectively, these outcomes show how Tara and Bernardo transformed AI adoption into a structured, scalable motion that drives lasting value for Zendesk and its customers.

⭐️ Sara Arecco | Antavo Ltd

Building a Scalable Customer Hub that Boosts Engagement and Efficiency

Sara is a Customer Success leader driving retention, advocacy, and meaningful customer impact. Blending creativity with strategic execution, she builds scalable programs and fosters authentic, human-first relationships that unlock long-term growth. She’s passionate about empowering teams and customers to innovate, collaborate, and succeed together.

The challenge

Antavo’s customers relied on multiple sources to find documentation, resources, and meeting materials, which created friction and slowed progress. As customer needs grew and engagements became more complex, Sara Arecco recognized that the team needed a centralized, scalable way to share information and guide customers through key activities. The challenge was to reduce repetitive communication, increase clarity, and provide a structured experience that motivated customers to take action, while still preserving a personalized and high-touch feel. The solution had to elevate customer education without adding operational burden to the CS team.

The creative solution

Sara led the implementation of EverAfter as a unified customer hub that consolidates information, tracks shared tasks, and supports recurring strategic conversations. By integrating the hub with HubSpot, the team ensured the experience remained both dynamic and easy to maintain. The solution included:

• A branded landing page with sub-pages organized by customer needs and topics.
• Easy-access links to key resources such as platform entry points, contract details, and account tools.
• Dedicated sections for product updates, company news, CSM-led discussions, presentations, EBRs, and follow-up tasks.
• A structured library of FAQs and educational articles, including phase-specific content like renewal preparation.
• Automated updates fed from HubSpot to ensure information remained accurate and scalable.

Sara’s design created a single, clear destination that improved navigation, reduced confusion, and empowered customers and CSMs alike.

The Outcomes

The results demonstrate strong and immediate impact:

• Customer sentiment improved by 10% year over year.
• Academy users increased by 26% year over year.
• Customer questions asking where to find information decreased by 100%.
• 22% of customers explicitly praised the new platform and its ease of use.
• Internal feedback averaged 7.7 out of 10, with every team member reporting positive improvements in efficiency and customer interactions.

This initiative strengthened alignment between Antavo and its customers, reduced repetitive communication, increased visibility, and established a scalable foundation for future growth under Sara’s leadership.

⭐️ Sneha Iyer | Observe.AI

First-Mile Intelligence: Accelerating Customer Value by 40%

Sneha Iyer leads the Customer Value and Analytics function at Observe.AI, where she builds scalable, insight-driven programs that transform onboarding, product adoption, CSM engagement, and executive alignment into measurable growth. Her work sits at the intersection of customer strategy, advanced analytics, and commercial outcomes—turning statistical modeling and predictive insights into clear, actionable ROI narratives. With a proven track record of helping GTM teams operationalize customer value and drive multi-million-dollar expansions, Sneha is known for turning complexity into clarity and empowering organizations to lead smarter, more strategic customer conversations.

The challenge

Observe.AI’s onboarding, Customer Success, and Business Value teams worked hard to deliver insights to more than 350 enterprise customers, yet Sneha Iyer began noticing a recurring pattern. Customers completed technical implementation, moved into value discussions, and then discovered that critical data needed for ROI measurement was missing or inconsistent. The root issue was not customer intent or product capability. It was a fragmented first mile. Teams operated in silos, using templates that varied by person, with no shared system of intelligence to guide discovery or ensure data readiness. This created inconsistent outcomes, slow time-to-value, and repeated reinvention across teams. Sneha recognized an opportunity to transform the first mile from a reactive checklist into a unified, intelligence-driven process that empowered every function to operate from the same foundation.

The creative solution

Sneha designed and launched the First-Mile Intelligence Platform, a guided workflow that connects people, process, and data to ensure customers are set up for measurable success. Key components include:

• Customer setup and automated research briefs that consolidate context from contracts, prior engagements, and similar customers.
• A discovery and data readiness checklist mapping each KPI to the exact data attributes required to measure it.
• Workflow triggers that assign tasks to the right teams when gaps are identified.
• An AI enrichment marketplace that surfaces proven enrichments and attributes based on industry patterns.
• A value map and time-to-value projection that predicts how quickly outcomes can be measured based on data completeness.

The platform blended structure with flexibility, acting as a digital co-pilot during discovery and enabling CSMs to lead more consultative, industry-informed conversations.

The Outcomes

The impact was significant across customer value, operational efficiency, and internal alignment:

• 70% reduction in discovery and data-prep time.
• Reduction from 16–20 weeks to 8–12 weeks from implementation to insight.
• 40% faster time-to-value for customers post-implementation.
• Internal adoption grew from under 20% to more than 70%, covering 80% of the customer base.
• Ramp time for new CS hires decreased from three months to six weeks.

Beyond metrics, the initiative created a cultural shift. CSMs now lead with confidence, guiding customers toward realistic, data-ready KPIs and building credibility early. Onboarding, CS, and value consulting teams now operate from a shared understanding of data readiness, creating consistent outcomes and accelerating measurable ROI. Sneha’s First-Mile Intelligence Platform transformed an operational gap into a scalable, strategic motion that strengthened the entire post-sale journey.

⭐️ Austin Henline | Okta

Scaling Personalization and Growth with Okta’s Digital Success Plans

Austin Henline is a Digital Growth Manager at Okta, where he manages the Quarterly Value Snapshot program and the self-service experience for thousands of customers. Prior to his time at Okta, he was in Marketing at LinkedIn where he optimized global email campaigns. Outside of work, Austin enjoys spending time with his wife and two daughters, plays golf and tennis, and is growing a YouTube channel (20k subs) focused on a personal hobby of his called Magic the Gathering.

The challenge

Okta observed declining renewal rates across several regions, particularly among digitally covered accounts. The team lacked a scalable way to deliver personalized recommendations aligned to each customer’s goals, maturity level, and product usage. Austin Henline recognized that improving digital guidance and tailoring it to real customer behavior would be essential to strengthening adoption, maturity, and long-term retention. The opportunity was to create a consistent, data-driven success motion that could scale globally while still feeling relevant to each customer’s identity journey.

The creative solution

Austin led the creation of Okta’s digital success plan, delivered through EverAfter and integrated into the Okta Help Center. By connecting real-time adoption data with guided workflows, the team developed a personalized experience that helps customers understand their identity maturity and take clear steps to advance it. The solution included:

• A Customer Success Hub entry point where users can access their personalized guidance.
• A goal-capture flow that prompts customers to share their business objectives.
• Automated success plans showing the customer’s current maturity stage and tailored checklists for improvement.
• Recommendations linked to descriptions, Help Center articles, Okta Learning videos, and deep links into the Admin console.
• Pendo walkthroughs that guide customers through completing recommended actions.
• Real-time data and benchmarking available inside each success plan.
• A structured space for educational resources and cross-functional contributions.

The result is a scalable program that brings personalization and clarity to every digitally managed customer.

The Outcomes

The digital success plans established a strong foundation for future hyper-personalized programs and delivered meaningful early impact:

• 8,600 customer goals captured for ongoing program personalization.
• Engaged customers increased key product adoption by an average of 18 percentage points.
• Success Hub traffic grew 34% year over year.
• 200+ Okta employees enabled with EverAfter to enrich customer conversations.
• More than 10,000 recommended actions completed by customers since launch.

Austin’s work created a repeatable, data-backed success motion that supports renewal, deepens adoption, and scales Okta’s identity maturity guidance to thousands of customers.

⭐️ David Jessup | Salesloft

AI-Powered Consistency and Coaching at Scale

David Jessup is a distinguished Customer Success Leader, currently serving as Senior Manager of Dedicated Success at Salesloft. With over a decade of experience dedicated to the CS discipline and leadership experience across industry innovators like Box, Sprinklr, and Akeneo, David specializes in scaling advanced retention models, integrating data science into customer health scoring, and delivering high-performance coaching. His leadership is characterized by a deep commitment to creative problem-solving, driving measurable results by transforming complex customer challenges into proprietary success methodologies and empowering his team with clarity, ownership, and the tools necessary to navigate the broad spectrum of modern Customer Success.

The challenge

Salesloft’s Customer Success team aimed to deliver consistently high-quality strategic calls such as Monthly Syncs and QBRs. However, call evaluation relied heavily on subjective, manual reviews by managers. This created variability in coaching, limited visibility into skill gaps, and made it difficult to drive consistent performance across the CSM organization. With no objective scoring mechanism or structured rubric, critical interactions varied significantly from one CSM to another, and managers lacked quantifiable data to anchor performance reviews. David Jessup recognized an opportunity to transform raw call transcripts into actionable intelligence that would standardize expectations, elevate coaching, and ensure every customer received a strategic, value-driven experience.

The creative solution

David led the creation of the CSM Call Grader Gem, an AI-powered evaluation system that operationalizes call quality and brings structure to Customer Success delivery. The solution introduced two major innovations:

• Detailed, weighted rubrics for the four most critical call types, grounding evaluations in observable, value-driven behaviors such as value articulation, strategic alignment, and proactive guidance.
• Automated transcript analysis, translating unstructured call data into objective scores, surfaced evidence, and consistent insights tied directly to the rubric.

By removing subjectivity, the Gem created a repeatable, data-backed coaching model that highlights exactly where each CSM can improve. Managers now spend less time reviewing calls and more time delivering targeted, meaningful coaching that drives performance.

The Outcomes

The CSM Call Grader Gem delivered measurable improvements in performance consistency and coaching efficiency:

• Manager coaching preparation time decreased from 4–6 hours per week to 1.5 hours, a 62.5% reduction.
• Evaluations now anchor to structured criteria, enabling clearer development pathways for CSMs.
• Leaders gained objective performance data to guide ongoing improvements in call quality and strategic delivery.

David’s work established a scalable system that elevates coaching, strengthens call execution, and ensures customers experience consistent, strategic engagement across every interaction.

⭐️ De'Edra Williams | Customer Success Revenue Frontier

Customer Success 5.0: Redefining Growth with the Fab5 for 2025 Framework

De’Edra S. Williams is the Chief Customer Officer for the Customer Success Revenue Frontier, leading organizations in achieving business outcomes and revenue growth. She has held senior Customer Success roles at CompTIA, Arturo.ai, SAP Ariba, and Salesforce, and holds an MBA from UT Dallas. Recognized as one of EverAfter’s 2026 Creative Customer Success Leaders and a SuccessHACKER Top 25 Influencer, she is also a Profiles in Leadership award recipient and the beneficiary of multiple prestigious international fellowships. De’Edra is an active community leader serving on several boards across Dallas/Fort Worth and is passionate about global education, cultural engagement, and mentorship.

The challenge

Customer Success has reached a turning point. Many organizations still view CS as a reactive support function rather than a strategic growth driver. De’Edra Williams recognized an opportunity to reframe the role entirely, positioning Customer Success as a central force in revenue architecture. Across the industry, CS leaders faced recurring challenges: disconnected data, misalignment with GTM teams, limited personalization, lack of executive visibility, and declining employee engagement. De’Edra saw a path forward that combined creativity, AI, storytelling, and cross-functional alignment to elevate CS into its next evolution.

The creative solution

De’Edra created the Fab5 for 2025 framework, a narrative-driven, technology-enabled model designed to guide organizations into Customer Success 5.0. Each Fab represents a strategic initiative with a clear operational purpose:

• Fab1: Customer-Led Growth through Customer Journey Flight Plans in HubSpot that turn onboarding into mission-based alignment.
• Fab2: Cross-Functional GTM Collaboration embedding the S.P.I.C.E.D. methodology to unify Sales, Product, Marketing, and CS.
• Fab3: AI-Driven Personalization using predictive analytics and Star Maps to tailor journeys and detect churn risk.
• Fab4: Revenue-Centric Metrics with Mission Briefing Dashboards linking NRR, GRR, CLV, and TTV to revenue outcomes.
• Fab5: Employee Experience Elevation through AI-based simulators, enablement tracks, and recognition programs.

By blending science fiction storytelling with structured execution, De’Edra transformed complex change management into an engaging, memorable system of alignment.

The Outcomes

The Fab5 for 2025 delivered measurable revenue impact and organizational transformation:

• $1.5M in expansion revenue driven by improved adoption and advocacy.
• 20% increase in renewal close rate through value alignment across GTM teams.
• 45% faster time-to-value powered by AI-driven journey personalization.
• 30% increase in C-suite engagement by reframing CS around revenue acceleration.
• 15% increase in employee experience scores through AI-based enablement and mentorship.

Beyond results, the initiative reshaped how CS is perceived, turning it into a creative, data-driven catalyst for growth and inspiring teams across the industry to approach Customer Success with bold, future-forward leadership.

⭐️ Vinay Chaturvedi | mindZvue

Turning Data into Action with Agentforce Intelligence

Vinay Chaturvedi is CEO for mindZvue, A US based Salesforce Summit Partner. Vinay is a Salesforce MVP Hall Of Fame ,A serial entrepreneur.He brings more than 15 years of experience in Salesforce Consulting, Enterprise Adoptions ,customer success and scaling strategies.

The challenge

As AI capabilities rapidly advanced, mindZvue recognized a significant opportunity to evolve beyond static reporting and create a real-time intelligence layer for customer-facing teams. Manual data entry, fragmented insights, and slow decision cycles were limiting the impact of Customer Success, sales, and support teams. Vinay Chaturvedi saw the potential to shift from traditional dashboards to an AI-enabled system that could interpret customer behavior, anticipate needs, and automate key workflows. The opportunity was to blend automation with human-centered design to help teams work faster, make better decisions, and focus on high-value engagement.

The creative solution

Vinay led the development of Agentforce capabilities within mindZvue, creating an intelligent automation layer that connects data, insights, and actions across the customer lifecycle. Key elements of the solution include:

• Mapping operational pain points where manual effort or data silos slowed execution.
• Designing adaptive AI agents that identify patterns, predict next best actions, and automate tasks or follow-ups.
• Integrating contextual intelligence to personalize insights for CSMs, sales, and support teams.
• Creating a human-in-the-loop feedback system to continuously refine the AI models.

This approach delivered not just automation, but a more empathetic and empowering workflow that strengthened how teams operate.

The Outcomes

The introduction of Agentforce resulted in measurable efficiency and engagement gains:

• 40% reduction in manual reporting and data entry.
• 30% faster response times for customer issues.
• 25% increase in onboarding completion and adoption rates.
• Improved data accuracy and visibility for leadership-level decisions.
• 85% of users reported that Agentforce made their work easier and more impactful.

Vinay’s initiative transformed mindZvue into a proactive intelligence platform, enabling teams to move from data interpretation to real-time action and unlocking a more strategic, customer-centric approach across the organization.

⭐️ Lisa Redman | Harris Computer

Driving Growth and Alignment through “Customer Voice Blueprint”

Lisa Redman began her career in education as a teacher, where she honed her strengths in communication, coaching, and building meaningful relationships. Her passion for helping others succeed naturally guided her into the world of Customer Success, where she has spent the last decade driving retention, adoption, and long-term client partnerships. Today, she blends her educator’s mindset with strategic business leadership to deliver exceptional customer experiences, lead high-performing teams, and support organizations through growth and change.  

The challenge

Following a merger, Harris Computer’s OnePulse portfolio expanded to 12 software applications across one business unit. This shift introduced significant complexity for Customer Success, which had traditionally operated with a product-centric focus. Lisa Redman recognized that continuing with product-specific strategies would limit scalability and create fragmented customer experiences. The opportunity was to adopt an agnostic project strategy that analyzed trends across the entire customer base, particularly within healthcare, to uncover themes that could solve problems at scale and support revenue growth.

The creative solution

Lisa launched The Customer Voice Blueprint initiative, a cross-portfolio strategy grounded in customer voice and data-driven insight. Her approach unified multiple inputs to identify themes that mattered most to customers and tied directly to revenue potential. The solution included:

• Consolidating data from anecdotal feedback, support tickets, usage patterns, and customer sentiment scores.
• Identifying shared themes across healthcare customers that could be addressed through three focused projects.
• Embedding these agnostic tools into every communication channel, including digital CS programs, 1:1 engagements, and 1:many calls.
• Shifting the team from product-driven thinking to a shared, customer-led problem-solving model through cross-training and collaboration.

The Customer Voice Blueprint became a repeatable framework that aligned customers, internal teams, and revenue goals.

The Outcomes

The initiative delivered strong results across customer value and financial performance:

• Customer feedback and product usage improved across the portfolio.
• Quarterly revenue forecasts were surpassed in Q1, Q2, and Q3.
• Forecasts were revised upward twice due to consistently hitting revenue targets early.
• Internal teams strengthened their capabilities through cross-training, enabling a broader and more flexible approach to customer initiatives.

Lisa’s work transformed a complex post-merger environment into a unified, customer-focused strategy that accelerated revenue, improved customer engagement, and enhanced team agility.

⭐️ Sanchit Kharbanda| Droplr

Driving Retention and Growth Through Personalized, Data-Driven Engagement

The challenge

Droplr saw a recurring pattern: customers signed up enthusiastically, but only a small percentage continued using the product after the first few weeks. Research revealed that if users did not experience immediate value tied to their daily workflow, they quickly disengaged, became inactive, or churned altogether. Sanchit Kharbanda recognized that long-term retention required early, observable wins. The opportunity was to create a focused retention and growth motion that demonstrated value quickly, deepened engagement, and encouraged customers to invest further as they saw success.

The creative solution

Sanchit designed a customer engagement program that blended behavioral insight, proactive communication, and tailored education. Key components included:

• Mapping customer journeys to identify milestones that predict activation, success, or churn.
• Automated but humanized outreach such as personalized onboarding videos, milestone check-ins, and success emails that highlighted ways to deepen value.
• Usage-based nudges and short-win tutorials directly aligned to each customer’s workflow.
• Real-time analytics enabling the team to intervene before disengagement occurred.

The program was unique in its thoughtful balance of automation and personal connection, turning early usage moments into confidence-building experiences that nurtured long-term advocacy.

The Outcomes

Within six months, the program delivered measurable improvements in retention, adoption, and revenue:

• 28% increase in customers completing onboarding.
• 18% reduction in early churn.
• 35% increase in active usage sessions per user.
• 22% uplift in subscription upgrades tied to improved perceived value.
• Strong qualitative feedback, with customers reporting higher satisfaction and appreciation for personalized guidance.

Sanchit’s initiative proved that combining creative communication with data-led actions not only kept users engaged, but also fueled meaningful growth and strengthened customer advocacy.

⭐️ Alanna Putnam | Numa

Turning CSMs into Strategic Performance Partners

The challenge

Numa’s Customer Success Managers excelled at support, yet many conversations remained reactive rather than driving measurable business impact. Alanna Putnam recognized that dealerships needed more than product guidance. They needed a strategic advisor who could connect Numa’s tools to outcomes such as higher dollars per RO, improved CSI scores, and faster response times. The opportunity was to shift CS from tactical problem solving to strategic partnership, ensuring that customers viewed their CSM not only as a product expert but as a performance consultant they could not afford to lose.

The creative solution

Alanna designed and launched a 90-day Performance Partnership program that reshaped how the team engaged with customers. Key components included:

• Training CSMs to operate like consultants using McKinsey-style frameworks and Challenger methodologies.
• Guiding customers through strategic conversations that uncover goals, barriers, and growth opportunities.
• Building data-driven 90-day action plans focused on dealership metrics such as dollars per RO, CSI scores, and response times.
• Tracking every plan in Vitally to create visibility, accountability, and measurable progress.
• Coaching the team to connect each metric to the customer’s purpose, elevating the relationship beyond support.

This blend of consulting structure and creative coaching redefined CS engagement, positioning the team as trusted advisors.

The Outcomes

Within six months, the program delivered measurable improvements across performance, engagement, and retention:

• 12% increase in dollars per RO for dealerships completing a 90-day plan.
• 15% improvement in response times and consistent gains in CSI scores.
• 37% reduction in no-show meetings.
• 121% increase in valuable, outcome-focused conversations.
• Stronger alignment around business results rather than activity-based metrics, improving trust and reducing churn risk.

Alanna’s initiative elevated Customer Success into a strategic performance partner, deepening relationships and delivering sustained results across Numa’s customer base.

⭐️ LeeRon Yahalomi | Aligned

Rebuilding Customer Success with AI-Powered Intelligence

The challenge

Aligned’s Customer Success organization was weighed down by administrative work that pulled focus away from customer outcomes. CSMs spent hours summarizing calls, updating CRM fields, and preparing decks, while insights lived across scattered tools and channels. Customer health signals were fragmented, reactive, and difficult to translate into revenue-driving action. LeeRon Yahalomi recognized that AI could be more than a convenience feature. It could become the operating system that unifies data, enhances predictability, and frees CSMs to focus on renewals, expansion, and strategic value. The opportunity was to shift AI from novelty to leverage and rebuild the post-sale motion around intelligence, not manual effort.

The creative solution

LeeRon led the creation of an AI Agent network inside Aligned, designed to automate routine work and amplify the strategic impact of every CSM. Key components include:

• AE to CSM Handoff Agent that generates structured briefs from HubSpot and Aligned rooms and posts them into Slack.
• Meeting Prep Agent that analyzes CRM data, notes, and transcripts to produce pre-reads with risks and opportunities.
• CS Forecast Funnel Agent that consolidates usage, sentiment, renewal timelines, and engagement signals to predict retention.
• Comms Agent that drafts follow-ups, summaries, and value emails in the company’s brand voice.

The system reflects Aligned’s unique motion, serving as a digital intelligence layer that multiplies CSM capacity without replacing human judgment.

The Outcomes

Within 90 days, the AI Agent network delivered measurable transformation:

• Administrative work decreased by 15%.
• Onboarding time decreased by 72%.
• Time to Value improved by 62.5%.
• Forecast accuracy improved by more than 30%.
• Renewal readiness scores increased by 25%.
• CS-led expansion opportunities grew quarter over quarter.
• Internal adoption exceeded 90%, with CSMs reporting stronger strategic engagement.
• Customers noted faster ramp times and clearer guidance, while sales, CS, and product teams gained unified visibility into account health.

LeeRon’s initiative elevated the entire CS motion, turning AI into a true revenue and retention engine and transforming CSMs into proactive, data-driven operators.

⭐️ Tomer Yair Zemel | AudioCodes

Scaling Without Headcount: How AI Drove 144% ARR Growth at AudioCodes Live Hub

Tomer isa Strategic Enterprise CSM and multidisciplinary problem-solver who loves turning complexity into clarity. With experience across media-telecom, cybersecurity, and data/AI innovation, I help companies build smarter processes, stronger customer journeys, and future-ready solutions I love connecting the dots between people, products, and data, and I do everything in my power to get things done. Based in Israel TLV & travel WW.

The challenge

As a small, start-up-style department operating within a large enterprise, Tomer Yair Zemel faced the dual challenge of proving value quickly while working with limited resources. The team supported a self-service platform with significant customer activity, high data volume, and growing demand across support, success, and marketing. With a small team and no additional budget, scaling manually was not an option. Tomer saw an opportunity to leverage AI as the engine that would streamline operations, accelerate time to value, and demonstrate the department’s strategic impact to the broader organization.

The creative solution

Tomer created a comprehensive AI strategy designed to automate workflows, elevate customer experience, and accelerate growth across multiple functions. Key components included:

• Full AI support agents operating in multiple languages to handle customer inquiries at scale.
• A complete Customer Success lifecycle strategy powered by automation to guide users through adoption and value realization.
• AI-driven task automation that removed manual bottlenecks and enabled faster execution.
• A marketing strategy enhanced by AI, including content creation and a YouTube channel for education and engagement.
• Cross-company utilization of AI tools to support CS, support, marketing, and R&D collaboration.

This approach transformed a lean operation into a high-impact, AI-augmented engine that improved platform experience while reducing human dependency.

The Outcomes

The results were significant and accelerated:

• 144% ARR growth achieved in just nine months.
• Dozens of new customers acquired through scalable, AI-enabled workflows.
• Improved platform performance and faster time to value for customers.
• Stronger collaboration across CS, support, and R&D driven by automated processes.

Tomer’s initiative demonstrated how a small team, empowered by AI, can deliver outsized impact, scale rapidly, and help position AudioCodes as a leader in voice AI innovation.

⭐️ Kasia Roth | Brevo

Saving Hours with AI-Generated Business Reviews

The challenge

Brevo’s Customer Success team spent significant time preparing Business Review presentations each week, especially for lower-value customer segments. This manual effort limited scalability and reduced the time CSMs could dedicate to strategic conversations. Kasia Roth recognized an opportunity to automate and streamline the EBR process without sacrificing personalization or insight. The goal was to create a system that delivered meaningful, data-driven reviews automatically while freeing CSMs to focus on high-impact engagement.

The creative solution

Kasia led the development of an AI-powered workflow that generates Business Reviews automatically and delivers them to customers through EverAfter. Key elements included:

• Integrating Planhat data into AI agents that analyze product usage patterns.
• Using AI to produce personalized recommendations based on each customer’s behavior and needs.
• Sending both the usage insights and tailored advice into EverAfter, where they are displayed in a clean, visual format for the customer.
• Eliminating manual preparation entirely so CSMs can focus on relationship-building and strategic conversations.

This automated flow enabled Brevo to deliver high-quality, personalized EBRs at scale with no additional effort from the Customer Success team.

The Outcomes

The impact was immediate:

• CSMs saved several hours per week previously spent assembling EBR materials.
• Customers now receive consistent, data-driven reviews that highlight value clearly.
• The team reclaimed meaningful time to focus on conversations, not slide creation.

Kasia’s initiative transformed Business Reviews from a time-consuming chore into an automated, insight-rich experience that improves scalability and enhances customer engagement.

⭐️ Bharath Jagannath | Payatu

From Reactive to Proactive: Building a Continuous Security Success Model

The challenge

Many organizations struggled to identify and remediate security vulnerabilities before they could be exploited. Traditional assessment processes often produced reactive outcomes, delayed mitigation, and reduced confidence from stakeholders. Bharath Jagannath recognized that clients needed a more proactive, research-driven approach that would surface risks early and guide ongoing remediation. The opportunity was to shift customers from periodic, reactive assessments to continuous security intelligence that strengthened resilience and trust.

The creative solution

Bharath led the development of a proactive cybersecurity program that combined continuous monitoring with high-touch advisory. Key components included:

• Ongoing vulnerability assessments that surfaced risks earlier and more consistently.
• Tailored recommendations informed by real-time threat intelligence and deep research expertise.
• A hybrid model blending automated detection tools with hands-on, manual analysis to improve accuracy and insight.
• Regular collaboration with client teams to guide strategic remediation and strengthen long-term security posture.

This approach moved clients from reactive defense to proactive risk management, establishing a new standard for high-assurance cybersecurity engagement.

The Outcomes

The program delivered strong, measurable results:

• 25% improvement in customer satisfaction based on post-engagement surveys.
• More than 80% of clients initiated follow-up projects within 12 months, demonstrating increased trust and long-term partnership.

Bharath’s initiative elevated Payatu’s value proposition, helping clients become more secure while driving deeper engagement and repeat business across the portfolio.

⭐️ Amber Frye | Alloy Labs

96% Retention and 70% Engagement Growth Through Data-Driven Success Model

Amber is the Director of Member Success at Alloy Labs, a consortium of 60+ community banks advancing innovation across the industry. She serves as the strategic link between member banks and Alloy Labs’ work streams, ensuring member priorities directly inform organizational strategy and outcomes. Previously, Amber spent a decade in community banking, culminating as Chief Operating Officer of a Kentucky institution, where she led customer service, marketing, and operations. She is also the founder of Ladies of the Lab, a quarterly forum highlighting women leaders in banking, and serves on the Board of Junior Achievement of South-Central Kentucky. Amber is a 2020 ATHENA Young Professional Leadership Award recipient and holds both a BA and MBA from Western Kentucky University.

The challenge

Alloy Labs faced stagnant member engagement and inconsistent value realization across its network of community and regional banks. Participation varied widely, and many institutions struggled to advance along their innovation journey. Amber Frye recognized that a one-size-fits-all approach was limiting impact. The opportunity was to build a personalized, data-driven success model that aligned support with each bank’s maturity stage, deepened strategic partnerships, and turned engagement into measurable growth.

The creative solution

Amber created a tiered engagement model built around three tailored member paths: Traditionalists, Explorers, and Leaders. Her approach personalized the experience while driving clear business outcomes.

Key elements included:

• Traditionalists: One-on-one Value Audits to uncover hidden opportunities, increasing program participation by 70%.
• Explorers: Partnership Roadmaps pairing banks with fintech pilots and Concept Lab projects, helping several institutions advance to the Leader tier.
• Leaders: C-suite strategy sessions focused on growth, regulation, and operational efficiency, positioning Alloy Labs as a strategic partner.

Behind the scenes, Amber unified Customer Success, Product, and Institute teams under a shared playbook and built the Strategy Session Prep Partner, an AI assistant that uses member feedback and engagement data to prepare strategy sessions. It reduced prep time by 40% and elevated the consistency and quality of renewal conversations.

The Outcomes

Amber’s program delivered the strongest engagement and retention metrics in Alloy Labs’ history:

• Member retention increased from 86% to 96%.
• Participation in Centers of Excellence grew 70% in six months.
• C-suite engagement rose from 22% to 68%.
• Five Explorer-tier banks advanced to the Leader category after realizing measurable ROI.
• Advisory and proof-of-concept initiatives increased by 350%.
• Strategy Session Prep Partner reduced prep time by 40%.
• Overall program utilization reached 44%, with major growth in automation, AI, strategy, and innovation programs.

Most importantly, member banks reported feeling more understood, supported, and strategically aligned, cementing Alloy Labs as a trusted growth partner, far beyond a traditional network.

⭐️ Karthick JL| Customer Success Compass

Empowering CS Professionals to Lead with Strategy and Impact

Karthick JL is a global Customer Success leader with 20 years of experience improving NRR, adoption and CSAT across SaaS businesses. He has led large post sales teams globally and now advises companies on scaling customer operations, digital success and retention.  He is also the founder of Customer Success Compass, where he advises SaaS companies on post sales transformation, forecasting, churn control, NRR, digital success and cost to serve optimization.  He helps CS leaders, individuals and teams drive real impact through strategy, coaching, and systems that work.

The challenge

In his coaching work, Karthick JL noticed a consistent pattern among Customer Success professionals and leaders. Many excelled at execution, yet struggled to shift from reactive, service oriented roles into strategic, revenue impacting partners. Traditional training programs focused heavily on tools and processes but rarely developed the mindset, business acumen, and outcome driven thinking required for Customer Success 3.0. Karthick saw an opportunity to build an education framework that would help CS professionals elevate their approach, think like business partners, and confidently lead growth focused conversations with their customers.

The creative solution

Karthick created the Customer Success Leadership Accelerator, a modular coaching and enablement program that blends structured learning with practical application. Key components included:

• Foundation sessions covering business acumen, value frameworks, and outcome design.
• Practical labs where participants applied these concepts to real accounts and created measurable success plans.
• Peer learning circles that encouraged cross-industry collaboration and broader perspective.
• Personalized growth paths co-created with each participant to ensure relevance and accountability.

By combining consulting style problem solving with coaching focused reflection, the program shifted participants from passive learning to active transformation. Every session connected daily CS activities to real business impact.

The Outcomes

More than twenty Customer Success professionals completed the program with measurable improvements in performance and confidence:

• Clear advancement in strategic communication and stakeholder management.
• Stronger outcome based thinking applied directly to customer accounts.
• Several participants advanced into new roles or expanded responsibilities within six months.
• Positive feedback across all cohorts, highlighting the value of personalized coaching and applied practice.

Karthick’s initiative created an enablement model that builds strategic leaders, not just skilled practitioners, and strengthened the professional trajectory of every participant involved.

⭐️ Tricia Jessee| ClearPoint Strategy

Cutting Onboarding Time with AI-Powered Pre-Kickoff and Adoption Kits

Tricia Jessee is the Associate Director of Customer Success at ClearPoint Strategy, where she leads implementation and onboarding to help organizations effectively adopt strategic planning and performance tools. Tricia combines process expertise with a people-first approach to drive smooth, scalable customer experiences. Tricia played a key role in ClearPoint’s partnership with EverAfter, creating a unified, role-based customer hub that reduced onboarding time and significantly expanded CSM capacity.

The challenge

ClearPoint Strategy supports a wide range of industries, and its highly customizable platform can make onboarding longer and more complex for new customers. Tricia Jessee recognized an opportunity to streamline this experience by simplifying early setup, reducing overwhelming content, and providing clearer structure. The goal was to use EverAfter and AI to create a more efficient, intuitive onboarding journey that accelerated time to value and improved overall customer satisfaction.

The creative solution

Tricia designed a two-part onboarding experience that combined creativity, guided preparation, and personalized engagement. Key elements included:

• A Pre Kickoff Kit that walked new admins through essential setup steps before the first meeting, setting expectations and saving time.
• An AI generated welcome graphic customized for each customer to create a friendly, encouraging start to the journey.
• An automated transition into an Onboarding and Adoption Kit that outlined success milestones and provided a dedicated space for admin training and key resources.
• A clear, intuitive workflow that reduced friction and helped customers feel supported from day one.

This thoughtful structure made onboarding more organized, welcoming, and effective across diverse customer types.

The Outcomes

The new onboarding model delivered meaningful improvements:

• Significant reduction in time to onboard.
• Higher percentage of customers completing onboarding successfully.
• Consistently positive CSAT scores following onboarding.

Tricia’s work created a streamlined onboarding experience that improves clarity, accelerates adoption, and sets every new customer up for long term success.

⭐️ Alex Turkovic | The Digital CX Podcast

The Digital CX Podcast: Building the Playbook for Modern CS

Alex Turkovic is a digital customer success leader and the creator of the Digital CX Podcast, where he shares insights from his career spanning learning and development, customer education, professional services, and customer success. Originally from Vienna and trained in music production at Berklee College of Music, Alex transitioned from the music industry into tech after running an entrepreneurial venture in Austin. His roles at Dell and subsequent companies shaped his passion for scalable customer experience, leading him to focus on digital CS and build a platform that elevates the voices and strategies of industry leaders. Today, he continues to champion learning, innovation, and community through his podcast and digital success work.

The challenge

Digital Customer Success and Digital CX have rapidly grown as strategic functions, yet few dedicated resources exist to help leaders build and optimize their digital programs. Alex Turkovic recognized a clear gap in the industry. CS leaders needed tactical, practitioner led insights that went beyond theory. The opportunity was to create a consistent, accessible source of knowledge that showcased real strategies from digital CS experts and supported teams looking to scale their own digital motions.

The creative solution

Alex launched and hosts The Digital CX Podcast, a content platform focused entirely on digital CS and CX excellence. Over nearly two years and almost one hundred episodes, he has curated a comprehensive library of insights by blending his own experience as a digital CS leader with perspectives from more than ninety guests across the industry. The podcast provides:

• Tactical strategies that leaders can immediately apply to improve digital programs.
• Real world examples from practitioners who have built and scaled digital CS motions.
• A consistent learning channel for teams seeking guidance, inspiration, and proven frameworks.

The show has become a go to resource, with Alex hearing regularly from CS leaders who have implemented ideas discussed on the podcast and achieved meaningful improvements in their own programs

The Outcomes

The podcast has delivered strong and sustained impact, both in reach and industry influence:

• More than 2,000 downloads per month across podcast platforms and Alex’s newsletter.
• Engagement from a growing community of CS practitioners and leaders.
• Sponsorship interest from leading companies including Gainsight and Vitally.

Alex’s work has filled a critical knowledge gap in the industry, establishing The Digital CX Podcast as a trusted resource for digital CS leaders and elevating the conversation around what effective, scalable digital success looks like.

⭐️ Emma Lamb | Xrecruiter Pty Ltd

Building a Seamless Client Journey

Emma Lamb is the Onboarding Manager at xrecruiter, where she leads onboarding, special projects, and the streamlining of internal operations and workflows. Passionate about creating positive experiences at scale, Emma focuses on building systems that empower both clients and the internal team to thrive.

She is the driving force behind the Xrecruiter Operating System (XROS), a multi-function platform designed to support XR Partners in their day-to-day work while maintaining the personal connection that defines the xrecruiter community. Her vision for XROS is to bring together resources, success frameworks, tools, business metrics, KPIs, revenue insights, coaching materials, and community engagement into one intuitive, self-serve ecosystem. By blending automation with a deeply human touch, Emma is helping redefine how partners start, run, grow, and stay connected, all with clarity, confidence, and ease

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The challenge

Xrecruiter works with clients who are launching, running, and scaling their own recruitment businesses, each with unique needs and varying levels of experience. Emma Lamb recognized that supporting this broad spectrum required a customer facing system that could guide clients through their entire journey while reducing reliance on manual support. The opportunity was to create a centralized, intuitive onboarding and enablement experience that empowered clients to access training, tools, and resources on demand and positioned Xrecruiter as a daily operational partner.

The creative solution

Emma built a comprehensive client hub in EverAfter.ai based on the Start, Run, and Grow framework. This structured model delivered guided support at every stage of the customer lifecycle.

Key components included:

• Start with onboarding, training, and setup resources to help clients launch confidently.
• Run with mentoring, coaching, frameworks, tools, and streamlined communication channels for faster support and operational guidance.
• Grow with the XROS framework and Customer Success Managers who advise on performance, optimization, and business expansion.

The system centralizes training, communication, and business enablement in one place, giving clients instant access to everything they need to run their operations. It also strengthened day to day engagement and created deeper, more meaningful connections with customers across international markets.

The Outcomes

Since implementing AI Customer Interface, Xrecruiter has seen measurable improvements in performance and engagement:

• Steady month over month increases in returning users, new users, and active accounts.
• A 75 percent reduction in manual support requests due to centralized processes and automated workflows.
• Strong positive feedback from clients and team members highlighting clarity, ease of use, and operational efficiency.
• Improved communication and turnaround times through seamless integration across multiple internal platforms.

Emma’s initiative created a scalable onboarding and enablement system that drives productivity, enhances customer experience, and supports clients in starting, running, and growing successful businesses.

⭐️ Cira Beauly | Construct Connect

Driving a 7:1 ROI by Turning AI Curiosity into Confident Adoption

The challenge

ConstructConnect’s Customer Success team showed high curiosity about AI but low confidence in applying it to daily customer work. Many CSMs were unsure how AI fit into their workflows, and managers hesitated to model usage without clear guidance. Beauly Cira recognized an opportunity to prove that systematic enablement could not only increase AI adoption but also generate measurable improvements in productivity and customer outcomes across the entire CS organization.

The creative solution

Beauly created a lightweight, scalable enablement program grounded in three principles: leaders first, champions everywhere, and continuous feedback. Key components included:

• Identifying AI Champions based on performance and cultural influence, with clear responsibilities for driving peer enablement.
• Running a leader first training series to ensure all ten managers gained confidence before cascading learning to their teams.
• Implementing pulse surveys at every stage to route real time insights into program design and create a continuous improvement loop.
• Showcasing early success stories to build momentum and reinforce best practices across teams.

This structured yet flexible approach ensured that AI learning felt relevant, supported, and directly tied to customer impact.

The Outcomes

Within twelve weeks, the program delivered significant behavioral and business results.

Key milestones and sentiment improvements:

• Weeks 1 to 4: Baseline sentiment captured and managers began modeling usage.
• Weeks 5 to 8: Active users increased 140 percent as peer showcases built confidence.
• Weeks 9 to 12: Eighty two percent of managers became daily AI users and teamwide adoption accelerated.
• Manager confidence increased 32 percent and perceived value improved 27 percent.

Business impact and ROI:

• Manager productivity increased by five hours per week, equating to 150,000 dollars annually.
• CSM productivity increased by eight hours per week, equating to 1,400,000 dollars annually.
• Combined annual value totaled 1,550,000 dollars in time redeployed to higher value work.
• With a program investment of 200,000 dollars, the initiative delivered a seven to one ROI in year one.

Beyond productivity gains, reclaimed capacity improved customer outcomes through faster response times, more strategic planning, and better prepared conversations that increased expansion conversion.Beauly’s program demonstrated that AI enablement, when designed with clarity and intention, can transform both team performance and business value.

⭐️ Noah Tradonsky | Silverfort

Transforming SMB Onboarding and Adoption

Noah Tradonsky works at Silverfort as a Customer Success Operations Specialist, with a specific focus on cross-departmental projects. Before his role in CS, he spent two years as the Associate to the CEO.

The challenge

Silverfort supports hundreds of SMB and commercial customers, with dozens being added every quarter. In the past, onboarding for this segment was entirely manual, requiring commercial CSMs to spend tens of hours per customer walking through the same deployment steps, downloading virtual machines, and delivering basic training. This repetitive workload consumed their capacity and prevented them from focusing on strategic conversations, upsells, and deeper adoption with their existing accounts. Noah saw a clear opportunity to automate the consistent parts of the onboarding process and free up the team's time to deliver higher value engagement.

The creative solution

Noah led the creation of a Personalized Digital Touch Portal in EverAfter that automated key elements of onboarding and product deployment. The initiative combined collaboration across Customer Success, Product, Marketing, and Enablement to deliver a personalized yet scalable experience. Key components included:

• Mapping deployment paths and common roadblocks with CS leadership and Product to ensure the portal reflected real customer journeys.
• Building targeted training and tutorial videos with Enablement and Product and using visibility rules to tailor content to each customer’s deployment method and segment.
• Partnering with Marketing and CS management to craft messaging that positioned the portal as a personalized onboarding, implementation, and adoption hub where customers could move at their own pace with all required resources readily available.

The result was a guided digital experience that reduced manual work for CSMs and empowered customers to deploy independently.

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The Outcomes

The first 60 days delivered excellent and measurable results:

• Dozens of customers onboarded through the Digital Touch program.
• Hundreds of onboarding hours were redirected to more complex and strategic customer discussions.

The Digital Touch program delivered meaningful impact:

• Significant time saved for CSMs, with several hours of work automated across onboarding and adoption.
• Enabled the customer to progress independently at their desired pace.

Noah’s initiative transformed onboarding efficiency at scale, allowing Silverfort’s team to provide high quality support while focusing on strategic conversations that drive retention and growth.

⭐️ Matt Wood| Brandwatch

Elevating Brandwatch Experiences with Studio-Powered Design

The challenge

Brandwatch’s Customer Education and Digital teams take pride in delivering clean, engaging, and well designed experiences across their programs. However, out of the box flexibility made it difficult to fully align certain widgets with the branding and creative style used in Brandwatch’s Academy and Community assets. This created a gap between the experience the team envisioned and what they could produce, limiting how immersive and on brand their digital spaces could be.

The creative solution

With the launch of EverAfter Studio, Matt Wood and his team were able to elevate the look and feel of their digital programs significantly. Studio allowed them to move from wishing for certain design capabilities to testing, iterating, and producing exactly what they had in mind. The improvements included:

• More engaging and visually consistent widgets that matched Brandwatch’s Academy and Community assets.
• The ability to incorporate animations that enhanced usability and user experience.
• Greater creative control that made every space feel like an extension of Brandwatch’s own platforms.

This shift enabled the team to deliver a polished, branded, and highly interactive experience that reflects the quality of their educational and community driven initiatives.

The Outcomes

While it is too early for quantitative performance data, internal response has been strong:

• Show and tell sessions generated significant enthusiasm for rolling out these enhanced spaces to customers in higher paying segments.
• Initial reactions indicated a clear desire to adopt the new approach more broadly, even in areas where high touch engagement was previously considered essential.

Matt’s work demonstrated how elevating design and brand alignment through Studio can spark stronger engagement, inspire internal adoption, and set the stage for a more cohesive and premium customer experience.

⭐️ Daniel Wilson  | NovoPath

Automating Knowledge Sharing with an AI Support Agent

The challenge

As a fast-moving startup, NovoPath continuously generates new issues and process changes across multiple data channels such as Zendesk, Azure DevOps, and Mavenlink. While this growth was expected, it created a major operational gap. Once new issues were identified, there was no consistent feedback loop to document how they were resolved or to help agents handle similar cases in the future. This resulted in repetitive manual work, slower resolution times, and an inconsistent customer experience. Daniel Wilson saw an opportunity to use AI to centralize knowledge, eliminate duplicate effort, and create a scalable workflow that strengthened both efficiency and customer outcomes.

The creative solution

Daniel built an AI agent using Zapier that automatically reviews all inbound tickets and emails, then searches the existing knowledge base for related solutions or configuration practices. The agent:

• Generates a set of recommended resolution options and drafts an email response for the agent to use.
• Documents each resolved issue by creating a new knowledge base article when no existing solution is found.
• Ensures the knowledge repository grows continuously and becomes more accurate and comprehensive over time.
• Allows every future agent to benefit from documented solutions, reducing repetitive work and improving consistency.

This approach turned scattered knowledge into a self-expanding system that supports real-time problem solving and scales with the organization.

The Outcomes

The AI powered workflow delivered immediate measurable improvements:

• Resolution time decreased by 20 percent.
• Touches per ticket dropped to fewer than two.
• CSAT averaged 98 percent month over month.

Daniel’s initiative created a repeatable, intelligent support system that captures institutional knowledge at scale, reduces operational drag, and significantly improves the customer journey.

⭐️ Jonathan Gruber| Port io

Turning Proof of Concept into a Scalable, Data-Driven Onboarding Journey

The challenge

Port.io’s Proof of Concept process was technically strong but lacked structured learning, storytelling, and business context. Sales Engineers captured information in different ways, making it difficult for Customer Success Managers to pick up after the sale and continue the value conversation. The opportunity was clear: create a unified onboarding framework that blended technical enablement, structured discovery, and centralized tracking so every POC became a repeatable, data rich journey with a seamless transition into customer success.

The creative solution

Jonathan Gruber led the creation of a global, customer facing POC onboarding and scoping program used by all Sales Engineers and Account Executives. The new framework replaced ad hoc tools with a standardized workflow inside HubSpot and EverAfter. Key components included:

• A Tech Academy learning path that guides customers through the technical foundations of the platform.
• A structured discovery model inspired by Command of the Message that captures user stories, business pains, and measurable outcomes.
• Centralized capture of all learning progress, scoping details, and business context directly in HubSpot, synced automatically with EverAfter.
• A unified process that ensures every POC follows the same journey and generates consistent, high quality insight for the handover to Customer Success.

The real impact came from the mindset shift. Every POC became a story of value, not just a technical demo, creating continuity from first conversation to long term adoption.

The Outcomes

The new POC onboarding program delivered clarity, consistency, and scalability across regions. Key results include:

• Full alignment in POC scoping with all SEs and AEs following the same framework.
• Predictable POC duration with expectations set clearly from the start and progress visible at any time.
• Consistent tracking with no more isolated or unmanaged POCs.
• Seamless CSM handover with all business context, discovery data, and learning progress preserved.
• Strong positive feedback from internal teams and customers who praised the clarity and professionalism of the new process.

Jonathan’s initiative transformed the POC from a disconnected demo into a structured, repeatable experience that scales across the entire customer journey.