Our head of customer success is a fantastic culture fit and has run her department for five years, but we are moving to an AI-powered ticketing system and she completely lacks the technical capacity to manage the API workflows. How do we handle this GWCTM issue without losing her?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a classic Right Person, Wrong Seat issue driven by rapid scaling. Your customer success leader gets the vision and wants the seat, but she does not have the capacity to manage the advanced technical systems that now define the role.

First, you must be honest with yourself: you cannot compromise on the capacity requirement of GWCTMs. If the seat now requires technical systems integration, and she cannot execute that, leaving her in the seat will only lead to broken workflows, customer churn, and immense stress for her.

The solution is to restructure the seat or move her to a seat where she can succeed. Look at your Accountability Chart and ask if the technical integration roles actually belong in a separate, dedicated IT or systems administrator seat. If you can pull the technical workflows out and assign them to a systems expert, your customer success leader can focus on what she does best: managing the team, client retention, and training.

If the seat cannot be split, you must move her to a different seat on the chart that matches her unique abilities, such as a high-level key account management seat. This is not a demotion; it is placing a highly valued team member in a position where she can win. Communicate this openly, showing her that the change is about aligning her strengths with the right structural roles.