Meet Atmaram Gunupudi, Global Head of Professional Services at ThoughtSpot and Research Fellow at the Indian School of Business, who has spent over 20 years turning customer success into a revenue engine. From scaling post-sales teams at Salesforce across global markets to driving 10x revenue growth at MoEngage, Atma has cracked the code on transforming customer success from a cost center into the most strategic function in SaaS companies.

In this episode, Atma discusses why most SaaS companies are leaving millions on the table by treating marketing and customer success as separate silos. He shares his controversial take on where customer success should report for maximum impact.

What you'll learn

🔸 The Marketing-CS Partnership Gap: Why treating marketing and customer success as separate functions fractures the customer experience at handoff

🔸 The Three Waves of CS Evolution: From reactive support to consultative partnerships to transformative business outcomes

🔸 Agent AI Revolution in Recurring Revenue: How to reduce effort to record, analyze, and execute by 60% using AI-driven automation

🔸 The Community Strategy Imperative: Why community is the single most crucial go-to-market lever CEOs have and most ignore it

🔸 Where CS Should Report: The controversial organizational design that drives 90%+ GRR and 120%+ NRR consistently

🔸 The Three Critical Skills for CSMs: Operational efficiency, account management, and functional expertise to survive the AI transformation

🔸 Customer Success Flywheel Framework: From acquisition to retention to engagement—and why most companies only focus on the first

🔸 Concept-to-Market Speed: Why traditional barriers to entry are obsolete and how this changes everything for B2B SaaS

🔸 The CEO-Level Community OKR: Making customer marketing a top-down strategic priority, not an afterthought

Where to find Atmaram Gunupudi

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/atmag/

• Atma's CS Flywheel Website: https://csflywheel.ai/

• Atma's Book - The Customer Success Flywheel: https://amzn.in/d/aPesIDp

Where to find Jaydip Sikdar

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaydipsikdar/

• X: https://x.com/jaydipsikdar

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

05:49 Reinventing Recurring Revenue Management

11:20 Defining Customer Success in Modern SaaS

16:00 Trends Shaping the Future of Customer Success

22:49 The Evolving Role of Customer Success Managers

28:22 Mindset and Training in Customer Success

32:14 The Collaboration Between Marketing and Customer Success

38:21 Ensuring Seamless Customer Experience

38:48 Collaboration Between Marketing and Customer Success

39:55 The Shift from B2B to B2C in SaaS

41:14 The Importance of Community Strategy

43:13 Organizational Design for Customer Success

48:13 Integrating AI in Customer Success Operations

59:26 The Reporting Structure of Customer Success

01:03:45 Insights from Research at ISB

01:06:24 Understanding the Customer Success Flywheel

01:08:12 Continuous Learning and Staying Updated

Referencd

• ThoughtSpot: https://www.thoughtspot.com/

• MoEngage: https://www.moengage.com/

• Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/

• Indian School of Business: https://www.isb.edu/

• CSFlywheel.ai: https://csflywheel.ai/

• Lovable: https://lovable.dev/

• Gartner: https://www.gartner.com/en

• G2: https://www.g2.com/

This Marketing video is part of 'The Marketing Couch' podcast series. Subscribe if you are a B2B Marketer, Customer Success Leader, want to grow your career in SaaS, AI-driven revenue operations, or you want to keep track of the latest trends in customer success, recurring revenue management, or agent AI applications.

For inquiries about the podcast, contact geetha@unstopppable.club.

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