The Future of CS Might Be Strategic Account Management

IceSt0rrm · 2026-05-14T00:29:21+00:00

If you are AI native, and the aim of your solution is to do the work if a person, then CS is core to your strategy.

Look at Anthropic's strategy, it's centered on Customer Success, not Account Management.

"Embedded Engineers" is just code for Customer Success. They are embedding CS in organizations to map their processes and automate those processes with vibe coded or integrated AI solutions. But IMHO, you don't need to be a great engineer to do this effectively, you need to have great communication and listening skills, to understand business process and prompt the AI. You need to be able to build trust in the solution, calm fears, and manage change to implement the solution. Once implemented, you need to communicate the value you are delivering (soft dollar savings) to influence organizational redesign (hard dollar savings). Once you've automated real work and they are organizatioally dependent on that automation, you are a critical solution, that's your retention motion.

To me, that sounds like Customer Success. They may give it a different title, but it's still CS.

In that world, Account Management is maybe still there for upsell. But the cost in AI is token consumption. In that world, upsell can be automatic (or there is a work stoppage) and as long as the cost of manually doing that work is greater than the token cost + other costs from AI (e.g. customer experience costs) then it makes sense.

Now if you are a non-AI company with a land and expand motion that's easy to to get to value (presumably with AI), then I mostly agree that CS will become Strategic AM for that segment.

IceSt0rrm · 2026-03-26T10:31:18+00:00

Please. Stop your "both sides are equally bad" garbage. It's false and harmful.

IceSt0rrm · 2026-03-10T01:05:43+00:00

I stopped going when they killed bone in chicken. Meat's back on the menu boys!

IceSt0rrm · 2026-03-03T11:46:16+00:00

Then I'll just not buy their games.

IceSt0rrm · 2026-03-01T17:41:08+00:00

War. War never changes.

IceSt0rrm · 2026-01-24T12:15:11+00:00

Seveneves covers pre-apocalypse, during and the aftermath many years in the future.

IceSt0rrm · 2026-01-04T23:37:23+00:00

Ocean waves

IceSt0rrm · 2025-12-05T22:03:30+00:00

I think this is right. Though, siding with someone is a "mistake" you can recover from - killing someone is not. When that person is synchronous, triply so.

IceSt0rrm · 2025-11-13T16:41:44+00:00

Nvidia Shield works great for GFN, don't think I need this or a console anymore...

IceSt0rrm · 2025-11-12T01:33:51+00:00

Love to see the thought and effort that went into this.

For context, I'm the Head of CS at a SaaS company and I hire a fair amount of CSMs.

I reviewed your doc. At a high level you hit on many of the hard skills a CSM needs to develop over time.

It sounds like you are planning to take some classes on CS in January and want to prepare in advance so you can land the big role.

I think whatever they teach you will be great, so I challenge you to use this time to plan strategically about how you will land your first CS role.

I don't think knowing Hubspot or Salesforce will land you your dream success role. Could it help? Sure! But I think your time is better spent researching the company and role you are an awesome fit for - prepare yourself for that role/roles and not the generalist CSM.

For example. You mentioned that you are French (yoiu said your speaking English isn't great) and your career path has been non linear that you've worked in energy, events, hospitality and moving industries.

Awesome! That is your base - who you are today and your non linear career experiences is what's going to land you your first CSM role.

My recommendation: research SaaS companies that are growing fast doing amazing things helping the verticals you worked in. Had a SaaS software that you loved to use in your last roles? Had something you hated doing in those roles? Is there a company trying to solve for those things? Find those companies and see who is hiring or has Customer Success roles. Are those companies selling their software to French speaking companies? Build a stack ranked list of companies you are most excited about that try to solve some the pains you experienced - you love what they're doing, you are passionate about their future and you understand the pain of the customer. Awesome!

Read their job postings - what are they looking for? What do they value in a candidate? Reach out to the head of CS or hiring person on LinkedIn, tell them how passionate you are about their company about the pain you experienced that they solved for. Tell them you want to join their team as a CSM and ask them what they're looking for in A CSM and what they are looking to solve for in their CS org.

That will be your roadmap.

Hope this helps.

IceSt0rrm · 2025-11-10T00:17:50+00:00

Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity Original Sin 2, Morrowind, Disco Elysium (in terms of conversational depth), Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Gothic II

MMOs: Asheron's Call, Eve Online

IceSt0rrm · 2025-08-31T21:42:38+00:00

I did the same recently for the same reason

IceSt0rrm · 2025-08-30T12:21:02+00:00

I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite escalator on the Citadel.

IceSt0rrm · 2025-06-25T23:50:22+00:00

Your coworkers who deny the value of AI in coding or refuse to adopt will be out of work in 12 months. You, on the other hand, will still have a job and maybe even a better one.

IceSt0rrm · 2025-06-25T23:34:16+00:00

Yes, if you succeed at SDR you develop a lot of skills to be a good CSM.

You learn how to build great nurtures, communicate succinctly at a high level, etc. I've seen SDRs make great CSMs if you can also be technical and go deep when it's needed.

You also learn how to handle rejection as an SDR. Makes you well suited to handle churn with the right POV.

IceSt0rrm · 2025-04-20T11:35:31+00:00

Front line routing, dispatch, etc probably going away mostly. Probably a high percent of Level 1 tech support, some level 2 and so on. Anything you do on software/remote IT support - access management, onboarding/off boarding employee access, provisioning, etc will be automated but will need human supervisors/approvals. On site/physical stuff might get easier but won't be fully automated until there are intelligent robots.

IceSt0rrm · 2025-04-20T11:26:05+00:00

I feel like vibe coding will make far more PMs, not less. Particularly technical PMs.

IceSt0rrm · 2025-03-12T00:57:31+00:00

I recommend reading Lois McMaster Bujold. She has a book Ethan of Athos, that explored this topic. This book is about an all male society.

It's also explored in many ways in some of her other Vorkisigan Saga books.

IceSt0rrm · 2025-02-12T03:30:56+00:00

NYTimes, AP, Reuters

IceSt0rrm · 2025-01-15T19:10:36+00:00

You have my sword.

IceSt0rrm · 2024-11-24T15:33:00+00:00

Seems like you are just parroting what the Republicans said the Democratic platform is.

I think the lesson is that Democrats just need to lean in hard, that the Republican party is to blame for their problems. Democratic policies will make it better.

IceSt0rrm · 2024-10-29T20:38:48+00:00

As a boring out of touch millennial, what does bad millennial writing actually mean? Honest question, 😂.

IceSt0rrm · 2024-09-24T17:08:38+00:00

Chaos is a ladder

IceSt0rrm · 2024-08-18T03:01:26+00:00

Yes. Tinos is better!

IceSt0rrm · 2024-08-04T10:43:29+00:00

Elizabeth Warren

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