Customer Success is a watershed.

Chris Bové offers VP-level leadership of global teams, strategy & operations.

Leading global Customer Success teams is a thrill because it sits at the intersection of product, revenue, and long-term customer value. This is especially true in the last two years, as strategy turns into measurable impact, and cost centers turn into profit engines.

A CS organization today is a truly healthy cross-functional team.

The finest reward comes from orchestrating all the interconnected parts: people, process, data, and culture, into a cohesive engine that consistently delivers value at scale.

This is now a human-first industry augmented by AI and automation tools that will do all those fun, deep-metric-y things you're looking for: 

• boosting adoption
• rescuing revenue
• mitigating churn
• delighting customers

Yes... Drive with data. 

Yes... Companion with AI. 

But... Lead with empathy.

[View Chris Bové's CV]

Users realize a company's strength through its Community.

Customers have less patience today. They want to see immediate value. They want a proactive, resource-rich environment that supports its products. 

Your Community can provide this internally to stakeholders through EoV (evidence of value) as a metric. Gone are the days where your Community is just there to regurgitate the value props put forth by the marketing team. It can now be a truly proactive growth tool. 

It starts with progressive adoption, and runs consistent learning (called "everboarding"). Then...

• Deploy onboarding to net-new. 
• Craft customer enablement. 
• Support it with conversational AI. 
• Connect it to CRM and your Support Teams for a seamless CX.

[Learn more about Community]

ProServe is your company's own consultants on strategy + tech.

The Professional Services Org is the specialized consulting and implementation arm of the company. It helps customers get the product configured, adopted, and delivering real value. 

This is highly necessary for complex deployments, either for strategic accounts or for when the product itself is complicated.

The PSO team's mission may vary, but here are the bullets:

• Set up success from Day 1. 
• Accelerate measurable ROI
• Project-based customer-focused consulting
• Get in, get out. Let Support and CS handle the rest.

Also, note that in 2025–2026, buyers are:

• Cutting budgets
• Consolidating vendors 
• Demanding more impact 
• Seeking cheaper or AI-native tools
   

In that climate, the Services team becomes a value proof engine, not just an implementation arm.

[Learn more about PSO]

Helping customers find value so that they stay.

When CS is siloed, it fails. When the entire company owns it, with trusted handoffs to/from various teams, it is highly effective as an engagement framework. It smashes renewal records and closes OKRs in the full spectrum LAER workflow. 

Chris Bové can help you evaluate your company's CS strategy. You'll start with the desired customer outcomes, then design and drive the strategy to achieve them. 

• Set the tone with progressive adoption
• Create proactive engagements
• Work 1:1 to help them achieve the success they deserve.

[Learn more about CS]

The new strategy is upgrading from LAER to LASER.

Digital Customer Success is evolving too quickly to hold on to strategy from even 2-3 years ago. The targets of proactive reach-out include customers, users, freeware usage, and also much more segmentation in Enterprise, Mid-Market and SMB. 

Leverage AI-companioned workflows, automation, and human-touch Digital CSMs. Examine scaled workflows. Reconfigure Customer Journey for LASER.

Scale is determined by the levels of tech-touch and hybrid engagement a company can support.

[Learn more about Digital CS]

USERS (not customers) are your strongest influencers of retention.

Times are changing. Customer Success is outgrowing itself. CSMs often see in B2B that the role of the customer is merely the purchaser. The most important influencer of renewals are the users of that purchase, and users are largely ignored by many companies running their CS processes. 

The changes in sentiment and approach between these two roles is vital. It requires different enablement materials; different tactics in proactive reach-out; and different playbooks that drive success.

[Learn more about US]

Seatbelts on! CS Ops is about to go from 0-60 in 2026.

The Ops Team always seems to be the last in line - the one that never hears about anything until it's too late. But don't worry, that's changing this year. 

Countless companies out there have made a huge shift in priorities in the last two years, consolidating their tech stacks and shedding unnecessary workflows. Conserving spend is everywhere, but the pendulum is swinging back. 

Solutions Engineering teams are going to be the next big focus, and it'll probably hit in Q3 2026 as companies plan on transforming their homegrown internal CS Ops in a big way. 

Note: If you're in Ops now, and are not yet solving real CS problems with an open-mind and with a hyper-proactive attitude, then you may fall behind the curve.