I'm committing to 1,000 iterations

Hi there,

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak at Matik's AI + Post Sales Summit, where I shared how I use AI to build strategic Success Plans.

If you missed it, you can watch my session here.

You can also watch all summit sessions here. (Highly recommend them)

The event brought together Customer Success, Services, Operations, and Revenue leaders who are actively using AI in their day-to-day work.

I've spent the last two years experimenting with AI to improve how I research customers, prepare for executive conversations, analyze data, and build Success Plans.

So when I saw the lineup for this summit, I knew I had to attend.

One thing stood out to me almost immediately.

Many of the presenters openly admitted they don't have technical backgrounds.

They're not software engineers; most don't know how to code, and yet… they're building agents, automations, workflows, and internal tools.

The common thread wasn't technical expertise; it was a willingness to experiment.

When they got stuck, they used AI to help them get unstuck.

When something didn't work, they adjusted their approach and tried again.

And again.

And again.

As I listened to the sessions, I found myself asking a simple question:

How can I apply this to my role as a Strategic CSM?

Because the truth is, I'm still very early in my AI journey.

Yes, I use AI every day to:

• Research customers

• Analyze 10-K reports

• Prepare for executive meetings

• Build Success Plans

• Generate discovery questions

• Analyze data and identify opportunities

But many of those workflows are still surprisingly manual.

And that's what I'm excited to change.

The Summit gave me a long list of ideas I want to explore over the next few months, but here are my top 4.

Automatically updating Success Plans

Today, AI helps me build Success Plans significantly faster.

Over the last two years, I've developed prompts and workflows that help me accelerate research, executive stakeholder analysis, discovery preparation, and success planning.

Many of those workflows eventually became part of my Success Plan Playbook.

But after every discovery session, I'm still manually updating documents, capturing business outcomes, documenting success metrics, and tracking milestones.

What if that process happened automatically?

I imagine finishing a discovery call and having AI update the Success Plan with new challenges, business outcomes, success metrics, stakeholders, risks, and milestones.

That's a workflow I'd love to eliminate. Wouldn’t you?

Building a customer intelligence engine

Research is the foundation of every Success Plan I build, and Step 1 of the Success Plan Playbook.

It's also one of the most time-intensive parts of the process.

Today, I still need to search for company updates, earnings reports, leadership changes, acquisitions, and industry news.

What if AI continuously monitored those sources for me?

What if every week I received a briefing highlighting the most important developments across my strategic accounts and explaining why they matter and how to tie them back to their business outcomes?

Creating a Customer 360 view

This one might be the most impactful, and oh boy… one that excites me the most!

Imagine automatically storing every customer interaction in a single place.

• Sales conversations.

• Demo notes.

• Implementation discussions.

• Support tickets.

• Success Plans.

• Business Reviews.

Every customer conversation. Every decision. Every challenge. Every outcome.

And being able to instantly understand the customer's journey from the moment they first engaged with your company.

That would completely change how we prepare for executive conversations and maintain continuity when stakeholders change.

Yesterday, I did a fun experiment, and it blew my mind.

I provided AI 18 call transcripts from the most recent implementation of one of my customers and asked it to give me a summary of:

• Key stakeholders, their roles, and responsibilities

• Business outcomes, current challenges

• Any metrics that were brought up during the calls

This has been the most detailed Implementation-to-CS transition document I’ve seen in my life. I can literally build my initial Success Plan with that briefing.

Rebuilding my data analysis workflows

Anyone who has worked in Customer Success knows how much time disappears inside spreadsheets.

• Exporting data

• Cleaning reports

• Combining datasets

• Pivot tables

• Looking for trends

• Building recommendations

This is probably the area where I spend the most time today.

I'm excited to explore how tools like Claude Code can automate portions of that work so I can spend more time helping customers take action and less time preparing the analysis itself.

Will all of these ideas work?

Probably not.

Some of them may fail completely.

Others may require dozens of attempts before they deliver the results I'm looking for.

But one lesson I took away from the Summit is that progress doesn't come from waiting until you know exactly how to build something.

It comes from being willing to start.

To test.

To iterate.

To get stuck.

And then use AI to get unstuck.

The presenters at the Summit weren't successful because they knew exactly what to build. They were successful because they were willing to keep iterating until they figured it out.

That's the mindset I'm taking with me.

More learning.

More experimentation.

More building.

Because every hour I invest in learning how to use AI more effectively is an hour I can give back to my customers through better insights, better preparation, and better outcomes.

And if it takes 1,000 iterations to create something that helps me deliver more value to my customers, it'll be worth every one of them.

I'd love to hear from you.

What are you currently building with AI? Hit reply and let me know ☺️

Best,
Erika