Senior AI Success Strategist
Why This Role?
Customer experience is transforming through AI-driven innovation. At Zendesk, we don’t just embrace this change — we lead it. As visionary architects of our AI-powered Resolution Platform, AI Success Strategists shape and deliver long-term AI success for our customers.
Why Now?
This role transcends technical deployment; it is about owning the strategic AI roadmap, maximizing business impact, and building executive partnerships from day one so AI initiatives start strong and scale predictably.
Strategic Responsibilities
Full 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.
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. Serve as the primary AI thought leader and trusted advisor throughout the engagement lifecycle.
Internal and External Stakeholder Alignment: Dedicate effort to internal cross-functional collaboration, aligning Product, Professional Services, Sales, Success, and other teams to deliver on the AI roadmap. Serve as the Engagement Lead: Coordinate and sequence activities, identify and escalate 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 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 refine strategies to optimize outcomes and customer satisfaction.
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
Must have a minimum of 8+ years of related experience in Customer Success / Experience, 2+ years of AI related experience.
Previous experience in go-to-customer/GTM roles in enterprise technology / SaaS — either customer success management, professional services/consulting, technical account management, or solutions engineering/pre-sales consulting.
Demonstrated experience in using adoption and health analytics to forecast churn and expansion; surface early risk signals and recommended mitigations to secure retention and growth.
Bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; advanced degrees; certifications in AI strategy or project management preferred.
Experience managing AI or software adoption programs with demonstrated impact on business metrics such as retention or satisfaction.
Demonstrated experience designing and executing success plans or roadmaps that drive measurable customer outcomes.
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.
Great to have AI Domain Expertise: Deep understanding of AI capabilities within Zendesk’s platform, not necessarily hands-on technical, but sufficient to translate product features into business value and strategic initiatives.
Pay
The US annualized OTE (On Target Earnings) range for this position is $118,000.00-$178,000.00 with a pay mix of 70/30 (base/commission).