Jessica, a senior customer experience leader at a mid-sized SaaS company, faced a troubling situation. Her team noticed customers becoming increasingly anxious during account reviews and renewal discussions.
The culprit? A pervasive Fear of Being Upsold (FOBU).
"I've seen how the mood changes when we start discussing expanding services or introducing new solutions," Jessica shared in a team meeting. "Our customers genuinely appreciate what we offer, but they're cautious about feeling like they're being sold to constantly. It's starting to hurt the trust we've built."
Jessica was fully aligned with the need to grow with existing customers but also knew if the FOBU trend persisted, it could jeopardize long-term relationships, stall renewals, and even lead to valuable clients walking away.
Understanding the Root of the Problem
Jessica wasn't just concerned about numbers—this issue was personal. She prided herself on building lasting customer relationships with users, executives, and decision-makers. "I've always believed in delivering value first, but when customers start pulling back, I can't help but feel like we're failing them."
Titles Matter
One surprising insight emerged from Jessica's analysis: even her team's job titles contributed to the problem. Words like "account manager" or "renewals manager" sounded more focused on the company's sales quotas than customers need. This subtle disconnect made it harder for customers to trust that their priorities were constantly being put first.
Jessica started brainstorming with her peers and exec. team about more customer-friendly and skill-focused titles: Customer Solutions Strategist, Onboarding Representative, Customer Advocate, Analytics Expert, and Customer ROI Specialist.
The titles were just one small piece of the puzzle, but they signaled a broader commitment to putting back customers first.
Reframing Conversations
Jessica also realized that her team needed to rethink their language. Instead of discussing "upselling opportunities," they needed to focus on collaboration and outcomes.
For instance:
Instead of: "Let's discuss upgrading your plan,"
They tried: "How are your current tools helping you achieve your goals? If there are gaps, we'd love to help you find a solution."
The changes were subtle but effective. One client, who had previously resisted expansion conversations, told Jessica during a quarterly review,
"It really feels like you're on my side now."
But There Was a Catch
While these adjustments improved customer sentiment, they came at a cost. Jessica spent months training her team on new communication techniques, conducting workshops, and providing real-time feedback. She hired external consultants and introduced monitoring tools to ensure consistency.
Jessica's Search for a Smarter way
Even with all this effort, the results weren't immediate. Jessica admitted to her manager, "I know this is the right direction, but it's draining our time and resources. There's got to be a smarter way."
Customer-Centricity at Scale
Jessica's Search for a scalable solution led her to Cast.app. Unlike traditional tools, Cast. app's AI agents, designed to autonomously create and present content tailored to individual customers, used several Psychological Techniques to put customer-centricity first and foremost, but at scale.
Here's how it transformed Jessica's approach:
Customer-Focused Presentations and websites
Cast. app's AI analyzed customer data to generate personalized presentations. For example, instead of pitching new features, the AI showcased the benefit to customer and how a feature may help.
Jessica described AI agents as "having a teammate who always knows the customer priorities inside and out."
Natural, Non-Salesy Communication
The AI agents avoided pushy language, framing every recommendation as a way to improve customer results.
Jessica noticed clients responding differently almost immediately. "The AI presentations felt like they were crafted just for them—and they were."
Results That Matter
With Cast.app, Jessica saw measurable improvements:
• Customer Satisfaction scores increased by 27%.
• Renewal rates grew by 21% in six months.
Results beyond numbers
For Jessica, the biggest win beyond numbers was when a customer mentioned "I feel like we're finally partners." That's when she knew the shift from fear to trust was complete.
Future-Proof Your Business with AI Agents
In today’s fast-paced world, adaptability is essential. Cast’s AI Agents offer a unique capability to learn and relearn, allowing organizations to shift direction more easily when necessary. If your Chief Revenue Officer notices that a message isn’t resonating, there’s no requirement to retrain the teams. With Cast, adjustments to AI Agent messaging can be made immediately, helping your team remain agile and responsive. Embracing this technology can provide confidence, knowing that your AI can adapt to changing needs effectively.
Transcript
(source: Apple Podcast)
And so particularly from the customer success footprint, she [CS Ops person] is setting that all up properly. And our pipelines and our automations and everything to see where she can continue to chip away at ways to give daylight back to the team and create consistency. Because again, different personalities, different experiences, different backgrounds working with different customers.
But we still want to have a baseline of the way we deliver what we deliver. And then we’re also trying to create a lot of engagement with our customers that does not require a human to do it.
We also find our customers are looking for the content but don’t necessarily want to talk to someone. They’re afraid they’re going to be upsold. So how do we make sure they get everything they need to be successful in a safe space so that they might consume more?
So we adopted a product called Cast.app at the end of 2022 and spent some time building it up.
Our customers get, on the first Tuesday of every month, an automated program health report. It’s a mini business review that says, “Here’s all of what you’ve been doing over the last month or over the last quarter with us. Here’s the orders. Here’s the time to resolution. Here’s the tickets that you opened. Here’s this, here’s that. Here’s what we’re managing for you. Here’s the number of invoices we pay for.” It tells you everything, and it gives it to them in less than five minutes.
And it has tons of recommendations where they can take themselves on a journey to look for more. They can look at white papers. They can see some recommendations about some products we’re curious about why they’re not using. And it’s all done.
The CSMs are able to see more coverage across their own account portfolios without having to work 24/7.
Customers are thrilled with what they’re getting.
And so she continues to evolve that program.
What else can we provide in this format? We’ve also done it for onboarding new customers, setting expectations with them. We send anniversary casts. We do our NPS through that.
There’s a ton of energy and effort right now. She’s been pouring the foundation of that so that it will be able to run alongside our teams.
We’ve started using a product called Full Story. It’s really for our software developers and our product management team. But software adoption and the CSMs are really able to understand how their customers are using our product to see their sessions.
If they’re experiencing frustration, we can understand if the directions we’re giving them are the directions they’re taking. If we keep saying, “Go left,” and they’re going right, either we need to make some enhancements to our product to meet them where they are, or we need to do a better job of training them.
And this helps the team understand.
