How is AI impacting customer retention?

Revenue, retention, recruitment: three pillars for any business leader. The problem is the second is by no means guaranteed once the customer signs on the dotted line. Retention has become harder for customer success teams to master, especially in the age of the “SaaS-pocalypse.”

Customer success is a critical arm of the go-to-market apparatus that strives to help customers maximize value and, ultimately, sign that all-important contract renewal. But as many revenue leaders will no doubt attest: It’s a jungle out there. According to 2025 data from SaaS management platform BetterCloud, the average number of SaaS apps used per company dipped from 112 in 2023 to 106 in 2024; midsize firms (companies with 1,500–4,999 employees) saw a 29% decrease in the number of SaaS apps used.

So what’s the AI play for CS teams? While customer success leaders agree it’s too early to tell if AI is going to negatively impact retention, they believe customer success managers (CSMs) need to use the tools to their best advantage.

“CSMs need to be thinking about, if they want to future-proof themselves in this space: What skills do I need to develop to be able to be the best strategic consultant for my customers?” said Abby Hammer, chief customer and product officer at customer success platform ChurnZero.

More bang for your buck

Customer success leaders are trying to optimize AI tools for their specific needs. Efficiency gains will give them the ability to focus more on retention strategies, like building their relationships with clients and understanding why some deals churn.

“A lot of the conversations I’m having are really around: ‘How can we effectively deploy AI in service of retention?’” said Jessica Starr, VP of customer success at Clari + Salesloft.

Starr says a key consideration is how to consolidate tools and extract the “full value from the tools that we’ve invested in.” She’s hitting on a topic close to the hearts of many revenue leaders: clawing back that crucial ROI. Part of this equation is ensuring GTM teams aren’t overly burdened with administrative tasks, so they can attend to their primary job function (yes, it’s the same with sales).

“[CSMs] no longer have to spend their time on a lot of manual things…They have to actually shift to doing the more strategic work and advisory work with the customer,” said Starr.

There’s an analytical component that also seems critical here. Starr says AI is also becoming a key tool in understanding how customers are utilizing a platform beyond providing just a “standard report” by curating customizations for a specific workflow or segment.

James Dressing, CEO of ad tech platform Motimatic, says the CSMs that are doing well in retaining customers are using AI to create personalized experiences, custom product recommendations, and reviews.

“The folks who are not embracing AI and are lagging on their platform capabilities, [the] tech sides are probably going to see an increase in churn because someone will be able to close that gap very easily,” said Dressing.

Garbage in, garbage out

It won’t be surprising that access to clean data is imperative, but isn’t always granted, for customer success leaders.

“The team is going to be constrained or hamstrung if they don’t have access to all the right data,” Starr said. “Then it can just be a complete distraction.”

Hammer agreed, saying customer success has been focused on acquiring data but believes that CSMs need to also be thinking about data quality and how it can be leveraged to make decisions. She also touched on the importance of intentionality of AI deployment. (If your AI strategy has been missing the mark, you are not alone—just ask the leapers.)

“In many organizations, it feels very shiny object, almost like, ‘Look over here and use this and then try this thing,’ as opposed to, ‘No, we’re going to take a step back, look at our journey, look at our processes, and intentionally put AI into each of those,’” Hammer said.

Across all these conversations, striking a balance between human beings and technology has emerged as a theme (read more on that in our Sales Tech: State of the Industry report).

“You can’t just rely on AI for the relationship side of it,” Dressing said. “It can be a heck of a tool for providing great outputs and inputs for your partner, but you have to focus on the relationship side to make that happen.”