[Un]Churned – The No. 1 Podcast for Customer Retention

Is AI still an experiment on your customer success team, or is it delivering results? In this episode of Unchurned, Rod Cherkas, CEO of HelloCCO and author of The Chief Customer Officer Playbook for the AI Era, joins Josh Schachter to talk about what post-sale leaders need to do now. Rod shares findings from his research with nearly 200 post-sale leaders, explains why CFOs are asking for proof of AI's impact, and gives a practical path from scattered pilots to measurable results. The conversation covers governance, change management, and the leadership habits that make AI stick, along with a real example of AI automating a painful handoff process. If you're planning for 2027, this episode gives you a clear way to think about it.What you'll learn- How to connect AI initiatives to the metrics your CFO cares about- Why leader adoption matters more than tool rollouts, and how to model AI use for your team- How to pick 4–5 key metrics and align AI pilots around one or two of them- A simple way to start with a company-grounded AI assistant, without overbuilding the knowledge base- When to buy enterprise AI tools and when (and when not) to build on top of them- How to assign an AI champion on your team and create a practical rollout structure- What the future of customer success roles may look like, and which skills will matter mostTimestamps0:00 - Preview 1:10 - Introduction & Meet Rod Cherkas3:15 - Why CFOs want measurable AI results5:20 - Rolling out AI with governance and expectations6:28 - Why leaders are resisting change10:20 - Lessons from his time at Marketo for the AI era12:38 - Frontline innovators who are ahead of the curve13:45 - Focusing on continous L & D15:10 - Automating the sales handoff17:30 - Starting simple with a company-grounded AI assistant20:10 - Measuring AI impact with key metrics22:28 - Why change management takes longer than expected23:37 - Delegating AI vs. leading it yourself27:35 - Role modeling and making AI part of daily work30:15 - Build vs. buy: what to build and what to avoid33:35 - The future of customer success---Josh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.com---Where to Find the GuestRod Cherkas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodcherkas/---Where to Find the Hosts: Josh's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/

Most companies treat renewals as a sales function. The real shift is treating retention as a job for the whole company.In this episode of the [Un]Churned Podcast, Josh Schachter sits down with Mike Marguglio, EVP of Global Renewals at Salesforce, to unpack how his team manages almost 400,000 renewals a year, how Salesforce brought attrition from over 20% to about 8%, and what AI agents are actually doing in renewals today.Mike shares how a renewals agent turned hours of contract research into an executive view, what hasn’t worked with AI, and how the shift from licenses to consumption is changing the renewal playbook.They also dive into:- How the attrition council aligns senior leaders across the company on retention- Why “a dollar of existing business is just as important as a dollar new business”- How a renewals agent, Ask Renewals, and a long-tail agent are changing the job- What hasn’t worked with AI: incomplete summaries, distrust, and low adoption- How pricing is shifting from licenses to consumption and human-plus-agent models- Why Mike wants renewal to be “a non-event”If you’re leading renewals, building a customer success team, or trying to figure out how AI agents fit into retention, this episode shows how Salesforce runs renewals at scale.Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.Chapters00:00 – Intro & Salesforce Renewals at Scale01:36 – Why 400,000 Renewals Is So Complex05:03 – The Attrition Council: From Over 20% to About 8%09:42 – What the Renewals Team Is Doing With AI17:09 – What AI Caught That Humans Missed20:28 – How Pricing Changes the Renewal Playbook22:06 – What Hasn’t Worked With AI26:05 – AI Adoption and the One-Year Forecast29:00 – Automating the Long Tail35:27 – Advice for People Starting Out in RenewalsJosh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.comWhere to Find the Guest:Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-marguglio-209895/Where to Find the Host:Josh’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com

Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.Can a nine-year-old SaaS company reinvent itself as an AI-native services business before the market leaves it behind?On this episode of Unchurned, Josh Schachter, SVP of Strategy and Go-to-Market Development at Gainsight, sits down with AJ Bruno, Co-Founder and CEO of QuotaPath. AJ started QuotaPath after years of reps asking why they couldn't get paid correctly. Today the company serves more than 1,000 customers and over 50,000 reps. Now it's making its biggest bet yet: running commissions for customers instead of selling them software seats, and eventually pricing on outcomes like improved GRR and lower cost of sale.AJ and Josh compare notes on how Gainsight and QuotaPath are both moving to AI-native services. They discuss why trust is the real barrier, how to prove causality when many factors drive revenue, why buyers resist outcome-based pricing, and what it's like to build a startup inside your own startup while still hitting plan for the board.AJ is candid about the stakes: if QuotaPath doesn't make this move, it becomes another forgotten SaaS tool.---What You'll Learn- Why so many companies deliberately keep comp plans confusing, and what that costs them- Why product-led growth failed for a sensitive category like commissions- How QuotaPath is moving from seat-based SaaS to AI-native services- What "selling outcomes" actually means, and how incentives can move metrics like GRR- Why outcome-based pricing is a hard sell, and how a crawl-walk-run approach reduces risk- How Gainsight is applying the same model to end-to-end renewals- What it takes to rediscover product-market fit inside a mature company---Timestamps0:00 - Preview & Meet AJ Bruno3:35 - What is QuotaPath? The compensation & commissions problem5:15 - Why companies keep comp plans confusing6:20 - Why product-led growth didn't work for comp8:20 - 10 years in: founder envy and wild pivots10:34 - The return of hustle culture and in-office startups13:00 - The pivot: from SaaS seats to AI-native services16:48 - Selling outcomes: incentives that move GRR19:19 - What QuotaPath actually runs for customers21:53 - Why nobody wants to pay for outcomes23:20 - Building a startup within a startup25:15 - AI-native services unite---Josh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.com---Where to Find the GuestAJ Bruno: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/---Where to Find the Hosts: Josh's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/

Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.The future of customer renewals is here. And it's AI-native. Josh Schachter sits down with Grant Clarke, EVP & GM of Gainsight Atlas, to explore how AI agents combined with human renewal managers are transforming the renewal landscape. Grant, a 15-year veteran of renewal operations at ServiceSource, explains how Atlas manages entire renewal books through an outcome-based model—not software licensing. Discover why deploying AI agents in renewals is harder than it looks, how Gainsight is pioneering a new category called AI Native Services (AINS), and why the long tail of customers just became manageable. Plus: the surprising story behind Grant's 15 beehives outside Nashville.---What You'll Learn- How AI agents are transforming customer renewals at scale- Why deploying AI agents in renewals is fundamentally hard - The margin economics that make productizing AI agents profitable- Why the long tail of customers is now economically viable to serve- How combining AI + human renewal managers creates better customer outcomes---Timestamps0:00 - Preview & Meet Grant Clarke2:00 - What is Atlas?4:50 - Grant's Background: ServiceSource & Dropbox11:05 - How Atlas onboards a new customer13:04 - Data hygiene: "The D word"14:21 - The ideal customer profile for Atlas16:20 A day in the life: the Atlas cockpit17:55 - When the agent hands off to a human19:05 - The learning loop: forward deployed engineers & 2-week sprints20:10 - The business model: avoiding the pure-services trap22:04 - Mirage PMF: go fast, go slow, go fast again23:35 - What's next for Atlas: Agentic judgment and renewal edge cases26:40 - Can AINS hit 70% gross margins?26:35 The renewal action inventory: 10–25 actions per renewal28:38 From 20% to 55% agent-led actions: margin accretion29:43 Grant's 15 beehives outside Nashville32:39 Wrap-up---Josh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.com---Where to Find the GuestGrant Clarke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grantclarke/---Where to Find the Hosts: Josh's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/

Most companies think of customer success as a support function that ships software. The real shift is treating it as a co-build practice that ships outcomes.In this episode of the [Un]Churned Podcast, Josh Schachter sits down with Christina Parra, Ariel Risman, and Kellie Woodin, three members of Notion's Outcomes Architecture team, to unpack how Notion rebuilt its entire customer success motion around AI, workshops, and shared commercial ownership.Christina, Ariel, and Kellie share how their roles evolved from traditional CSM to "Outcomes Architect," why they stopped selling software and started selling work, and how an AI maturity model now shapes everything from onboarding workshops to renewal conversations.They also dive into:The shift from customer success manager to outcomes architect and what it actually means to "co-build" with a customerHow workshops (some with 180+ attendees) replace one-to-many trainingsProving ROI in a consumption-based pricing model, credit by creditWhy CS teams are absorbing commercial ownership and what that's taught them about creative expansion leversNotion's internal multi-agent feature-request pipeline, and why they see AI as abundance, not scarcityIf you're rethinking what customer success looks like in an agentic AI world, or figuring out how to prove ROI on usage-based pricing, this episode is a blueprint for turning your CS team into co-build architects.Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.Chapters00:00 – Intro & Guest Backgrounds01:36 – What Is Notion?04:25 – From Customer Success to Outcomes Architecture08:51 – Ariel's Book: Deep Discovery & the Workshop Format15:10 – The AI Maturity Model21:37 – From Success Plans to AI Transformation Plans23:14 – Benchmarking, ROI & Proving Value in Consumption-Based Pricing28:01 – Becoming Strategic Partners: CS Owns Commercials32:50 – Lessons From Owning Renewals & Hiring for Curiosity37:30 – The Feature Request Pipeline & AI as AbundanceJosh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.comWhere to Find the Guests:Christina Parra's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina-wills/Ariel Risman's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariel-risman/Kellie Woodin's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelliewoodin/Where to Find the Hosts:Josh's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/[Un]churned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com