Real Time AI Insights Redefine How Customer Success Teams Engage Clients

AI is no longer the silent observer in customer success. It used to sift through call notes after the meeting was over, but now it’s joining the conversation. A new model is emerging where AI acts as a live copilot for customer success managers, surfacing insights and context in real time. The challenge is knowing how far to let it speak before it starts talking over human intuition.

Taylor Conyers, Senior Customer Success Manager, Enterprise at Hootsuite, has seen every version of AI’s promise play out in her eight years of B2B SaaS experience. Now, she’s watching AI shift from a back-office helper to a real-time partner in the customer conversation, changing how CSMs listen, react, and build trust.

"The biggest opportunity for AI and CSMs to come together is in the call itself. Scripts don't work, because every customer is different. What's needed is a tool that provides real-time data, objection handing, and small alerts that pop up on your screen with key context, like a recent 30% increase in that client's adoption," says Conyers. That vision is starting to come to life as real-time agent assist tools step in to support and work in concert with human agility.

• Humanity's home turf: A key piece of the puzzle lies in knowing where technology's capability ends and where human intuition ought to take the reins. "AI can analyze things a lot quicker, but it can't read the room. It can't sense when a client is frustrated, hesitant, or losing trust. That's where I believe humans are irreplaceable. It can help with the initial discovery and identify what is going on. But it takes the judgment of a CSM to understand the why behind it," explains Conyers.

• Red flags and red herrings: That limitation also includes the failure to understand context, which can lead to "false positives" where AI misinterprets neutral data as a negative signal. "I could see a whole bunch of red on a dashboard for a customer who isn't using certain platform features. But when I speak to them, they love the platform. AI would not know that. It's just flagged in red because they don't need to use those features for their strategy."

Externally, AI proves its worth by handling simple, transactional requests that prevent CSMs from becoming a bottleneck. The greater challenge, Conyers said, is replicating the subtle nuance of a human brand ambassador.

• No more bottlenecks: "I encourage my clients, if they are on a very tight timeline, to use the AI assistant that our tool provides. This prevents a situation where a customer feels it takes too long to get a response, especially when the answer is already available on the platform." It’s a simple fix that keeps momentum flowing and frees CSMs to focus on conversations that actually move the relationship forward.

• The line not yet drawn: But for that partnership to succeed, the chatbot has to capture the brand’s voice with the same care a human would. "How do you know if an AI bot can truly sound like your brand? The way I talk about Hootsuite might be completely different from how someone else would. There’s a fine line between letting AI speak for you and knowing when to step in with a human touch, and that line still isn’t clear."

Nowhere is the power of this new model clearer than in how Conyers uses AI as a personal coach. Recognizing that human notes can be subjective, she turns to AI’s objective record to uncover details about her own performance. One insight in particular, she says, proved to be a turning point that has changed how she conducts her calls.

• An alarming insight: "One insight was particularly alarming. The AI showed that on one renewal call, I talked 80% of the time, while the client only talked 20%. It was a shocking realization, and it helped me to really let the customer speak more. They speak, on a renewal call especially, the more information you get," says Conyers.

That single 80/20 data point becomes most useful when paired with the human judgment to interpret it. And that, Conyers explains, is the core of the human-AI partnership. The skill is in knowing the data is an invaluable input, but also knowing when to follow it—and when to do the exact opposite.

"Sometimes a client is steering the conversation off track, and you need to talk more to bring them back to the critical topic of their renewal. That was an interesting insight for me, and honestly, I would not have known if it wasn't for AI," she concludes.