The Customer Success Playbook
Welcome to “The Customer Success Playbook,” a fresh podcast initiative spearheaded by Kevin Metzger and Roman Trebon. Immerse yourself with us in the dynamic realm of customer success, where we unravel the latest insights, inspirations, and wisdom from recognized leaders in the Customer Success domain.
Our journey began with a simple yet profound belief: that meaningful conversations can significantly impact our professional trajectory. With this ethos, we’ve embarked on a mission to bring to you the voices of seasoned and revered professionals in the field. Our episodes have seen the likes of Sue Nabeth Moore, Greg Daines, Jeff Heclker, James Scott, David Ellin, and David Jackson, who have generously shared their expertise on a variety of pertinent topics.
We’ve delved into the intricacies of Profit and Loss Statements in Customer Success with Dave Jacksson, explored the potential of Customer Success Platforms with Dave Ellin, and unravelled the role of AI in Customer Success with all guests. With Sue, we navigated the waters of Organizational Alignment, while Greg brought to light strategies for Reducing Churn. Not to be missed is James insightful discourse on the Current Trends in Customer Success and Jeff’s thoughts on Service Delivery in CS.
Each episode is crafted with the intention to ignite curiosity and foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement among customer success professionals. Our discussions transcend the conventional, probing into the proactive approach, and the evolving landscape of customer success.
Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to the industry, our goal is to propel your customer success prowess to greater heights. The rich tapestry of topics we cover ensures there’s something for everyone, from the fundamentals to the advanced strategies that shape the modern customer success playbook.
Our upcoming episodes promise a wealth of knowledge with topics like CS Math, Training, AI, Getting hired in CS, and CS Tool reviews, ensuring our listeners stay ahead of the curve in this fast-evolving field. The roadmap ahead is laden with engaging dialogues with yet more industry mavens, aimed at equipping you with the acumen to excel in your customer success journey.
At “The Customer Success Playbook,” our zeal for aiding others and disseminating our expertise to the community fuels our endeavor. Embark on this enlightening voyage with us, and escalate your customer success game to unparalleled levels.
Join us on this quest for knowledge, engage with a community of like-minded professionals, and elevate your customer success game to the next level. Your journey towards mastering customer success begins here, at “The Customer Success Playbook.” Keep On Playing!!
The Customer Success Playbook
Customer Success Playbook S3 E45 - Cairo Marsh - AI and Empathy: Can Technology Truly Understand Your Customer?
In this forward-looking Friday edition of the Customer Success Playbook, Cairo Marsh returns to round out his trilogy of episodes with a critical discussion: can artificial intelligence enhance empathy in customer experience, or does it risk eliminating the human touch? Cairo, Roman, and Kevin dive into the real-world uses of AI in sentiment analysis, automation, and service design, exploring when and how AI tools can be customer-centric rather than just cost-centric. From call centers to cultural nuance, this conversation balances optimism with realism.
Detailed Analysis: The final installment in Cairo Marsh's series on the Customer Success Playbook podcast explores the intersection of artificial intelligence and empathetic customer experience. While AI is often championed for its efficiency and cost-saving potential, Cairo is quick to caution that most implementations prioritize business needs over customer value—a misalignment that risks undermining trust.
He argues that true empathy-driven AI must empower the customer, not just the brand. The conversation unpacks this idea with practical examples: AI as a helpful tool for low-value, transactional queries ("Did my payment clear?") versus high-emotion, high-stakes moments ("I’ve been in a car accident"), where human connection is irreplaceable. The team discusses the strategic importance of context in deciding where AI belongs.
But the episode doesn't stop at critique. Kevin and Roman offer ideas on human-AI collaboration—pairing agents with AI copilots to enhance real-time service without sacrificing warmth. Cairo reinforces that the real opportunity lies in using AI to support customers on their terms, not as a substitute for authentic engagement.
In a surprisingly touching moment, Cairo shares a story from a bank in Taiwan, illustrating that sometimes, the most valuable service is simply human presence. As businesses embrace automation, remembering our innate desire for connection may be the key to designing AI with empathy.
This episode challenges us to ask: Is your AI working for you, or for your customers?
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Customer success.
Roman Trebon:Welcome back to the Customer Success Playbook podcast. I'm your host, Roman Reon, here with my co-host Kevin Metzger. Kevin, happy Friday. We made to the end of the week. We've had an amazing conversation all week with Cairo Marsh, founder of relative. We're talking empathy and marketing value. We've touched on a bunch of topics today. Know you're excited to get into the impact of artificial intelligence.
Kevin Metzger:Always love ai. Friday, Monday, we talked with Cairo about explain why empathy should guide every customer interaction. Wednesday we dove into building empathetic marketing strategies, and today it's AI Friday. So how can AI tools help or hurt brands aiming to build genuine connections? Cairo, many companies are turning to AI tools for sentiment analysis and customer feedback at scale. In your view, how does AI fit into an empathy first approach and what pitfalls should brands be aware of? I
Cairo Marsh:think it's really interesting'cause I don't know, I, I know what I think. The technology should eventually do. I think right now, and I think this is one of the challenges that I think we have as an industry, is that I think there's still a lot of emphasis on AI as a cost saving measure more than anything, and as a cost saving measure, completely understand it, right? Completely understand. But, but I think that also ends up coming from the vantage point of the brand or the business, not the service value add for the consumer. So everyone, I think, you know, every consumer has these nightmares of being like stuck on the, the, the phone queue with, with whatever, uh, partner trying to figure out how can I speak to an operator? Can I speak to an operator? Right? And, and, and the brand is saving money, right? Is how it feels like it, yeah. And whether that's, whether that's, you know, a legacy system which isn't quite artificial intelligence or more evolved sort of chatbots or whatever that do incorporate artificial intelligence tools. The question is, are you doing it for the consumer? Are you doing it for the um, for the business? I think, I think the challenge brands has right now is I think the general perceptions of doing it for the business, which will therefore not create an empathy or trust. It creates Yeah, I get it. We're saving money. You have a view of where you think it should go? Well, I think ultimately look and don't, and don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with saving money. I completely understand it. I completely understand it as a business, but I think ultimately, I. What you wanna be able to do, what consumers want, I think, is they want to feel more empowered, right? So I think, I think the question is how do I as a brand or a business, when I introduce different AI tools, sort of put them not at my, not to do my bidding, but to help do the consumer's but bidding. Right? So I think, and that may be, and, and I think at scale, I, I think there's. Probably, in my opinion, only a few companies can really do it right, because you want it to work across platforms. But I think of AI sort of agents, if you will, being able to be assigned to me as an individual where I can sort of tap into that AI agent and go, here's the things that I want you to buy or want you to manage to be more efficient. For me, that's powered or enabled by Brand X, whoever that is, that will, um, simplify my life. I think AI is a, is a, is a consumer empowerment, will be an amazing thing. And I, and I think that'll happen. I think it's, it's a matter of when, not if. Um, I think that will be an amazing thing. Until then, I don't think it will, it will, AI will be positioned today as something making the end user or consumer's life more beneficial. It'll, right now, I think today it's more about the, the business of the brand.
Roman Trebon:We had a guest on recently Cairo talking about this in the call center, right? You had mentioned the call center on Wednesday. If I call into a call center and I just want to know if my payment cleared. Use ai, right? It's a low touch, low value. Great. Like you paid it on Thursday, great job. If I am in a car accident and I need to file a claim, get that AI outta there. I want talk to someone and I want to get it done right? And if, if you start having your agent trying to handle that, my frustration grows. Right? So it's that balance. And I think right now it's like, to your point, it's all about the cost savings. And I think companies are struggling a little bit with where does that human touch, where's that human touch come in? Right?
Cairo Marsh:I think that's a great point. If I can just add on, I think it, it is you that, that example of the, the car accident's perfect in the sense that it's contextual that says, when are you really gonna make a difference? As a brand, you don't make a difference to tell me what my balance is. It's mean, it's meaningless, but when I'm in a jam and you step up and help me, that's where you actually do make a difference. And that's really where I want to. Feel the impact and the point of view and the per perception. I think that's also another, and with technology in general, I think the more that we all as a business society adopt similar tools, we sort of create a very commoditization of our brand experience in a lot of capacities, right? One call center bots like the other one who cares, but the difference will be in how the actual. Customer service person engages with you and treats you differently based on the culture of that organization and where to where to interject. Those moments become really critical. So you still provide cost savings, but you allow yourself to be distinctive, not by the same unifying technology that everyone else has.
Kevin Metzger:Yeah, that's a great point. I do think that the, you know, the ability for sentiment analysis and AI is starting to, to get there. Sure. Um, and looking at and talking with people when you're interacting with a bot or an agent of some sort, I. And you start seeing the sentiment change and the interaction change, that's an opportunity where you can start creating those exit clauses to drive into the human element and bring, bring the human in the call. One of the things I know that, uh, Roman and I have talked about in the past is where you put the AI agent as well. Does the AI agent sit there as the interface to the customer, or do you break. Bring a human on with an AI agent, both helping to drive the customer experience. Yep. I think that's another opportunity, right? So that. The age, the AI agent has all the knowledge that you might need to access, but having that conversation with a real human who can help help you work with the AI agent to really drive all of the stored knowledge Yep. To, to the right answers. I think, uh, those are where we've, we're starting to. I, I think we've got a lot of opportunities to start changing what the customer experience looks like.
Cairo Marsh:I think that makes sense. And if I can just add one last thought. It reminded me of a story like, uh, like recently,'cause I said we opened up, uh, an office not too long ago in Taiwan. I was in the bank in Taiwan, and banks in Taiwan are notoriously slow. They don't go very fast. You're there for a while. And I was there, the, the a few people there waiting, usually a little bit older, and they were there waiting for like hours. And I was asking, you know, the person helping me translate in Taiwan, like, um. Why, why this is so inefficient, why all these people here? And part of what they were saying was that, well, I, these people are retired, they don't have anything else to do. This is, this is a day out. This is good fun. You know what I mean? Like, and, and, and I kind of understood that. My point in that is I think there is a natural human desire for humans, right? Like there's a, there's a need for belonging. And I think as, as brands use AI and they use technology. When they figure out what are, what are those right points where you can combine that, where my need to belong, my need to connect, my need for someone to actually understand me gets empath, gets, gets overlaid with the technology. That'll be critical because I think that example that I was saying about in the time is just people need people, you know, and I don't think that goes away with technology.
Roman Trebon:This is awesome stuff. Thank you for joining us all week. You've rocked it. You knocked it outta the ballpark. This is terrific. Uh, I would say catch out, catch Cairo in the Bronx, but he may be in Taipei, he may be in Japan. So Kyro, where can our audience keep tabs on you? I know on LinkedIn. Where else can they find out where, what's, what's the latest you have going on?
Cairo Marsh:Find, you can find me on LinkedIn or or Instagram. My name's Cairo Marsh. I'm pretty much the only one, so if you type that in right, you're bound to find me. The, the other place, obviously a company website is R-E-L-A-T-I v.com relative no e.com Find us there and like happy to continue this conversation with anyone who would like to.
Roman Trebon:That's awesome, Cairo. I really appreciate it. Uh, to our audience, this is the end of our mini series with Cairo. Again, you can connect with him on LinkedIn, check out relative, uh, and, and more. He's, he's bringing great insights I to our audience. If you found these episodes helpful, please subscribe and share them with your team, your colleagues, your friends. We really appreciate it. Don't forget, subscribe, comment, like give our podcast or a rating that helps us grow our audience. We really appreciate you listening. We'll be back next week with more customer success strategies and insights, Kevin, until next time, keep on playing.
