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From San Francisco to Sundance to NYC: Takeaways for Modern CS

Andrew Snyder
By
October 14, 2025

Tingono being remote means I get to live and work from my home state of North Carolina—which is great...until my calendar decided to play Tetris with time zones. 

 

Week 1: San Francisco for Customer Success Summit and the Chief Customer Officer Summit. 
Week 2: Sundance for CS100.  
Week 3: New York for Customer Success Week.  

 

So, naturally, I did what any rational person would do: stuffed snacks into a backpack, memorized every airport coffee line from SFO to JFK, and pinballed from coast to mountains to coast. Somewhere between jet lag and too many lanyards, I realized my favorite way to understand what’s actually happening in CS is just talking to people. 
 

Three weeks of those conversations later, a few patterns stood out loud and clear. 

 

1️⃣ Actions beat dashboards 

 

Dashboards are helpful. But the teams winning right now are the ones that move from signal → action → outcome. They’re building systems where risk alerts trigger plays automatically—so they act before the QBR turns into a post-mortem. 

 

That’s exactly the shift Tingono helps power: action-ready insights that prioritize where to focus and what to do next. Because prettier charts don’t reduce churn—timely action does. 

 

2️⃣ “Value provided” ≠ “Value realized” 

 

One of the spiciest consistent talking points was about proving impact, not activity — to both your customers and your company. Too many teams stop at “we delivered value.” The best ones go further and make sure customers actually see and feel that value. 

 

They don’t just send adoption metrics; they connect the dots between usage, outcomes, and business impact — “Because you did X, you achieved Y.” 

Internally, the same shift is happening. Winning CS orgs tie every save and expansion back to revenue metrics: NRR, GRR, and pipeline influenced. 

 

3️⃣ Earlier beats louder 

 

By the time churn risk is obvious, it’s expensive. The best teams are spotting early behavioral and commercial shifts weeks in advance—then nudging customers before things wobble. 

 

Think of it as “customer success time travel.” Predictive models plus smart automation mean you’re solving problems before they make it to a renewal deck. 

 

4️⃣ Automate context, not conversation 

 

Nobody wants to sound robotic. The pattern that works: automate the prep—data pulls, insights, recommendations—so humans can handle the nuance. 

 

That’s what Tingono’s intelligence layer delivers—pre-call briefs, next-best actions, and prioritized queues that free CSMs from spreadsheets and slide decks. 

 

5️⃣ AI isn’t coming. It’s here. 

 

Agentic AI isn’t a theory anymore...it’s running inside the best CS orgs. AI is already surfacing risk, recommending plays, and following through automatically. 

 

At Tingono, we see this daily: customers cutting churn and driving expansions without adding headcount, because their systems think with them, not just for them. 

 

6️⃣ Finance is your friend 

 

When CS and Finance agree on metrics, the “prove our value” conversation disappears. A few companies are even running “CS P&L” reviews—forecasted risk, saves won, and expansion pipeline—all in one view. 

 

That’s the future: CS as a measurable growth driver, not just a department of good intentions. 

 

7️⃣ Learning loops beat heroics 

 

The best teams treat their playbooks like products: launch, measure, iterate. Every save or expansion becomes a data point that sharpens the next one.

 

That’s where AI + human collaboration shines—systems learn, CSMs adapt, and the loop keeps compounding value. 

 

🎤 Bonus Takeaway: Jimmer Fredette can still get buckets 

 

CS100 Summit in Sundance brought all the insights—and, yes, watching Jimmer Fredette casually drain jumpers from the logo (metaphorically) during the keynote was an unexpected highlight.  

 

☕ Closing thought 

 

From San Francisco to Sundance to New York, the signal was consistent: The future of Customer Success is proactive, predictive, and human. 

 

AI anticipates and accelerates. People build the relationship. When those two collaborate, teams stop defending value—and start creating it. 

 

That’s the motion we’re building toward at Tingono: fewer “FYIs,” more “action taken".