customer success isn’t the goal anymore

Customer success isn't the goal. Value realization is...

It's a subtle but critical distinction. "Customer success" often implies keeping a customer happy and engaged. Value realization means ensuring they achieve a tangible, measurable return on their investment. One is about satisfaction; the other is about impact.

This framework is built on three core pillars:

Commercials

Value is a function of cost and return. A customer's perception of value depends directly on how much they paid and the time they invested to get there. The math has to work. If the effort or cost outweighs the benefit, value is never realized, no matter how great the product is.

Execution

This is the "delivery" piece — making the product or service deliver on the promise the customer bought. It's the ground game. This is often a customer, professional services, and/or partner-led motion where the tangible work gets done and the initial outcomes are generated (and where most tech value delivery happens).

Multi-level relationships

Delivering value isn't enough; you have to communicate it at all the right levels and across the organization. This means building multi-level relationships to tell success stories to new parts of the business, onboard new stakeholders, identify new use cases, and begin the cycle of value realization all over again.

It's often said that in a tech business, you're either building something or selling it. I believe it's evolved: today, you're either building products, selling them, or helping customers realize value in a tangible, measurable way.

But this is where many CS teams get stuck. Too many talented people are left sitting on the sidelines, acting as facilitators or project managers instead of value drivers. They aren't owning the commercial conversation, directly driving the execution, or building the multi-departmental relationships needed to communicate value effectively.

Value realization is the key to the modern flywheel of AI and SaaS companies. Customer success as we've known it for two decades must transform into a value realization engine.

So, with that framework in mind, take a look at the diagram below. What's missing?

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