Jamie Davidson’s Post

I’m proud to announce that we’re sponsoring UpdateAI's mental health symposium “Succeeding Sustainably: Balancing Wellbeing in Customer Success” in NY next week! We'll be diving into all things mental health and its vital role in customer success. As someone deeply passionate about this topic, I believe in prioritizing mental health within organizations. At Vitally, we're dedicated to enhancing customer relationships and driving success and growth. Every day, I'm reminded of how crucial it is to prioritize mental health, as it cultivates empathy within customer success teams, resulting in stronger connections and better outcomes for all involved. Join us next Thursday, May 2nd, at 6pm at Rise New York to hear from experts like our very own Celine Doumar, who will share mindful techniques for sustainable success at work. https://lu.ma/sso39lqp

I recently discovered Sentry.io's approach to adding AI to their product and found it hilariously…practical. I mean that as sincere praise. I’m a fan of businesses using AI tools to be more productive. But if you have an “AI-first” mindset to problem solving, you run the risk of being *less* productive and/or less effective. These days, we have two options when confronted with a problem: 1) Find a solution using the reliable, human problem-solving skills that have served us for eons (and created these AI systems to begin with) 2) Invest time and effort into trying to get an AI tool to solve it for us. That second option might be faster. Sentry here knows it also might not be if you end up spending a lot of time refining and refactoring AI’s solution. All the while, perhaps you could have just solved the problem yourself faster? We shouldn’t forget that we all should be experts in our own domains. Training an AI tool on your domain so it can help solve your problems is a great thing to do! But lest we forget us humans should also be trained on that domain and ideally, should still be the foremost experts on it. This is especially a challenge if the output touches your customers. Sure, writing a thoughtful and coherent email to your client will take longer than auto-engaging that client with an AI tool. But if the AI-generated message is nonsense or overly high level, it’ll create more back-and-forth cycles of clarification — upsetting your customer along the way. When that happens, you can’t really say that you’re being more “productive,” can you? You certainly aren’t being more effective. AI can help you do your homework, but it's not necessarily what you should turn in. We all have problem-solving skills, even if we forget to use them sometimes. Just remember that the breakthrough that will unlock the next phase of your business’s growth probably won’t come from a ChatGPT prompt.

When you're a Customer Success leader, your "team" is not just the CSMs who report to you. Your team is also the other department leaders in your organization. Success/ful is the first podcast designed to help CS leaders strengthen ties across their organizations. Over the course of our first season, Taylor Johnston will be talking to Product leaders, Marketing executives, Founders, and other VPs of CS, and sharing their insights on how to be more effective and influential in your role. I'm extremely proud to see Vitally's first-ever audio series hit the streets. Thanks to Ryan Seams for being guest #1!