Quick summary: In 2025, digital customer success will evolve beyond efficiency to focus on efficacy, measuring how digital strategies impact revenue, not just cost. Expect to see increased use of in-app engagement, broader adoption of digital programs within the enterprise, and a shift toward AI-driven personalization, planning, and productivity. Forward-thinking CS leaders will embrace these tools to scale smarter, deepen impact, and future-proof their customer relationships.
2025 still sounds like some far-off, distant year in the future to me, with flying cars, robot maids, and all sorts of other sci-fi phenomena. But now that 2025 is actually here, although 2024 certainly had its fair share of futuristic innovations (a desk bike to charge your phone, anyone?!), and you may catch a self-driving car or two roaming your city, it’s not exactly the Jetsons reality of my mind’s eye (yet). Still, just as 2024’s customer success trends pushed the boundaries of what teams could achieve, 2025 brings its own wave of transformation.
While those consumer innovations may still be a few years away, 2025 is sure to be a year of creativity and change in the B2B technology space, particularly in customer success (CS). And even more specifically, in the sphere of digital customer success. Customer success predictions have evolved rapidly over the years. Just look at the difference between 2019 assumptions and 2025 trends. And now, digital CS is stepping firmly into the spotlight as the domain where modern leaders are investing in both scale and sophistication.
You don’t have to live in a futuristic time warp to know that customers (yes, even B2B and SaaS customers) are more and more online, working when and how it works for them, and they want (and sometimes need) to engage with your products and your company in that same flexible, at-their-fingertips kind of way. With that in mind, here are my top four predictions on the digital customer success trends we’ll see from forward-thinking teams this year.
Digital customer success trend #1: Efficacy, along with efficiency
Making customer success teams more efficient has long been a stated goal of many digital programs. CS leaders work towards KPIs like reducing cost to serve, increasing customer success manager (CSM) capacity, or adding coverage to the portion of their customer base that’s made up of small businesses and currently has to fend for themselves.
These are noble goals. Being fiscally responsible and figuring out how to make your budget work for you are critical capabilities of any CS leader. But if you’re only measuring the success of your digital initiatives by the impact they have on your team’s efficiency, you’re missing the other half of the equation. When you look at increasing efficiency, it’s all about reducing costs. But equally important, on the other side of the balance sheet, is revenue.
How are these digital programs impacting revenue? That’s where measuring efficacy comes in. Are these messages and engagement strategies actually working to move lagging metrics like net revenue retention (NRR), churn rate, and expansion revenue, in the direction you want them to be going?
Just remember that it takes time (usually in years, not weeks or months) to see the impact on those big-hitting lagging indicators, because many of them won’t have an opportunity to change until the customer’s next renewal. In the meantime, be sure to measure engagement metrics (like email opens and clicks), gather product usage data, and other intermediary measures like time to onboard (TTO), time to value (TTV), net promoter score (NPS), and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. By following this path of measurement, you’ll be able to draw a line from your digital programs and campaigns all the way to retention and growth over time.
Digital customer success trend #2: An in-app takeover
I hear “email is dead” all the time, and yet it’s still the default channel used by most customer success teams to deliver automated messages to customers. In 2025, I predict that in-app engagement, through pop-ups, guides, and walkthroughs, will start to take over some of that market share.
Every time I talk about in-app (or in-product) automation, I can’t help but be reminded of Clippy, everyone’s (least) favorite virtual assistant, via Microsoft circa the 90’s. Clippy is no longer with us, having been fired by Microsoft in 2007, but the intrusive little paper clip has left a legacy from which all in-application virtual assistants have sprung. But don’t let this comparison discourage you. I have a former colleague who instead, liked to compare this type of in-app guide to video game tutorials that instruct you on how to move, jump, look around, and so on.
Whichever analogy makes it come to life for you, this is the ultimate example of “meeting your customers where they are.” Seamlessly releasing new features, steering customers toward desired behaviors, optimizing your customers’ experience – anything you need to educate your customers on can happen in-app, while they are immersed in the world that is your product.
Digital customer success trend #3: More digital in the enterprise
The debate on whether digital is a segment or a strategy rages on (and honestly, will probably never end). My perspective here is that digital is both a strategy and a segment, and it’s not an either/or proposition. On the one hand, it wouldn’t be fiscally responsible to assign a dedicated CSM to each of your smallest customers, as a group, they simply don’t spend enough with you to justify the cost of consistent one-on-one engagement. But does that mean they shouldn’t hear from you at all? Of course not! You develop digital strategies to cover that segment, with opportunities for customers to ‘raise their hand’ and connect with a pooled CSM or other resource when the need arises.
But this doesn’t mean that digital is only for that segment of your smallest customers. It is (and should be) a broader strategy to help you accomplish your goals in a scalable manner. The most cutting edge technology companies and customer success teams are already starting to implement engagement models based on how the customer wants to interact with you, not just on company size or annual spend. I predict that 2025 will be the year when a larger share of CS teams catch up to those early adopters.
In the enterprise space, where customers often have a dedicated CSM, automation and digital strategies should be used to complement and strengthen those relationships. Automating manual repetitive tasks, like welcome emails, quarterly business review (QBR) scheduling reminders, and renewal alerts, can then free up CSMs’ time to have more thoughtful, strategic conversations with their customers. Providing self-service resources, like a knowledge base, community, or even automated QBR content, enables the same customers to get answers in real-time, whenever they may need it. This removes friction and builds trust, creating even more opportunity for the CSM to act as a trusted advisor, sharing best practices and strategic guidance, rather than simply problem-solving or answering rapid-fire questions.
Digital customer success trend #4: AI, AI, and more AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) became the ultimate buzzword in 2024, and that’s not going to change any time soon. Many customer success executives have been cautiously curious about AI up to this point, but have yet to commit fully to investing in its capabilities. 2025 is the year that must change and CS leaders must uplevel the skillsets of their teams to incorporate AI into their ways of working. Those who fail to do so will quickly be left in the dust – not because AI will replace them, but rather because they will be replaced with leaders who have gained the skills required to reap the benefits of using AI to their advantage.
The use cases for AI seem nearly endless in the broader world, which often contributes to the sense of overwhelm when it comes to actually using it. Some of my favorite uses for AI in customer success, that I think we’ll start to see more and more of in 2025, include:
- Customer journey mapping – AI can enable a bird’s eye perspective of your customers’ experience with your company, from evaluation through purchase, usage, renewal, and growth.
- Customer success plan development – leveraging AI to build joint success plans with customers can help rapidly speed up this process at the beginning of a new customer relationship.
- Scalability and CSM to account ratios – when it comes to segmentation, tiering, and assigning books of business to your CSMs, AI can be a massive problem solver and time saver.
- Personalization at scale – AI can deliver personalized experiences and persona-based engagements to every customer, analyzing data in real time and tailoring content to individual preferences.
- Designing playbooks – use AI to identify good, better, and best possibilities to refine action-based playbooks for internal and external audiences.
- Measuring engagement and efficacy – save time and energy in measuring and evaluating the key metrics I shared earlier by relying on AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data.
The rapid pace of development and new capabilities in AI mean we’ll probably see new uses in 2025 beyond this list that we haven’t even thought of yet! I, for one, can’t wait to see what creativity and technology combined come up with in that regard.
2025 is sure to be another year of change, growth, and scalability when it comes to digital customer success. Which of these strategies will you implement this year?
Marley Wagner is a freelance digital customer success consultant and fractional chief marketing officer. Her work centers on helping B2B tech companies increase revenue and accelerate growth with both prospective and existing clients through organic channels that emphasize brand reputation and trust. Read more from Marley Wagner at ChurnZero here.
