When delivering exceptional value to your customers, life-cycle services are often the unsung heroes of long-term growth and satisfaction. From revenue generation and customer success, to professional services and serviceability, every stage of the customer journey offers opportunities to build stronger relationships, improve outcomes, and drive sustainable growth for your organization.

Recent research uncovered critical insights into how leading technology companies are evolving their approach to life-cycle services. Whether you're looking to refine your revenue strategies, enhance service delivery, or ensure customers realize the full value of your solutions, this blog breaks down the most impactful takeaways you can apply today.

Let’s first examine the strategies and practices helping organizations like yours improve the value proposition of life-cycle services—and, ultimately, achieve better outcomes for your customers and business.

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Maximizing Revenue and Driving Customer Success Through Strategic Approaches

Improving the value proposition of your life-cycle services isn’t just about delivering great support—it’s about driving measurable business outcomes. Two key strategies are emerging as game-changers: smarter customer segmentation and transforming customer success into a revenue-generating engine.

Smarter Customer Segmentation for XaaS Transitions

Transitioning customers to XaaS offerings can feel like navigating uncharted territory. However, as Nandini Nag highlights, Global Business Development and Strategy Principal at Hitachi Vantara LLC, it doesn’t have to be chaotic. She introduced the “tolerable transitions” concept, which blends machine learning models with human insights to segment customers effectively.

By identifying key customer groups—like early adopters, transitional customers, and CapEx-focused customers—you can tailor your approach to minimize disruption and maximize results. This segmentation strategy reduces friction and improves win rates, conversion rates, and customer relationships. As customers shift to subscription-based models, this will create fewer roadblocks and more growth opportunities for your business.

Related: Tolerable Transitions to XaaS Through Customer Segmentation

Monetizing Customer Success for Business Growth

Customer success isn’t just about retention—it’s a powerful engine for revenue growth. Irit Eizips, CEO of CSM Practice, and Sanjeet Kaur-Bali, Senior Vice President of Global Customer Support at Infor, shared a clear roadmap for turning customer success into a revenue driver.

Their three-stage approach—design, launch, and scale—emphasizes building customer-centric offerings, aligning closely with sales teams, and leveraging data to inform decision-making. Companies that adopt this framework can experience significant financial gains, improved customer satisfaction, and long-term business growth.

At the heart of these strategies lies a common thread: leadership commitment and a willingness to adapt and improve continuously. Whether you’re segmenting customers more strategically or monetizing customer success, these approaches can help your organization meet and exceed customer expectations—while driving meaningful revenue growth.

These are more than just tactics—they’re a blueprint for success in today’s evolving services landscape. The question now is: How will you apply them to your organization?

Related: Unlocking the Path to Monetizing Customer Success

The Potential of AI: Turning Technology Into Tangible Outcomes

AI is a powerful tool that, when used effectively, can redefine how your organization delivers value to customers. From aligning business goals with customer outcomes to streamlining workflows and boosting productivity, AI has the potential to drive meaningful results across every stage of the customer journey.

Aligning AI With Customer Outcomes

Usman Nasir, Vice President of Customer Success at Salesforce, emphasizes that AI’s real value lies in its ability to impact cost reduction, growth optimization, and productivity improvement—and not just traditional performance metrics. Nasir highlights the importance of aligning AI strategies with measurable customer outcomes to create a collaborative environment where businesses and customers thrive.

AI agents are at the forefront of this transformation. AI tools have evolved from basic chatbots to advanced co-pilots and intelligent virtual agents to handle more complex tasks. By automating repetitive processes and delivering personalized support, these agents free up your team to focus on high-value initiatives. However, the true power of AI lies in its ability to harness unstructured data—a resource often overlooked, but critical for building smarter, more effective AI solutions.

Generative AI: A Productivity Game-Changer

Generative AI (GenAI) is taking productivity and customer interactions to a new level. Patricia Day, Global Leader of Customer Success at Google Cloud, showcased how GenAI transforms customer success practices.

GenAI enables teams to work smarter, not harder, by automating repetitive tasks, streamlining workflows, and enhancing content creation. Day emphasizes the importance of adopting a GenAI-first mindset, where businesses proactively integrate these tools into their processes to unlock productivity gains and elevate employee and customer experiences.

For your organization, embracing AI and GenAI isn’t just about adopting new tools—it’s about shifting your mindset; using technology to bridge resource gaps, align teams with clear goals, and deliver customer experiences that drive measurable results.

As AI continues to evolve, one thing is clear: The companies that invest in AI-powered strategies today will lead the way tomorrow. Are you ready to make AI a core driver of your customer success strategy?

Related: Deploying AI to Optimize Customer Outcomes and Financial Results

Designing for Serviceability: Building Better Software Experiences From the Start

When delivering exceptional customer outcomes, the design phase of your software can make or break the experience. Serviceability isn’t something you tack on after launch—it needs to be built into the foundation of your product.

Serviceability by Design: A Strategic Shift

Serviceability by design means considering the needs of every persona involved in the software lifecycle—not just end-users. From implementation teams and support specialists to customer success managers, each group plays a vital role in ensuring your product delivers value. By bringing professional services teams into the design phase, your organization can simplify implementation, streamline configuration, and reduce long-term management challenges.

The benefits of this proactive approach are clear:

• Faster implementation timelines
• Lower operational costs
• Improved customer satisfaction and retention

When services teams are embedded in the design process, they can identify potential roadblocks before they become costly problems, ultimately creating a smoother experience for customers and internal teams.

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The Role of Services Teams in Continuous Improvement

Serviceability doesn’t stop at launch. Professional services teams play an ongoing role in refining the customer experience by:

• Defining clear service standards to ensure consistency across implementations.
• Capturing and analyzing customer feedback to inform product updates.
• Leveraging Generative AI (GenAI) to process large datasets and extract actionable insights.

This continuous feedback loop ensures your software evolves in ways that directly address customer needs and pain points.

For your organization, embedding serviceability into your design process isn’t just a technical decision—it’s a strategic advantage. By prioritizing serviceability from day one, you reduce long-term costs and build customer trust and satisfaction.

The question remains: Is serviceability a core part of your product design strategy? If not, it might be time to rethink your approach.

Bringing It All Together: Strategies To Elevate Your Life-Cycle Services

Improving the value proposition of your life-cycle services isn’t just about adopting the latest tools or following industry trends—it’s about creating intentional strategies that drive measurable outcomes for your business and your customers. Whether leveraging AI and machine learning for smarter customer segmentation, embracing generative AI to streamline workflows and enhance productivity, or prioritizing serviceability by design in software development, the goal remains the same: delivering lasting value at every stage of the customer journey.

The insights shared here aren’t isolated tactics, they’re interconnected strategies—which,when implemented together—can create a powerful engine for growth, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. As the technology landscape evolves, organizations that prioritize these approaches will thrive.

Now it’s your turn. How will you apply these insights to improve your life-cycle services and deliver greater value to your customers? The opportunities are there—it’s time to seize them.

Your Key Takeaways

• Smarter customer segmentation drives XaaS success: By leveraging machine learning models and human insights, companies can segment customers into key groups: early adopters, transitional customers, and CapEx-focused customers. This approach minimizes disruption, increases conversion rates, and strengthens customer relationships during transitions to XaaS models.
• AI and GenAI are transforming productivity and customer outcomes. AI tools, from advanced agents to generative AI, are revolutionizing workflows by automating repetitive tasks, analyzing unstructured data, and delivering personalized customer support. Organizations that embrace these technologies drive cost reduction, productivity gains, and customer satisfaction.‍
• Serviceability by design enhances long-term value: Involving professional services teams in the software design phase ensures smoother implementation, reduced costs, and a better customer experience. This proactive approach, ongoing feedback loops, and data-driven improvements set the stage for sustained success.