CS Must Fight for a Seat at the Table

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Christine Lavery, VP of Customer Success at Conga, shares why the traditional approach to digital customer success is broken and how she's applying digital motions across all customer tiers—not just the long tail.

Christine discusses her two major priorities for 2026: implementing product analytics as the foundation for customer outcomes and rolling out SMART goals to move from vague value conversations to measurable impact. She also explores how AI is transforming customer intelligence by synthesizing structured data (product analytics) with unstructured data (emails, support tickets, NPS verbatims) to create a complete picture of customer health.

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Timestamps

0:00 - Preview & Introduction

1:25 - Meet Christine Lavery

2:15 - Overview of Conga

3:05 - Conga's acquisition of PROS and the future of CPQ

4:04 - Structure of Christine's 100-person global CS organization

6:35 - Why digital motions shouldn't be "long tail only."

9:52 - Mapping customer journeys and communication strategies

13:42 - Collaboration between CS, Product, and Marketing

19:42 - Reporting to revenue and driving growth

25:30 - Breaking down the SMART goals framework for customer outcomes

27:42 - How AI fits into product analytics and customer intelligence

31:27 - Why CS leaders must fight for a seat at the table

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What You’ll Learn

* Why limiting digital customer success motions to only "long tail" customers is a mistake

* How to scale one-to-many strategies across enterprise and strategic accounts

* How to use SMART goals to transform vague "value" conversations into measurable customer outcomes that clearly demonstrate ROI

* The difference between basic product analytics and sophisticated use-case tracking that helps you coach customers to better outcomes

* How AI synthesizes structured data (product usage) and unstructured data (emails, support tickets, NPS) to create a complete picture of customer health

* Why CS leaders must actively fight for a seat at the executive table

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Where to Find Christine Lavery

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-lavery/

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Where to Find Josh:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/

Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/