Senior AI Success Strategist, Customer Success

Overview

As an AI Success Strategist at Zendesk, you will own the strategic AI roadmap for key customers, translating product capabilities into clear business strategies, defining a long term AI vision, aligning internal and external teams, and driving execution from initial adoption through sustained expansion. Your performance will be measured by high customer satisfaction, increased automated resolution usage, improved retention, and the successful execution of AI programs that translate into predictable revenue and retention improvements.

Responsibilities

• Ownership of AI Roadmap Delivery: Lead the design, planning, and execution of comprehensive AI adoption and expansion roadmaps for key customers, ensuring alignment to their broader business goals and customer success vision.
• Design Authority: Serve as the design authority for customers' AI deployments, lead solution design reviews, ensure deployments align with the latest best practices, and collaborate with Professional Services on integration and configuration guidance.
• Technical Escalation Coordination: For complex agent implementations, coordinate troubleshooting and technical escalations with Professional Services, Product and Engineering to resolve blockers quickly.
• Long Term AI Vision & Business Strategy: Partner with executive stakeholders to co create and refine a forward looking AI strategy that anticipates market trends and customer needs, acting as the primary AI thought leader and trusted advisor throughout the engagement lifecycle.
• Stakeholder Alignment: Dedicate effort to internal cross functional collaboration, aligning Product, Professional Services, Sales, Success, and other teams to deliver on the AI roadmap.
• Engagement Lead: Coordinate and sequence activities, identify and escalete risks early, and ensure the right technical, product, and services resources are engaged at the appropriate times.
• Sustain Engagement & Mutual AI Roadmap: Maintain recurring outcome driven cadences and a mutual AI roadmap that define strategic goals, shared initiatives, measurable success, and a roadmap to maximize value and secure renewal.
• Channel & Adoption Strategy: Own the channel strategy for AI solution dissemination and adoption, balancing direct customer delivery with channel enablement and partner engagement.
• Measure and Drive Impact: Utilize data driven insights to track AI adoption, resolution metrics, and gross revenue retention improvements, continuously refining strategies to optimise outcomes and customer satisfaction.
• Discovery & Success Planning: Lead structured discovery and success planning engagements that create measurable playbooks and milestones early in the lifecycle.

Strategic Skills & Expertise

• Project & Program Management - proven ability to orchestrate multi phase technology adoption projects, managing diverse teams and timelines with clarity and agility.
• Product and Technical Knowledge - product expert who assesses customers' use case automation potential and technical readiness (generative AI, integrations, authentication), crafts user journeys and translates features into value.
• Business & Strategic Acumen - demonstrated skill in aligning AI solutions to customer business challenges, driving revenue growth, and influencing executive decision making.
• Consultation & Communication - strong stakeholder engagement skills with customer executives and internal teams to advance AI adoption and sustain strategic partnerships.
• Analytical & Outcome Focused - strong analytical capacity to interpret adoption data, develop predictive health scores, forecast retention/expansion, and translate metrics into prioritized action plans.
• Forward Thinking & Pragmatic - visionary in embracing AI's potential with a grounded, realistic approach to execution, balancing innovation with practical delivery feasibility.
• Responsible AI & Compliance - confidently advise customers on ethical AI practices, data governance and compliance considerations, framing use cases within safe, explainable and policy aligned guardrails.

Qualifications

• Minimum 7+ years of related experience in Customer Success / Experience, with 1+ year of AI related experience.
• Experience in go to customer/GTM roles in enterprise technology / SaaS (customer success management, professional services/consulting, technical account management, or solutions engineering/pre sales consulting).
• Experience using adoption and health analytics to forecast churn and expansion, surface early risk signals and recommend mitigations to secure retention and growth.
• Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; advanced degrees or certifications in AI strategy or project management preferred.
• Demonstrated impact on business metrics such as retention or satisfaction from managing AI or software adoption programs.
• Excellent program management and cross functional influence skills.
• Familiarity with emerging AI trends is a plus.
• Ability to distill complex AI concepts for diverse audiences, especially executive stakeholders.
• AI domain expertise: deep understanding of AI capabilities within Zendesk's platform is a plus.

Work Environment

Hybrid: the role requires attending the local office part of the week, with flexibility to work remotely for the remainder. The specific in office schedule will be determined by the hiring manager.

Equal Opportunity & Accessibility

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer. We are proud of our efforts to foster global diversity, equity, and inclusion. 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/Disabled/Veteran employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you 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.