Quick summary: When planning for 2027, CS leaders must define whether CS teams own retention, expansion, or both. In addition, leaders should already be exploring how to integrate AI for task automation and enable CSMs to focus on more valuable tasks.
Heading into 2027, CS leaders face important decisions about revenue ownership and integrating AI into their customer success playbook. First, organizations need to define which revenue streams CS owns: expansion, retention, or both. Second, CS leaders should explore how AI can automate manual tasks for CSMs, and then redirect resources toward more high-impact work.
These questions are all on the field in a recent webinar hosted by Ravi Pimplaskar, Senior Director of Revenue Marketing at ChurnZero, and featuring a panel of CS leaders:
- Emily Alexander, Chief Customer Officer at WelcomeHome Software
- Lukas Alexander, VP of Customer Success at ChurnZero
- Jeff Davison, Chief Customer Officer at Unanet
To celebrate the return of football, the webinar is structured into four quarters. In this second of a two-part blog series, we cover quarters three and four (check out our recap covering the first two quarters here).
Want to see the full discussion? Watch the webinar in its entirety to get all the insights the panel shared.
Quarter 3: Does CS own retention or expansion?
In order to properly define the role of the CS team, businesses need to define what revenue streams it owns. The two most common CS performance metrics are retention and expansion:
- Retention is your ability to retain your existing customer base. It represents one of the most crucial metrics for CS teams and directly impacts the health of the entire organization.
- Expansion is your ability to grow recurring revenue through upsells, cross-sells, and add-ons. CS teams or sales teams may be responsible for expansion, with sales more likely to handle expansion than retention.
In recent years, expansion may account for a growing share of ARR. Ravi noted that a 2025 Benchmarkit SaaS report found expansion ARR now represents 40% of total new ARR, up five points from the previous year. This makes a compelling case for CS teams to focus both on retention and expansion.
That’s the approach that Unanet implemented for its CS team, Jeff said. The CS team owns both numbers and CSM performance gets measured on a net bookings basis. After all, accounts can’t grow unless the company retains them.
But CS teams can also focus solely on retention, with sales handling expansion, Emily said – and this approach makes sense if you’re the right type of business: “We’re in senior living, so expansion is somebody buying or building a new building … so we’ve been very focused on retention and adoption metrics for our CSMs … we’re letting sales sell,” though she added that could change in the future.
Lukas noted that CSMs can also help drive growth without being responsible for expansion. For example, they can refer qualified leads to sales and identify customers that will serve as brand advocates, providing a vital resource for sales and marketing.
How to motivate CSMs
To round out the third quarter, the panel shared some tips on how to motivate CSMs:
- Fair compensation packages: If your CSMs are responsible for multiple performance metrics, make sure the compensation is fairly balanced. CSMs should be compensated for renewals, upsells, GRR, and any other revenue stream they own.
- Remove roadblocks: CSMs succeed when they believe their leaders remove roadblocks instead of creating them, Lukas said. In addition, leaders should make sure they’re celebrating wins – even if it’s a saved customer.
- Allow space for passion projects: Give your CSMs time and space to pursue passion projects or develop new ideas that benefit the company, Emily said. Working on creative projects outside of daily tasks can be a great motivator.
Quarter 4: AI-enabled customer success
Another crucial question for CS leaders is how AI can help enable customer success, without automating away the important touch points that customers appreciate. One approach is to use AI to take over the work-intensive admin tasks so that CSMs can spend more time on high-value work – Ravi referenced ChurnZero CEO You Mon Tsang’s prediction that CSMs will gain 25% – 50% bandwidth using AI by next year.
- Emily said that at WelcomeHome, that figure is aspirational, and she’d be happy to give CSMs back 20% of their time by the middle of next year.
- Jeff said that Unanet is still working toward the 20% mark, but they could get there within the next few quarters. He added that reclaimed time would be used to expand customer coverage, not reduce staff.
- Lukas said that the first 25% of that time could come from easier wins, like automating repetitive or manual tasks. The remaining time could come from using AI to handle more complex automations, like escalations, QBRs, and risk signals.
Using AI to gain bandwidth for CSMs only matters if you reinvest that time in something valuable, Lukas said. If CSMs can handle bigger customer portfolios, book more expansions, or contribute to a better GRR, then AI has helped to enable that success.
Emily recommended auditing CSM profitability by measuring CSM salaries as a percentage of their ARR. WelcomeHome used those numbers to evaluate capacity and adjust the books so that CSMs could take on more customers without risking retention rates. At the same time, the team also evaluates time saved using AI automations – such as measuring how long it takes to complete QBRs with AI vs. without.
CS leaders need to define and enable success for their teams
Whether your CS team owns retention, expansion, or some combination of both, CSMs need to know which revenue streams they own and how they’ll be compensated for meeting their goals. AI can handle manual tasks and workflows, but those automations only matter if you reallocate time toward more valuable work. As you plan ahead for 2027, define what success means for your team, then use AI to work toward those objectives.
