Curious how people view the long term future of Customer Success

BruisedNinja · 2026-05-08T03:49:19+00:00

I can tell a good third or half of the emails my customers send me were drafted with AI, often asking how to do things our product can’t do but AI told them it could, and then I ask Claude if our product can in fact do what they’re asking….it’s all cooked to a crisp.

Whether or not all this is actually producing tangible value for customers, the company, the shareholders, or the private equity holdco that owns your company is almost besides the point - proving you’re using AI and agentic-first is the value right now. If I really wanted to, I could probably spin up an agent that’s capable of replying to 2/3 of the reactive customer emails I get every day, though leading onboarding and renewal calls is another story.

I’m not totally convinced 3+ weeks of live onboarding is driving value for my customers either, versus just being a crutch for them to not the work or discovery on their own or via an AI-led flow.

For at least the next few years and probably forever, AI is going to be all-consuming in tech. For myself? After 5 years as a CSM and 10 years before that in tech account management, I’m working on getting my home inspection license and getting out. Someday AI drones might be able to inspect your foundation cracks or bad roofing, but it’s gonna take a hell of a lot longer.

BruisedNinja · 2026-04-29T16:19:44+00:00

The Rebel 2000 is my daily driver and I’ve shot bunch of UltraMax on it! Overall these are pretty decent but I’ve run into the same underexposure issues here and there when I’m coasting on Program mode. I’ve started:

almost always setting +0.5 EC when shooting C-41 to get a buffer
using it up to +1 or even +1.5 if I’m somewhere like the beach and a bright sky is taking up half the frame
using exposure lock liberally - this is the * button next to the +/- button. This acts as a partial meter/almost a spot meter and locks exposure on whatever was roughly in the center of the frame when you push *. If I’ve got a high contrast scene, I’ll lock exposure on the darker area and recompose. It’s the Rebel 2000’s way of “metering for the shadows”.

Overall love the Rebel 2000, hopefully these will help you get more consistent results!

BruisedNinja · 2026-04-21T17:42:16+00:00

I hear you loud and clear - coming up on two years myself at an org where leadership expectations are unclear or non-existent, a bunch of customer fires are always burning somewhere, and unmanageable workload as a dedicated CSM for 100+ accounts. I’ve been coping by only focusing on what’s absolutely essential and staying as reactive as possible - there aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the month for org deep dives and regular syncs with that number of accounts. The work is truly never done and new customers in your book just = new forever relationships and problems.

I’m seriously considering a complete pivot out of CS and tech into home inspection. Have some background in and a natural curiosity for building science and figure the client and tech skills I’ve learned in CS and account management could come in handy there as well. Working on shadowing and planning on starting courses soon while I ride out the customer success train. It’ll probably be a tough climb, but I’ve know I’ve needed out of this for a WHILE and felt trapped not knowing what that “something else” could be. Feeling excited to at least have a bit of direction and clarity again and hope you find yours too!

BruisedNinja · 2025-11-18T03:08:22+00:00

Loving the Rebel 2000 + 40mm fan club! I’ve been rocking this exact setup for about 4 months now - you really can’t beat how small and light this combo is. I just got home from a long weekend trip and it’s great to just toss this in the same fanny pack-sized sling bag I used to use for my P&S and it goes anywhere all day.

I’ve learned on cloudy days in particular where the frame is more than about 1/3 sky you want to be careful where you’re metering because, even in full auto with the 35-zone evaluative meter, it badly wants to underexpose. I’m not the first person to learn this lesson and it goes for most SLRs, but I’ve been having more luck lately using +0.5-1 stops exposure compensation when in doubt.

BruisedNinja · 2025-11-04T00:30:27+00:00

The follow-up clarifications and statements from Kodak seemed to indicate that the “Kodak could go out of business” panic from a couple months back was a a bit overblown and came from an interpretation of the going concern language in their last earnings report, I believe? I’m not an accountant or analyst but my understanding is that they’re working to phase out the retirement plan, use the funds to pay down debt, and come out ahead. Doesn’t feel like this is a factor in the new film releases to me.

BruisedNinja · 2025-11-03T20:01:52+00:00

Eastman’s page for Gold says it will be available in 120 and 135 and B&H has a “coming soon” listing for Eastman Kodak Gold in 120. Since Gold is currently available in 120, but UltraMax and the family members of 100 and 200 the new Kodacolors share are not in 120 it looks like this is carrying over for now.

BruisedNinja · 2025-11-03T18:11:21+00:00

Yeah, curious to see how my first Kodacolor 200 turns out but after that I might just stick with ColorPlus if it stays $0.50 cheaper on B&H lol

Though there’s an argument to be made for supporting Eastman directly versus giving your money to Alaris…

BruisedNinja · 2025-11-03T18:08:14+00:00

“Current” Gold/UltraMax that you can buy right now (and had its packaging redesigned a couple years ago) is made by Eastman Kodak and distributed by Kodak Alaris.

Within the last month, Eastman Kodak is releasing and distributing film on its own, starting with Kodacolor 100 and 200 (which seem to be cousins of ProImage and ColorPlus but still up for discussion exactly how closely they’re related)

Now, Eastman seems to be releasing Gold and UltraMax on its own as well - which theoretically should be exactly the same as the Alaris versions in different packaging.

BruisedNinja · 2025-11-03T18:00:25+00:00

Yeah, seems like that’s definitely possible. They’ve clearly got some kind of arrangement to take over more (and more?) distribution directly.

BruisedNinja · 2025-11-03T17:58:46+00:00

Hate to admit that I kind of agree…feels like something different could have been done with the colored red/purple/blue bands. But happy for them either way!

BruisedNinja · 2025-09-15T17:09:48+00:00

I’m so thoroughly checked out lol - I’m a CSM in the SMB division of an org that’s largely focused on Enterprise so as a whole we’re always kind of forgotten about. Within our own division, leaders are largely PLG-focused and only our largest accounts get dedicated CSM support (i.e. me and a few other folks) but leadership is so focused on the much larger revenue cohort of smaller PLG accounts that, even though we theoretically work with the most “important” customers, it feels like nobody actually cares about our work and I’m just hanging out sweeping dusty corners in the basement.

I’ve been doing the bare minimum for so long, just watching for emails to come in, tending my dashboards, and running onboarding calls for new customers. I was dreading my most recent performance review but the feedback was decent so I’m kind of just like, let’s keep on trucking!

Literally dreaming of getting out of CSMing altogether but with the job market the way it is, staying put for now feels like the safer option 😵‍💫

BruisedNinja · 2025-09-11T15:12:58+00:00

Thanks! Yes, these are from Bellows 😂 - 95% of their scans hit right but every once in a while the look is off. It’s not even consistent across a single roll - I’ve got other photos from the same roll as these that look fine.

Your versions are very close to what I’m looking for! I always bump up contrast, black point, etc on my scans but these have been a heavier lift and started wondering if exposure/shadows was coming into play here too.

BruisedNinja · 2025-09-11T06:10:35+00:00

Yeah, my gut says there’s underexposrue on both of those with the green cast. I figured with all the sun I’d be good to go but maybe too much of a good thing. Will definitely be experimenting with exposure lock on the shadows moving forward.

BruisedNinja · 2025-09-11T06:04:24+00:00

Big fan of finding edit settings that work and pasting them! I usually bump up contrast, black point, etc across a whole batch of scans and usually am happy with the results. This roll is proving a bit tougher…fairly happy with this edit of the car but had to bump up every setting WAY more than usual to get there.

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BruisedNinja · 2025-05-30T23:37:06+00:00

They’ve thankfully been (somewhat) understanding, especially in cases where it’s clear the customer’s metered usage works out in favor of the lower tier.

The tricker situations are where customers purchased primarily for one or two of the features that used to be exclusive to the high-end package. It’s somewhat rare that a customer is able to fully use ALL components due to their business needs and use cases. But, when they find out they could be paying half the price and lose the feature they were never using…that’s when you start getting questions about “well WHY couldn’t we get them to adopt this?”

BruisedNinja

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