Digital customer successCustomer success for every account, inside the product.
Most accounts will never have a customer success manager of their own. Digital customer success is how you help them anyway. This page covers what it is, the usual channels, where they run out, how an in-app AI agent adds hands-on help, and what stays with your CSMs.
What digital customer success is
A customer success manager can look after a set number of accounts well. Past that, every new account gets less of their time. Digital customer success is the one-to-many side of the work: helping accounts reach their goals through channels that reach everyone at once, rather than a person for each.
You will also see it called tech touch, for the tier served mainly through automated and self-serve help, or scaled customer success, for the wider effort to cover many accounts without a CSM for each. It usually covers smaller and self-serve accounts, and it supports the larger ones between their calls too.
The usual channels
- Lifecycle emailWelcome, nudges, the next feature
- In-app messagesAnnouncements, checklists, tips on a page
- CommunityUsers helping users, with your team in the room
- WebinarsTraining and office hours for many at once
- Help contentArticles, videos and guides to search
Each one is good for something real. Email brings people back. In-app messages reach them at the right page. Community and webinars spread what your best users know. Help content answers the same question for the thousandth person at no extra cost.
Where it runs out
Look at what those channels have in common: they tell the user what to do. The user still opens the right page, finds the right field and does each step alone. When the screen in front of them doesn’t match the article, or the step they need isn’t in any guide, the help is somewhere else.
That gap is where accounts stall. A CSM closes it by sharing a screen and walking through it. Digital customer success usually can’t, so the user opens a ticket, waits for a webinar, or quietly stops.
Hands-on help for every account
An in-app AI agent closes that gap without a call. The user says what they need, in their own words, and the agent does the steps in the product while they watch. It is the same kind of help a CSM gives on a shared screen, available to every account at any hour.
Stiro is that agent. A user asks something like “set up our weekly report and send it to the team every Monday”, and Stiro clicks, types and navigates your real app to do it.
- One script tag, nothing to train. It reads your live screens, so it keeps working as your product changes.
- The user keeps the final say. Anything that sends, spends or deletes is prepared and handed back for them to press.
- An honest stop. If your product can’t do what was asked, it says so and changes nothing.
- Your team when it’s stuck. The user can message your team from the same panel, with the request and the reason attached, or it goes to your help desk.
- everyday requests passed, cold, in three apps it had never seen
- 44 of 44
- requests the apps couldn’t do, stopped with a reason and nothing changed
- 7 of 7
- median time from request to reply
- 19.5 s
What stays with your CSMs
An in-app agent does the steps a user asks for. It does not run your customer success strategy. These stay with people:
- Strategy and goals. Understanding what each account is trying to achieve, and planning how your product gets them there.
- Renewals and expansion. Commercial conversations, pricing and the case for growing the account.
- Relationships. Business reviews, trust with the people who decide, and knowing when something is wrong before a metric shows it.
What changes is how CSMs spend their time. With the “how do I” requests done in the product, they spend less of it walking users through screens. More on that on the AI customer success page. For the first weeks of a new account, see customer onboarding and the user onboarding guide.
Digital customer success questions.
What is digital customer success?
Digital customer success is one-to-many customer success: helping accounts reach their goals through email, in-app messages, community, webinars and help content, rather than a named customer success manager for each. It covers the accounts a CSM can’t, and supports the ones they do.
What is tech touch customer success?
Tech touch is the customer success tier where accounts are served mainly through automated and self-serve channels instead of regular calls with a person. It usually covers smaller or self-serve accounts, and it is often run as part of a digital customer success programme.
What is scaled customer success?
Scaled customer success is the work of giving many accounts good help without adding a CSM for each. It combines digital channels, automation and pooled teams, so every account gets guidance and the people on your team spend their time where it matters most.
What are the channels of digital customer success?
The usual channels are lifecycle emails, in-app messages and checklists, a user community, webinars and office hours, and help content such as articles and videos. An in-app AI agent adds one more: hands-on help that does the steps in the product.
Where does digital customer success fall short?
Most digital channels tell users what to do, and the user still has to do the steps alone. When they get stuck on a screen, the help is somewhere else. That gap is where accounts stall, and where an in-app agent that does the steps can help.
Can AI replace customer success managers?
No. An in-app AI agent like Stiro can do the steps a user asks for in the product, at any hour, for every account. Strategy, renewals, expansion, business reviews and relationships still need a person, and Stiro does not do those.
Let your users just ask.
Stiro does the steps in your app for your users. One script tag, 50 runs a month free, no card.