#TDSU Episode 189:

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:25 - Parker’s big question on CS

00:01:45 - AI, SaaS, and the market shift

00:04:16 - Should we care about disruption?

00:07:17 - Finding hope in a shifting industry

00:08:06 - The SaaS identity crisis

00:11:04 - Practical tips for staying ahead

00:11:49 - Is this really CS’s job?

00:13:13 - Wrapping up

📺 Lifetime Value: Your Destination for GTM content

Website: https://www.lifetimevaluemedia.com

🤝 Connect with the hosts:

Dillon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dillonryoung

JP's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanpierrefrost/

Rob's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-zambito/

👋 Connect with Parker Chase-Corwin:

Parker's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parkercorwin/

[Parker] (0:00 - 0:20)

The way I think about it is being the canary in the coal mine. So if CES can really make sure that we are raising up signals to the business and then mobilizing the business around the strategy on how to combat that, I think that's the play. I worry that we're trying to solve this too much from within CES and I just don't think that's going to be enough in this case.

[Dillon] (0:30 - 0:44)

What's up, Lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new ambiance about customer success every single day. I got my man, Rob, with us, giggling. Rob, can you say hi, please?

[Rob] (0:44 - 0:44)

How you doing?

[Dillon] (0:46 - 0:49)

And we have JP with us. JP, can you say hi, please?

[JP] (0:50 - 0:52)

It's 2025, but we'll survive.

[Dillon] (0:53 - 1:00)

Stop dating the podcast. I thought after 170, 180 episodes...

[JP] (1:00 - 1:05)

The year? The year? But the year, though.

But it's the year, though. Yes. It's the year, though.

[Dillon] (1:05 - 1:06)

Don't. All right.

[JP] (1:06 - 1:06)

Don't. All right.

[Dillon] (1:07 - 1:07)

This is going to be 20...

[JP] (1:07 - 1:09)

Hey, how you doing? How you doing?

[Dillon] (1:09 - 1:11)

Might want to save this for 2026.

[JP] (1:13 - 1:13)

Oh.

[Dillon] (1:13 - 1:17)

And we have Parker with us. Parker, can you say hi, please?

[Parker] (1:17 - 1:18)

Hey, everybody.

[Dillon] (1:18 - 1:25)

How you doing? Parker, welcome back. Thanks.

And I'm your host. My name is Dillon Young. Parker, please introduce yourself.

[Parker] (1:25 - 1:31)

Hey, folks. My name is Parker Chase-Corwin. I am a customer success and customer experience consultant.

[Dillon] (1:31 - 1:45)

Happy to be back. Second time. Happy to have you back.

Parker, you know what we do here? We ask one simple question of every single guest, and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success or customer experience. Can you tell us what that is for you?

[Parker] (1:45 - 4:15)

Sure. It's going to go back to a conversation that Rob and I were actually having at a cafe in Boston not too long ago. So I just want to expand on it, get your thoughts on it all.

So let me set the stage by saying a couple of stats. So there's a great newsletter out there. It's called Chief Martek.

If you haven't seen it, highly recommend it. In that newsletter, I recently learned that there are 14,106 Martek companies, which is a mind-blowing number. Historically, we've seen like 10% growth year over year in terms of the number of solutions that are out there.

And this is just Martek. But in the last year, we saw that kick up to 30% growth. So AI obviously accelerating, bringing products to market makes things a lot easier.

But you compare that to NRR dropping, median NRRs dropped. Pre-pandemic levels was, call it 115% or so. Now it's down around 100%.

So definitely a correlation in terms of how hyper-competitive the market is. So what I'm seeing and where I wanted to talk about today is most of the conversations that I'm seeing out in the customer success world are, I'm going to call them surface level, right? So as we think about going into 2025, we're talking about predictions, surveys, advice.

It's all focusing on the same kind of common themes, like focus on outcomes, move closer to the revenue, improve digital engagement, leverage AI, like pretty, pretty typical stuff, all important things. But what I'm concerned about is it shows more of like an insulated thinking. And CS tends to be an echo chamber.

I think we'd probably all agree on that a bit. But my concern is that with this new rapid pace of evolution, we're not going to solve this next level of market challenges from within CS. So instead of asking like, as a CS leader, how should I use AI going into 2025?

I think the better question to ask is, how am I preparing my company for a potential market disruption based on these new AI technologies? As we see markets start to, not universally, but definitely niches within the market are getting hammered by AI overnight. You're seeing examples where AI is literally displacing products or making them irrelevant.

And there are a lot of examples out there that we're starting to see. So I want to elevate the conversation a little bit. I think we need to start talking a lot more strategically about as a CS leader, what is our role in shaping the company's direction in preparing for that disruption?

[Dillon] (4:16 - 4:21)

I'm going to do this in the following way. So Rob and JP know that I'm feeling spicy today.

[JP] (4:21 - 4:25)

Yes. So you should go first.

[Dillon] (4:25 - 5:12)

I'm going to ask one question. Parker, I'd like you to respond to that. And then I'm going to go to JP.

And then Rob, I want you to round this out by telling us maybe how this conversation went in the cafe and whether you had a chocolate croissant or an almond croissant. My question is, this echoes of so many different ages of innovation in the history of the world, right? So you could just, probably the easiest one is how many horse-drawn carriage companies or chauffeur companies of horse-drawn carriages went out of business overnight with the invention of the car.

So my question is, we can find so many examples of why we should, but let's zoom out for a second. Should we care? Like this just seems like the way it goes.

[Parker] (5:13 - 5:57)

So yeah, my direct response to that is as customer success, we are accountable to care. Our job is to make sure that we're retaining our customers. So if you think about the incumbent technologies, and it's interesting to think of SaaS, software as a service as the incumbent technology.

We're now moving into service as a software, which means that the work that humans used to do and use software to perform that work, that's now going to be in some cases, potentially bypassed. So AI is going to just do the work for us. And then the software that the humans depended on may become irrelevant.

So as a CS leader, and where my job is to make sure that we're obtaining high retention numbers, I have to care about that.

[Dillon] (5:58 - 6:13)

Yeah, I think the nihilist in me would again, zoom out and say like, I think if you're working for a company whose product is easily disrupted by it, like I think you can care, but how much control do you have? But anyway, I mean, I'm being contrarian here.

[JP] (6:13 - 7:16)

So JP, why don't you go ahead. Well, no, that is exactly where I was going to go, which is like, I care about a lot of things in the world part. I really do.

I care about a lot of things. But there's some things that I care about where I'm like, what is within my power? And frankly, in this discussion, I know you're speaking like on a leadership level.

So I haven't been a CS leader. I've only been a middle manager at Victoria's Secret and that was how, so that's its own type of special purgatory. But for this, I'm wondering, like you're advising people, like the ability to see something and then implement a change as positively, like you said, you're thinking about how are you going to protect the revenue?

I'm not asking you to give away your secret sauce because you're a consultant. So I'm assuming that you help people through this, but I'm thinking like, what's the hope, the hope in your voice? You're saying like, okay, we're seeing this.

Where's the hope coming from for you that we can stem this sort of just incoming disruption from these different products, from AI?

[Parker] (7:17 - 7:57)

Yeah, so simply put, because I know Rob wants to jump in here, but simply put, I'd say tangibly, we should be focusing on our product market fit and making sure that PMF is revisited more frequently because there's going to be more disruption that's going to happen, which means we've got to make sure that we've strengthened our customer feedback loops, our market feedback loops. The way I think about it as being the canary in the coal mine. So if CES can really make sure that we are raising up signals to the business and then mobilizing the business around the strategy on how that can combat that, I think that's the play.

I worry that we're trying to solve this too much from within CES, and I just don't think that's going to be enough in this case.

[JP] (7:57 - 8:06)

Before you go, Rob, I just want to say, I'm worried they won't listen, Parker. I'm worried that we will be the canary in the coal mine and people will just go ignore it. So go ahead, go ahead, Rob.

[Rob] (8:06 - 8:12)

I'm going to read to you guys, this is a text from a friend. We're talking about getting out of the echo chamber here. So I'm going to tell you.

[Dillon] (8:12 - 8:14)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, go. I'm going to read a text. Some Walt Whitman.

[Rob] (8:16 - 9:18)

Allow me to regale you with some classics. No, so I actually read this text to Parker because I have a friend, he's a career VP of product and he's super, super, super smart. I had the privilege of working with him.

His name is Kevin Flynn. I had the privilege of working with him for a couple of years. And so he's now working on a new startup that is stepping back from the echo chamber and looking at the whole market trends.

So he said, very long topic of Convo, but in short, I think the traditional SaaS pure software market is very overcrowded. Couple that with advancements in AI, which will dramatically lower the cost to producing software while also reducing the number of point software solutions you need as AI becomes more of an all encompassing assistant. I think the startup landscape is at an inflection point.

You're going to see more would be startup founders become acquisition entrepreneurs, acquiring and growing preexisting businesses in more sustainable margin enhancing ways. So I thought that was very interesting. I don't know what you gleaned from that.

I have more thoughts on that, but I'll pause there. Did you guys glean anything?

[JP] (9:18 - 9:20)

Should I keep rolling? That's a hell of a, yeah, keep going.

[Rob] (9:21 - 10:42)

Now you see what my text conversations can look like. It's not pretty. But I'm also thinking about a couple of days ago, I was sitting at this coworking studio and I overheard this conversation between two fractional CTOs who were saying like, look, I won't encourage my kids to become a software engineer today.

I wouldn't do it, which is interesting. So basically what we're seeing is like this, a lot of big trends in the market. This might sound like a fever dream, but we're seeing the proliferation of AI.

We're seeing the cheapening of tech, which as Parker was saying, we're seeing increasing competition. We're seeing a growing divide between companies and their customers, vendors and their customers. And so we ask like, what the hell is our identity in this big picture of SaaS that we all live in?

And there are simple practical things we can do, right? We can do simple things like, for starters, just staying aware of the competition and compiling notes and writing like industry thesis papers in whatever industry you're in, right? Like just write something small, something short, just like your opinion on the industry and how it's going to change over time and share it internally.

Bounce ideas, build a culture in your company around what is the future of our industry and how is technology going to influence this. Now I know this sounds crazy, but this has actually been a real thing at some companies that I worked at. And you can be at that forefront.

Otherwise, fast forward 10, 20 years, we're going to look like, you know, the regrettable generation that didn't keep up with technology.

[JP] (10:43 - 10:47)

We're going to look like skeletons in 10 to 20 years, but I appreciate that, Rob. Thank you.

[Rob] (10:47 - 10:51)

Yeah, I know. What? I'm going to be spray tanned on a beach in Palm Beach.

[JP] (10:51 - 10:51)

Terminator.

[Rob] (10:52 - 10:54)

Oh, yeah. Living my best life.

[Dillon] (10:54 - 11:00)

Oh, I thought you meant you were going to be dead, JP. I had great concern for you for a minute there.

[JP] (11:00 - 11:03)

I'm living forever. I don't know what you got. I drink water.

[Rob] (11:04 - 11:22)

Practical tip for the audience. Practical tip. If you don't already, just start with some competitive battle cards.

Like be aware of who the other players are in your industry, in your space, and just have a blurb written about them. They don't have to be quote unquote battle cards. I think that term is actually kind of stupid because you're not going to battle with these other companies.

But just be aware of the other industry players.

[Parker] (11:23 - 11:47)

I'll build on that real quick. I'll just say lead a thought experiment internally and try to figure out a way that your product could be disrupted, whether it's an aspect, a feature, or something along those lines. But open up with a cross-functional team.

Open up a conversation where you try to figure out where are the chinks in the armor, so to speak, and then work backwards from there. I like all of it.

[Dillon] (11:49 - 13:10)

I think where I get stuck is traditionally speaking, traditional definition, even today's definition in 2025, JP, I think we have a part to play, but this really sounds like a product responsibility. I don't know that this is a, I mean, unless you want to talk about how customer success actually has a lot more control over a lot more pieces and oversees a lot more things and is a company-wide philosophy and not just a single individual's job. Like I'm not a fan of this attitude, but it sounds like not my job.

Like unless I want to be a founder, unless I want to, you know, like stuff like that. Like I understand all of it. I respect it.

I just want to maintain that level of perspective of like, I think we can get really excited about exercises and thought experiments. And there's a scenario in which you take that to your internal groups and they're like, get the, that's my job, get out of here. And again, I think that depends on the maturity, the culture, all of those things.

But yeah, it's a cool idea. It's definitely something to pay attention to. I think it's going to happen more rapidly than people think.

The ground is shifting under their feet today. But it's, I'm sorry to be such a pessimist. I almost feel bad.

[JP] (13:10 - 13:13)

No, no, no. That's good, that's good.

[Dillon] (13:13 - 13:28)

When we lap you though, we'll high five you. That's fine, that's fine. Parker, thank you so much.

We are at time. Would love for you to come back again in the future. Maybe our first three times.

No, you can't be our first three times. You got to come back twice and be our first four time.

[Parker] (13:29 - 13:30)

I'll sign up tomorrow, man.

[Dillon] (13:31 - 13:32)

But for now we've got to say goodbye.

[Parker] (13:33 - 13:34)

Appreciate it, guys.

[VO] (13:40 - 14:11)

You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at LifetimeValueMedia.com.

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