Customer Success: Pivot Your Career
Aug 24, 2026 · 45 min · 11 segments
Customer Success is shifting from activity to measurable outcomes as AI reshapes SaaS. Guest Erich Gardner, Manager of Deployment and Growth Strategy at Planhat, joins the Customer Success Pivot Your…
David LokietzHost
Alex WhiteHost
It was actually originally people in marketing and they're doing AI for marketing and then they expanded it.
But I was listening to the episode this past week and what they do in an hour and a half every week, they summarize everything happening with the different models and licensing and they go down all these things.
And what they're finding out is people aren't getting trained on this and everyone's still siloed.
But I thought there was one interesting stat that kind of stood out to me is they said people are starting to see AI benefiting them in some small ways.
But now that they have the free time, they're not necessarily doing stuff strategically with that free time.
They're not being essentially, I don't know why they have to be told this, but they're not leveraging that free time efficiently now that they have it.
They're using that as either a break in what they're doing or what, but it was an interesting little conversation around that.
It's not a new phenomenon, so to speak, with people not knowing or utilizing their time properly.
I think we have a tendency to get in the weeds and not really spend time and understanding where we should apply our time and having a good approach to whatever it might be, whatever an issue might be, whatever training or learning it might be.
So when you talk about people not maximizing their time or not knowing how to use it, I think A lot of those folks could use one of two things.
Number one is a little bit of coaching or guidance from someone in leadership or just a mentor in general.
The other one is for them to look into themselves and say, where do I wanna be? What can I do to really enhance what I do? I was reading something this weekend I don't know if you remember, he's been around for a long time.
And he talked about a little bit of an article and he's well into his 60s or 70s.
And for all intents and purposes, he's been developing software and writing books and all sorts of stuff, heavy on the XP stuff.
It was actually originally people in marketing and they're doing AI for marketing and then they expanded it.
But I was listening to the episode this past week and what they do in an hour and a half every week, they summarize everything happening with the different models and licensing and they go down all these things.
And what they're finding out is people aren't getting trained on this and everyone's still siloed.
But I thought there was one interesting stat that kind of stood out to me is they said people are starting to see AI benefiting them in some small ways.
But now that they have the free time, they're not necessarily doing stuff strategically with that free time.
They're not being essentially, I don't know why they have to be told this, but they're not leveraging that free time efficiently now that they have it.
They're using that as either a break in what they're doing or what, but it was an interesting little conversation around that.
It's not a new phenomenon, so to speak, with people not knowing or utilizing their time properly.
I think we have a tendency to get in the weeds and not really spend time and understanding where we should apply our time and having a good approach to whatever it might be, whatever an issue might be, whatever training or learning it might be.
So when you talk about people not maximizing their time or not knowing how to use it, I think A lot of those folks could use one of two things.
Number one is a little bit of coaching or guidance from someone in leadership or just a mentor in general.
The other one is for them to look into themselves and say, where do I wanna be? What can I do to really enhance what I do? I was reading something this weekend I don't know if you remember, he's been around for a long time.
And he talked about a little bit of an article and he's well into his 60s or 70s.
And for all intents and purposes, he's been developing software and writing books and all sorts of stuff, heavy on the XP stuff.
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