The Customer Success Playbook
Welcome to “The Customer Success Playbook,” a fresh podcast initiative spearheaded by Kevin Metzger and Roman Trebon. Immerse yourself with us in the dynamic realm of customer success, where we unravel the latest insights, inspirations, and wisdom from recognized leaders in the Customer Success domain.
Our journey began with a simple yet profound belief: that meaningful conversations can significantly impact our professional trajectory. With this ethos, we’ve embarked on a mission to bring to you the voices of seasoned and revered professionals in the field. Our episodes have seen the likes of Sue Nabeth Moore, Greg Daines, Jeff Heclker, James Scott, David Ellin, and David Jackson, who have generously shared their expertise on a variety of pertinent topics.
We’ve delved into the intricacies of Profit and Loss Statements in Customer Success with Dave Jacksson, explored the potential of Customer Success Platforms with Dave Ellin, and unravelled the role of AI in Customer Success with all guests. With Sue, we navigated the waters of Organizational Alignment, while Greg brought to light strategies for Reducing Churn. Not to be missed is James insightful discourse on the Current Trends in Customer Success and Jeff’s thoughts on Service Delivery in CS.
Each episode is crafted with the intention to ignite curiosity and foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement among customer success professionals. Our discussions transcend the conventional, probing into the proactive approach, and the evolving landscape of customer success.
Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to the industry, our goal is to propel your customer success prowess to greater heights. The rich tapestry of topics we cover ensures there’s something for everyone, from the fundamentals to the advanced strategies that shape the modern customer success playbook.
Our upcoming episodes promise a wealth of knowledge with topics like CS Math, Training, AI, Getting hired in CS, and CS Tool reviews, ensuring our listeners stay ahead of the curve in this fast-evolving field. The roadmap ahead is laden with engaging dialogues with yet more industry mavens, aimed at equipping you with the acumen to excel in your customer success journey.
At “The Customer Success Playbook,” our zeal for aiding others and disseminating our expertise to the community fuels our endeavor. Embark on this enlightening voyage with us, and escalate your customer success game to unparalleled levels.
Join us on this quest for knowledge, engage with a community of like-minded professionals, and elevate your customer success game to the next level. Your journey towards mastering customer success begins here, at “The Customer Success Playbook.” Keep On Playing!!
The Customer Success Playbook
Customer Success Playbook S3 E67 - Gayle Gorvett - AI Governance Essentials
Ready to navigate the complex world of AI governance without getting lost in legal jargon? This episode delivers a masterclass in building ethical AI frameworks that actually work for your business. Global tech lawyer and fractional general counsel Gayle Gorvett breaks down the essential guardrails every company needs before diving headfirst into AI implementation. From her work with Duke University's AI working groups to real-world enterprise applications, Gayle reveals why treating AI like the "shiny new toy" without proper governance is a recipe for disaster. Whether you're protecting customer data or safeguarding your company's future, this customer success playbook episode provides the foundational knowledge to approach AI adoption with confidence and compliance.
Detailed Analysis
The AI revolution isn't just changing how we work—it's fundamentally reshaping the legal and ethical landscape of business operations. Gayle Gorvett's expertise in AI governance comes at a crucial time when companies are rushing to implement AI solutions without adequate safeguards. Her comparison of current AI hype to the blockchain frenzy of a decade ago serves as a sobering reminder that sustainable innovation requires thoughtful planning, not just technological enthusiasm.
The multidisciplinary approach Gayle advocates represents a significant shift in how businesses should structure their AI initiatives. Gone are the days when technology decisions could be made in isolation. Modern AI governance demands collaboration between business functions, technical teams, and legal counsel—creating a new paradigm for cross-functional leadership in customer success organizations.
For customer success professionals, the implications extend far beyond internal operations. When AI systems interact with customer data, handle support tickets, or predict customer behavior, the governance framework becomes a direct reflection of your company's commitment to customer trust. Gayle's emphasis on informing customers about AI usage highlights how transparency has evolved from a nice-to-have to a business imperative.
The Duke AI Risk Framework and NIST guidelines she references provide actionable starting points for organizations feeling overwhelmed by the governance challenge. These resources democratize access to enterprise-level AI governance, making sophisticated risk assessment accessible to companies of all sizes. This democratization aligns perfectly with the customer success playbook philosophy of scalable, repeatable processes that drive consistent outcomes.
Perhaps most importantly, Gayle's 26-year perspective in technology law offers historical context that many AI discussions lack. Her experience through previous technology waves—from the early internet boom to blockchain—provides valuable pattern recognition for identifying sustainable AI strategies versus fleeting trends. This wisdom becomes particularly relevant for customer success leaders who must balance innovation with the reliability their customers depend on.
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Customer success.
Kevin Metzger:Hello everyone and welcome to the Customer Success Playbook podcast, where we bring you actionable insights for the customer success team of today and tomorrow. I'm your host, Kevin Metzker. Unfortunately, Roman is unable to join us this week, but we are thrilled to welcome Gail Vete to the show. Gail's a seasoned global tech lawyer and fractional general counsel with deep expertise in SaaS, cross-border transactions and AI governance. She's helped companies expand into markets from China to Istanbul. And currently leads g Govett Consulting. Gail, welcome to the show. Would you like to share a little bit more about your background?
Gayle Gorvett:Thank you. Um, yes, I would. Before forming my company, I was an associate at a large law firm in New York, and I was in-house counsel at two public companies, um, in France, nal, which is an Altel spinoff, and Brinks, EMEA. Where I was international corporate counsel for the BGS business division and responsible for EMEA and Asia Pacific. And now in addition to helping clients with their day-to-day, um, legal matters, I do quite a lot of AI governance work. Which is a very interesting area to be in.
Kevin Metzger:Yeah, and I'm, I'm super excited about that because that's really what the topic of today's show is. It is kind of getting into what you're doing in AI governance and how it kind of applies. And, you know, we do look at this from a customer success perspective, but quite frankly, this is whole company type stuff, right? So how, how people are using AI and what's happening. And how the governance structures are coming in. It's important to understand that information and how to structure a governance program within a company because you're. Working on your customer's data. You're working on protecting your company's data. This new AI scenario, this new AI workflow is something that we need to consider all of these, these priorities. And so with that said, like I said, I'm super excited to kind of talk to you about this and I think you're working or you're working with a program for governance structure. Can you kind of get into that a little bit more?
Gayle Gorvett:Yes, I've been a member of two, um, AI guardrails working groups with the Duke Center on Law and Technology for, I guess it's a little more than a year now. And, um, duke is actually in, you know, similar to a lot of big universities like Stanford and MIT. Um, creating a lot of working groups in this area. They have five. Um, the, the two I'm working with are focused on two different user groups. One is end users of ai, you know, just the general population, and the other is users. So lawyers that are either in law firms or in-house who would be using ai. And we've been focusing on producing, um, AI guardrails for those two user groups. In the working groups that I'm part of.
Kevin Metzger:Can you get into kind of how those guidelines are getting developed? What, what can you get into around
Gayle Gorvett:that? Yeah. Um, so Duke basically, you know, put out a call to have volunteers to anyone who was really interested in participating in, of course got a, a pretty, um, large response. Um, and a lot of. The people who volunteered for the user group. Um, the working groups that I'm part of are, um, lawyers or people who work in, um, different, uh, nonprofit organizations. Some, some are professors, um, and they're interested in making sure that we have, um. Guidelines and, and, um, documentation for the general population and also especially for lawyers to help clients and other lawyers, um, to really provide ethical and compliance guardrails for ai, especially in the United States where we have a, a real lack of federal regulation in this space. Uh, to make sure that people use ai, but that they have some ethical and governance guidelines to help them do that.
Kevin Metzger:Thank you for the background. And if we get into the, what's your number one SH tip, which, so first show always is about what's your number one tip for ensuring that we kind of like the foundational rule for ensuring you have those ethical guidelines in place.
Gayle Gorvett:You know, I've been a, a technology for, uh, going on 26 years now, and, you know, I've been working with, um, companies in this space since, you know. The beginning with like monster.com and, um, you know, the, the battle between, uh, Microsoft and um, and, and Google in the old days. And, um, and I, I think AI has a lot of promise. It's very innovating. It's a kind of the, the shiny new toy right now. But I, I see a lot of the, the hype in this space as similar to what we saw when blockchain was. Everywhere about 10 years ago. And, and, um, people who are, you know, thinking about using this in a, in an enterprise context. I would say two things. I would say yes. It, it definitely, it has a lot of promise. It, it shows a lot of, um, you know. Um, innovation in terms of helping, uh, in, in a lot of administrative tasks, a lot of potential productivity tools. But think about the use case, the specific use case for your business, um, before, you know, potentially investing, uh, financial resources or making AI a really big part of your. Uh, you know, planning in, in any strategic way on a business level. Then when you think about AI and how to, um, look at a, a governance policy or an ethical, uh, use of ai, you always have to think about how you're using it. Of course, think about your customers and how they want to be, um, informed of your use of ai. And then you have to approach it from a multidisciplinary way. Um, make sure that you are involving the business function, the the tech people in your team. If you do have in-house counsel involved, the them. If you, if you're not big enough to do that, maybe think of someone you know, like me, who's a fractional, um, general counsel to help you. Um, come up with those kind of guidelines. You know, there are resources out there, um, to help you go go through this process and think about the considerations and the risk that you might be, uh, facing in your company, um, as you're going through that. So, one that I would recommend to people in the US is the nis NIST AI risk framework. That's NIST. And the other one for legal teams is the one that we've developed through Duke, which is the, the Duke AI risk Framework, through which we've, we've developed, you know, a comprehensive, um, AI risk assessment, which allows legal teams to develop their own governance policies that are. Um, really app appropriate to their business, their industry, their sector, and the use case that they're using it for.
Kevin Metzger:Fantastic for, and thank you for helping kick off today. I think we're gonna probably get into more detail on some of these in our show on Wednesday. Um, kind of what happens on when you go deep and who's responsible or accountable. When AI goes wrong, don't miss it. Like, share, subscribe, and until then, keep on playing.
