Principal AI Specialist, Customer Success

Principal AI Specialist, Customer Success

The Principal AI Specialist, Customer Success role is a dynamic customer advisory role responsible for helping customers achieve business outcomes as fast as possible using Zendesk AI solutions.

The overarching objective is to ensure Zendesk customers realize business value and outcomes from their investment in Zendesk's Advanced AI Agents. This role works across a customer's organization—from CXO-level to senior customer experience leaders, administrators running Zendesk solutions, and ProdDev teams. When our customers realize value and succeed, Zendesk succeeds. This is a specialist function and key enabler of our customers' success and Zendesk's company growth aspirations, with AI being the key driver.

To achieve these goals, the mission of the AI Specialist team will be to:

• Drive AI adoption through outcome-driven engagement throughout the customer's journey and by being a product expert using Zendesk's Advanced AI Agents
• Be the AI specialist partner in Success for the Customer Success organization, functioning as an internal business partner and driving AI adoption into overall success planning
• Work hand in hand with Customer Success, Professional Services and ProdDev to ensure customers are realizing value with AI

Job Responsibilities

• Proactive customer health management through intentional, outcome-driven customer engagement
• Collaborating closely with Zendesk customers and colleagues, particularly Zendesk Customer Success Managers, to accelerate AI adoption and customer value realization
• Cultivating, strengthening, and accelerating growth of Zendesk customer relationships
• To deliver on those three overarching objectives, AI Specialists, Customer Success will:
• Be a product expert and develop a comprehensive understanding of how Zendesk's Advanced AI Agents can be used to create value for customer service teams and in Zendesk CRM, how Zendesk's AI Agents complement and interact with other products in Zendesk's suite.
• Deliver a world-class customer experience anchored on getting our Zendesk customers to value as quickly as possible — Partner with Professional Services by engaging in customer onboarding by helping to define objectives, project scope and minimizing time-to-value. Ensure continued engagement after launch.
• Drive, enable and remove obstacles to adoption of Zendesk's Advanced AI Agents — Keep engagement high through recurring outcome-driven engagement, committing to mutual Success Plans with each customer, outlining strategic goals, mutual initiatives, what measured success looks like, and a roadmap of future projects to drive solution sophistication, maximize value and secure renewal.
• Tirelessly advocate for the Zendesk customer across the ecosystem, including bringing prioritized & data-driven customer feedback and insight back into the Zendesk product development team.
• Deliver a heightened customer experience through proactive engagement and communication with the customer, both written and verbal. Provide prescriptive best practices, resources, expertise and continuously link customer adoption to quantified/qualified customer value & business outcomes.
• Develop strong relationships with customer leaders at all levels of an organization – from CIO and business leaders to IT experts, professionals and architects
• In addition to core customer-facing responsibilities above, AI Specialists, Customer Success must also be able to:
• Forge tight relationships with the rest of the Zendesk customer account team — including customer success, sales, support and professional services. Provide regular internal reporting on automation, product adoption, and account health KPIs, and develop strategies to improve them. Uncover and qualify expansion opportunities and work closely with Account Executives on closing them.
• Understand all aspects of overall customer health and know how to proactively manage health – Work closely with the account's Customer Success Manager to understand overall success plan status, relationship strength, product adoption/usage/currency, level of engagement, NPS and customer experience-metrics
• Learn and understand new software solutions in the customer experience space, particularly those leveraging AI. Previous experience in the customer experience space ideal.
• Be able to liaise with technical teams, both internally and externally, including testing and providing feedback on beta features, troubleshooting technical challenges (i.e. product, CRM integrations, APIs) and collaborating with Product to implement fixes.
• Track all engagement and touchpoints with accounts and provide continuous, unbiased intelligence on the status of customer's overall health.

Qualifications

• Must have a minimum of 12+ years of related experience in Customer Success
• Previous experience in customer success roles in enterprise technology / SaaS — either customer success management, professional services/consulting or technical account management.
• Track record of learning new technology/software solutions and linking software solutions to common customer use cases, product adoption maturity/frameworks, and, ultimately, business value and outcomes for customers.
• Experience in supporting and driving adoption of AI-powered solutions in customer-facing roles is a plus
• Ability to explain and demonstrate the business value of AI to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Proven ability to multi-task and perform program/project management activities to ensure multiple customers are progressing against success plans and outcomes.
• Strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence at multiple levels (e.g., CXO to Director to Administrator) across the customer's organization and across multiple functions (e.g., Sales, Professional Services, Customer Support, Product Management and Engineering) within Zendesk.
• Bachelor degree in computer science, information sciences & technology, engineering or business is a plus.
• Financial acumen and the ability to do foundational quantitative analysis and forecasting.
• Previous experience leveraging leading customer success tools (e.g., Gainsight, etc.) as an integral part of a daily routine engaging with your customers.

Hybrid

In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration — while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The Intelligent Heart Of Customer Experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we're proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to with your specific accommodation request.

Seniority level

• Mid-Senior level

Employment type

• Full-time

Job function

• Consulting

Industries

• Software Development, Outsourcing and Offshoring Consulting, and IT Services and IT Consulting

#J-18808-Ljbffr

---