Our VP of Customer Success has been with us since we had ten clients. She shares our core values and works eighty hours a week, but she refuses to adopt our automated ticketing and AI sentiment analysis tools, insisting on personal phone calls for every minor issue. How do we run a GWC call when her work ethic is unquestionable but her operating model is actively destroying our margin?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a legacy leader works eighty hours a week but refuses to adopt tools that scale, they do not GWC the seat. Let us break this down using the EOS framework. G stands for Get It. She understands customer relationships deeply. W stands for Want It. She wants to help clients. But C stands for Capacity. Capacity is not about time or effort; it is about capability, resources, and mental capacity to perform the role as it must exist today. Her refusal to adopt automated ticketing and AI sentiment tools proves she lacks the capacity to run a modern, high-margin Customer Success department.

To prepare for a clean exit, you must build a business that is scalable and not reliant on brute-force human hours. Buyers pay a premium for systems, not heroics. Keeping her in this seat drags down your gross margins and signals to buyers that your operations are unscalable.

You must have a candid conversation. Explain that the seat has evolved. The role now requires leading an AI-leveraged team, not doing manual phone calls for every minor issue. If she cannot or will not build the skills to manage this modern infrastructure, she is in the wrong seat. You must move her to a role where her relationship skills are a genuine asset, such as a high-touch key account manager, and bring in a leader who has the capacity to build a scalable, tech-enabled customer success machine.