The GTMnow Podcast

GTM 174: The 7% Rule: How AI Is Rewriting Customer Success Budgets (From 10% to 7%) with Abbas Haider Ali

Jan 14, 2026
Guest
Abbas Haider Ali
Abbas Haider Ali, a seasoned VP of Customer Success at GitHub, shares insights from his extensive experience in tech. He discusses the shift in customer success budgets from 10% to 7%, revealing reasons behind this change, including how AI can both enhance and obscure customer retention. Abbas emphasizes the importance of retention costs over customer acquisition in the AI era. He introduces a budget allocation strategy and explains the emergence of AI-powered specialized generalists transforming support frameworks.
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INSIGHT

AI Can Mask Fragile Growth

  • Rapid AI-driven product changes can erode prior value quickly if new models don't preserve use cases.
  • Track leading indicators of endurance, not just lagging revenue, to spot hidden fragility.
ANECDOTE

Model Shipments Can Kill Old Usage

  • Abbas describes a model company that ships a new model and sees old usage collapse.
  • He uses this to show how quickly AI product changes can erase prior customer value.
INSIGHT

Customer Success Budget Recalibrated

  • Post-sales investment benchmarks shifted as AI moved from experiments to durable customer-facing leverage.
  • Abbas recalibrated the envelope from ~10% to ~7% given consistent efficiency gains from AI.
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