Activate the AI Pilots 🪜 (for Customer Success)
Step 2 of the 🪜MAKR AI Transformation Staircase 🪜
Once you’ve mapped your AI opportunities, the next move isn’t to buy a platform, roll it out everywhere, and hope for magic. That’s the fastest way to burn credibility.
The next move is to activate the pilots.
Think of this step as your first real “hire.” You’ve scoped the job in Step 1 of the staircase. Now you’re running a 90-day trial to see if AI can actually perform it.
What “Activate the Pilots” Means
A pilot isn’t “let’s play with a shiny tool.”
A pilot is a structured experiment:
🎯 Defined Workflow: One workflow, not the whole org. (Onboarding nudges, renewal briefs, escalation summaries, etc.) ONE PILOT, ONE WORKFLOW. Remember, in experiments, it’s important to isolate a single variable.
📊 Clear Success Metric: Time saved, errors reduced, customer outcomes improved. Not “AI adoption.”
🧑🤝🧑 Real Users: CSMs or Onboarding Specialists actually use the AI in their day-to-day, not just a sandbox demo.
🗓 Short Timeline: 30–90 days. Enough to measure, not so long it drags.
Three Tips for Running AI Pilots in CS
Scope Small, Measure Big
Pilot one discrete job (e.g. drafting renewal briefs).
Define the metric that matters (e.g. prep time cut from 3 hours to 30 minutes).
Co-Pilot, Don’t Auto-Pilot
Let AI draft or suggest, but keep the human in the loop.
Adoption skyrockets when AI enhances rather than replaces CSM workflows. It should act as a force multiplier rather than a replacement.
Capture Stories, Not Just Stats
Document where the pilot made a CSM’s day easier or impressed a customer.
Execs want numbers and narratives.
Why Pilots Fail
🚩 Success metric = “adoption.” If the goal is just “did people use it?” you’ll end up with usage, not impact. And you will never be able to get to Stage 3 if you don’t come up with meaningful goals and impact.
🚩 The scope was too vague. “Fix renewals” is too broad. “Cut prep time for renewal briefs by 75%” is testable.
🚩 The team didn’t know the “why.” If CSMs see it as a top-down science project, they won’t care.
🚩 No alignment with the company’s AI direction. If CS is running its own AI experiments in a silo, you risk rowing against the org’s strategy instead of amplifying it.
Where This Fits on the AI Staircase
“Activate the Pilots” is Step 2 of the MAKR AI Transformation Staircase:
Map Opportunities: Define jobs AI could realistically do.
Activate Pilots: Test AI in one workflow with real metrics.
Key Up Operations: Bake proven AI use into CS processes.
Redefine CS: Reimagine CS roles and models with AI at the core.
If you skip Step 2, you risk scaling hype instead of results.
The Bottom Line
A pilot isn’t proof that AI works in general.
It’s proof that AI works here, for this job, in this workflow.
Get one win. Show the impact. Build credibility.
Then climb to Step 3. 🪜
