While being a customer advocate is important, the post-sales organization's fundamental purpose is to help their own company win in the market by delivering profitable revenue. Viewing advocacy through this lens clarifies priorities and aligns actions, preventing friction that arises from misinterpreting the core objective.

The siloed functions of customer-facing teams are an artifact of human limitations. Intercom CEO Owen McCabe argues AI will enable a unified agent to manage the entire customer lifecycle seamlessly, providing one continuous, context-aware conversation from initial contact to support and upselling.

Assigning expansion quotas to Customer Success (CS) is a critical mistake. CS should focus on implementation, adoption, and value realization, creating the conditions for growth. However, the act of selling the expansion is a core sales responsibility that requires a sales skillset and incentive structure.

The biggest productivity unlock isn't just making customer support cheaper. It's using AI models to eliminate the need for separate human archetypes for sales (yapper) and support (listener). Companies will bundle these functions into one unified team aimed at a higher-level business goal, like improving CAC.

Traditional marketing silos are becoming obsolete as AI manages the entire customer lifecycle. Leaders must blend performance and retention teams to focus on holistic customer behaviors, requiring more agile and flexible org structures that are not based on channel-specific metrics.

A radical approach to ensuring customer value is to eliminate the traditional Customer Success team. As seen at Snowflake, this forces sales reps to own the entire lifecycle. They are incentivized to only sell deals they know will be successful, preventing the acquisition of 'bad fit' customers.

Traditionally, departments like sales and support were built around different human archetypes (e.g., talkers vs. listeners). AI models can adopt any persona, eliminating this constraint. This allows companies to consolidate functions like sales, support, and collections into a single, goal-oriented team focused on metrics like CAC improvement.

AI will handle predictable, repeatable CX tasks, making human roles more valuable, not obsolete. Humans will focus where AI fails: managing emotional nuance, resolving conflict, guiding high-impact decisions, and building genuine trust. AI creates space for people to be advisors and relationship builders.

While many teams use AI to accelerate product development, a key advantage lies in using it to improve customer interactions. Providing customized deployment plans and deep technical answers shows customers you understand their specific needs, building trust and positioning your team as a superior partner.