The Gomocha team recently attended Field Service Palm Springs. This special event brought together professionals in the field service industry to learn from experts and network with their peers.
I was one of the attendees and took detailed notes on the information I learned to apply as a customer success manager at Gomocha.
Artificial intelligence was a major theme throughout the conference. It was woven into conversations about efficiency, automation, and the evolving role of service organizations.
One presentation stood out for me. Katie Diaz, Leader of Customer Success & Services Enablement at Schneider Electric, shared a compelling perspective on how customer success, when empowered by AI, transforms the customer experience and becomes a critical engine for profitability. Her insights reinforced what I deeply believe: Customer success isn’t just a support function — it’s also a strategic growth driver.
Here’s a breakdown of the key takeaways from this Field Service Palm Springs session that had the most significant impact on me:
What Customer Success Should Be Doing
To maximize value, today’s customer success teams are responsible for much more than reactive support. They play a proactive, strategic role by focusing on:
- Onboarding customers to ensure seamless adoption
- Building customer success plans that align with long-term business goals
- Creating relationship maps to identify key stakeholders and foster meaningful engagement
- Overseeing commitments to ensure customers’ needs are met
- Collaborating across commercial, operations, innovation, and offer management teams to create a unified approach
- Leading business reviews and actively addressing any churn risks
- Ensuring renewal security by building long-lasting, value-driven relationships
How Customer Success Drives Profitability
Reducing cost to serve: A well-executed customer success program can generate up to 91% ROI over three years. Customer success teams reduce costs and improve efficiency by streamlining customer interactions and addressing issues proactively.
Increasing expansion: Companies prioritizing customer success retain over twice as many customers. This retention opens the door to greater upsell, cross-sell, and customer lifetime value.
Boosting retention: A 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a 25% to 95% boost in profitability, which is a powerful case for making customer success a strategic priority.
AI’s Role in the Evolution of Customer Success
AI is reshaping how we approach customer success by delivering intelligence and automation that enables smarter, faster, more targeted action.
Key AI capabilities include:
- Customer health and churn risk detection
- Usage and adoption analytics
- Customer sentiment analysis
- Opportunity identification for growth
- Engagement intelligence
- Personalization at scale
AI enhances visibility and precision. It empowers teams with the data to prioritize effectively, tailor interactions, and act before problems arise.
What Customer Success Can Achieve with AI
When customer success teams harness AI effectively, they unlock new levels of strategic impact for proactive outreach and retention planning, data-driven success plans, stronger executive business reviews, and more.
In essence, AI equips customer success with intelligence, and customer success transforms that intelligence into impact.
This Field Service Palm Springs session was a powerful reminder for me that the future of service is both tech-enabled and human-led. AI makes teams smarter and faster, but customer success drives the most important outcomes — retention, growth, and profitability. As the field service landscape continues to evolve, the organizations that empower customer success with the right tools, insights, and strategic seat at the table will be the ones that lead the way.
Visit my LinkedIn profile: Amy Martin