stop automating everything

Everyone says high-touch CS is dead.

Amid budget cuts and the relentless push for efficiency, the conventional wisdom is to automate everything, scale back human interaction, and chase a frictionless "tech-touch" model. Anything that doesn't scale easily is on the chopping block.

Yet, when I talk to CS leaders who are consistently crushing their retention goals, a different pattern emerges. They're quietly doubling down on the very "unscalable" motions everyone else is abandoning.

Here's what top retention leaders are actually doing:

They’re obsessed with strategic alignment.

This goes beyond surface-level check-ins. They’re running detailed executive business reviews that connect product usage to strategic business goals. They’re co-creating comprehensive success plans with measurable outcomes that justify the investment. And they’re building customer councils and advisory boards that act as ongoing collaborative forums, not just once-a-year events. The deeper the strategic alignment, the stickier the customer.

They’re investing in high-touch, human engagement.

Yes, in a world of Zoom, they are still doing in-person QBRs with key accounts. Because face-to-face interaction creates a level of partnership that video calls can't match. They deliver high-touch, white-glove onboarding for strategic accounts to create champions from day one. And they host regional customer roundtables… small, focused events where customers learn from each other, not just from a screen.

They’re building teams with deep expertise and commercial acumen.

The narrative that CS can't sell is being disproven daily by teams leading CSM-led expansion motions. They leverage proactive health-score monitoring flagged by AI, but apply human judgment to prevent false alarms and add context. And while others build generalist teams, they invest in deep technical specialists who create exponential impact.

The common thread? None of these approaches scale easily. They all require significant investment of time and resources.

But that's precisely why they work. In a world rushing to automate, deep human investment has become the ultimate competitive moat.

The revenue reality most CS leaders miss is this: while everyone rushes to optimize for the long tail of customers (the 80% of accounts representing just 20% of revenue), they neglect the strategic accounts that truly matter.

The most effective CS organizations take a different approach. They identify 3-5 processes that can be automated for that low-revenue segment, then relentlessly focus on removing obstacles for the CSMs handling the accounts that drive 80% of the revenue.

It all comes down to the simple formula we've discussed before… make your tech investments where they create efficiency, but make your human investments where they generate retention and growth.

Are you over-optimizing for the 20% of revenue, or are you investing where it truly counts?

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