[Un]Churned – The No. 1 Podcast for Customer Retention

How To Stop Managing 38% of Your Customers in 2026 ft. Yvette Hill (F5)

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Dec 24, 2025

Yvette Hill, SVP of Customer Success at F5, has a remarkable 35-year career across tech giants like IBM and Microsoft. In this insightful discussion, she tackles the transformation from traditional customer success to an AI-driven model. Yvette emphasizes the importance of leveraging AI to enhance customer interactions and drive real value. She shares her bold decision to allocate 100% of her budget to AI, unlock data-driven insights with 175 customer signals, and encourages teams to embrace experimentation. Her vision for a curious, AI-enabled workforce is truly inspiring!

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ANECDOTE

From Devices To Outcomes

Yvette Hill described moving Xerox from selling devices to selling print-by-the-click, which forced a focus on outcomes because revenue depended on usage.
She repeated this transformation at Microsoft by converting TAMs into CSMs to drive platform adoption and revenue.

INSIGHT

AI Frees CSMs For Strategic Work

Yvette Hill calls the current AI shift the biggest transformation because it removes toil and frees CSMs for deep customer work.
She expects agentic tools to let teams focus on understanding customers and driving outcomes rather than manual tasks.

ADVICE

Allocate Budget To AI And Skills

Yvette Hill is allocating 100% of investment budget to AI while investing in people to operate alongside agents rather than hiring new headcount.
She advises developing skills to work with AI and experimenting boldly with use cases.

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Every major transformation Yvette Hill has led started the same way: with a moment of panic.

Across a 35-year career at IBM, Xerox, Microsoft, and now F5, Yvette Hill, SVP of Customer Success and Global Renewal Sales at F5, has repeatedly observed the same pattern: big deals on paper, but little customer value realized. Each time, the fix was clear: transform the teams closest to customers into engines for value.

Recorded live at Pulse Europe in Dublin, Yvette joins host Jenny Calvert to share why today’s AI shift is the most exciting transformation she’s seen—and how she’s acting on it. From recruiting data scientists into CSM roles to allocating 100% of her budget to AI, tracking 175 customer signals, and forcing automation conversations, Yvette is focused on what works now.

This episode is a candid look at leading real change—and why teams that get curious today will pull ahead fast.

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Timestamps

0:00 - Preview & Introduction

[00:00] Introduction: Live from Pulse Europe in Dublin

[01:15] Yvette's unconventional path into customer success

[02:45] The Xerox transformation: From selling devices to driving outcomes

[05:30] Microsoft Azure: Solving the "big commits, no revenue" problem

[07:20] Joining F5: Hardware to SaaS, single product to multi-product

[09:00] The agentic era: Why AI is the biggest transformation yet

[11:45] 100% budget allocation to AI—zero new headcount

[13:30] Hiring data scientists as CSMs: The breakfast table story

[16:00] Building curiosity in legacy teams: "Be more curious every day"

[18:15] Structuring teams for AI: Leaders, data analysts, and business-side AI builders

[20:30] Use case #1: Harvesting unstructured feedback across silos

[23:00] Holding product teams accountable with ROI-driven insights

[25:45] Use case private channel: Aggregating 175 customer engagement signals

[28:00] Why you can't wait for IT—and why speed matters more than perfection

[30:30] Investing in people: Skills for operating alongside AI agents

[33:15] Getting team buy-in: From fear to excitement about AI

[36:00] The democratization of AI: Small wins and Titanic shifts

[38:45] Final advice: Just get started—the tough stuff isn't harder than the easy stuff

[41:00] Closing thoughts: This is CS's time

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What You’ll Learn

* How to shift from retention-only to expansion-driven CS in a multi-product business

* Why Yvette is hiring data scientists as CSMs (and what they bring to the team)

* The 175 customer engagement signals F5 is aggregating to predict retention and expansion

* How to hold product teams accountable for customer feedback using ROI-driven insights

* Why investing in people—not just tools—is the key to AI adoption

* The breakfast conversation that changed F5's entire hiring strategy for AI

* The ROI framework that holds product teams accountable for customer feedback

* Why waiting for the perfect use case means you'll never start

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Where to Find Yvette Hill

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yvette-hill-smith-0374265/

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Where to Find Jenny:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennycalvert/