[Un]Churned · 20 May 2026 · From the week of 18 May
Why The Best CS Leaders Start With The Boardroom, Not The Product ft. Adnan Rahman (Paycor)
These are notes on the conversation, checked against its transcript. The episode itself has the full discussion.
In brief
Adnan Rahman, Head of Customer and Partner Success at Paycor, speaks with host Josh Schachter about the value realization framework his team built to move CSMs from tracking health scores and running product-demo QBRs toward outcome-based conversations. He describes the discovery questions that helped his team ask about renewal, the success planning cycle, and the joint success plans that replaced traditional QBRs. The episode also covers Paycor's current AI use in call prep, churn prediction and planned agents, plus its plans for community and learning. His central argument is that customers who cannot articulate the value they receive are at risk when a CFO questions the spend.
For founders
- Adnan says the first step to a value framework is to list the top reasons customers buy, grouped into three to five broad categories, before going deeper.
- Adnan says customers who renew out of inertia often cannot articulate the value they receive, which leaves the CS team without an answer when a CFO asks why they are paying.
- Adnan says Paycor already uses AI for call prep and has released a churn prediction model, while deck tools and AI agents are still being evaluated or built.
For revenue leaders
- Adnan says Paycor's success plans run as a cycle from discovery through business review to verified outcomes, then either continue or reset.
- Adnan says since rolling out the framework, executives attend meetings that used to be tactical status calls, and Paycor calls these meetings joint success plans.
- Adnan says disruptive discovery questions, such as asking whether the customer would answer a call from a competitor and what they would say, helped his CSMs get past their fear of asking about renewal.
- Adnan says that when CSMs asked customers directly about the relationship, customers were more forthcoming than the team expected.
- Adnan says tracking outcomes surfaces products and use cases customers have not bought, which his team uses as white space for expansion.
What was said 24, most useful first
The value framework makes CSMs start from the customer's desired business outcome and work back to the product, rather than starting from product usage. Listen
At Paycor, Adnan says CSMs without a framework default to product usage, feature adoption and support cases, which he calls means rather than an end. The framework starts with outcomes such as reducing time to hire, cutting errors or improving employee retention in HCM, then works backwards to the product. He presents this as the core of the approach, which has been rolled out to 28 enterprise CSMs and expanded to 17 mid-market CSMs.
“And so the value framework forces The CSM to start with the customer's desired business outcome whether that's reducing their time to hire”
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A useful discovery question is asking whether the customer would take a call from a competitor and what they would say. Listen
Adnan says the competitor question helped the team get past their fear of asking about renewal. He ties it to the team's shift toward having more direct renewal conversations. He presents it as one of the disruptive questions from the UBR training.
“If a competitor called you right now, you know, would you answer and what would you say?”
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He avoids yes-or-no questions such as whether a customer has hiring challenges, and instead asks which parts of a process feel efficient. Listen
Adnan gives the hiring example: asking whether there are hiring challenges invites a one-word answer, while asking which parts of the hiring process feel efficient changes the frame and gets the customer to share more. He says discovery questions of this kind are very important to the framework.
“So you never really want to ask a question like, do you have hiring challenges in our case, right?”
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The first step to building a value framework is to ask the top reasons customers buy, then group the answers into three to five broad categories. Listen
Adnan says the categories should be about challenges and outcomes, not features, and should start high level without boiling the ocean. He recommends interviewing best customers, top-performing CSMs, solutions engineers, account executives and the learning team, with categories emerging from the patterns in those conversations.
“Yeah, the first step is You got to start by asking what are the top reasons customers buy our product, right?”
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Each category should have three to five measurable expected outcomes, with leading and lagging metrics attached. Listen
Adnan says outcomes should be concrete enough to measure but broad enough to apply across the customer base. Leading metrics serve as an early warning system and coaching tool for CSMs, while lagging metrics are what gets discussed with the executive sponsor. He says this is what gives the framework teeth.
“And your leading metrics will be early warning system and coaching tool, lagging metrics, the things that you're going to talk to about with your executive sponsor.”
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Customers renewing out of inertia often cannot articulate the value they are getting, which leaves CS without an answer when a CFO asks why they are paying. Listen
Adnan describes CS teams stuck in a reactive cycle of monitoring health scores, chasing red accounts and running QBRs that feel like product demos. In his account, customers renew out of momentum rather than a clear understanding of value. He says the value framework gives CS teams a structured way to tie each customer interaction to measurable business outcomes.
“Customers can't really articulate the value they're getting, right?”
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Paycor calls its outcome-based review meetings joint success plans, with the emphasis on the customer and the vendor working on success together. Listen
Adnan says the team usually refers to these meetings as joint success plans and stresses the word joint. He contrasts them with QBRs that felt more like product demos. He says the meetings are now strategic rather than tactical status calls.
“We usually mention we talk about joint success plans.”
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Since adopting the framework, CSMs are getting executives to attend meetings that used to be tactical status calls. Listen
Adnan says the conversations have moved up a level and now function as business reviews covering strategic items. He describes customers as feeling the relationship has evolved into a more strategic one. He gives no numbers for executive attendance.
“And their conversations of up level, they're getting the executives to attend the meeting, right?”
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One discovery question his team likes is asking what the customer's board is discussing at the moment. Listen
Adnan credits Bob London's UBR method, which he says trained the team on pointed and disruptive discovery questions. The board question asks the customer to imagine stepping into a board meeting and name the one thing being discussed. He presents it as a question the team still uses.
“I think the team really likes asking about, you know, what their board is talking about.”
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Adnan describes the value framework as a cycle of success planning, progress tracking, business review, verified outcomes, and then continue or reset. Listen
The first CSM conversation is a strategic success planning discovery session, with a cadence that varies by segment. Over the following months and quarters, the CSM shares information and tracks progress, and status calls become more pointed. The business review recaps progress, and the team then either continues or resets the plan based on verified outcomes.
“So it really starts with success planning, right?”
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Working through customer outcomes surfaces products and use cases the customer does not yet own, which opens white space for expansion. Listen
Adnan says that by understanding where the customer is and where they want to go, Paycor can plug in a product that addresses the need. He says this has produced expansion and NRR results, which he describes as a huge success, and has made CSMs more strategic.
“And so now you have some white space and you talk about product purchasing additional products and expansion and things like that.”
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Each outcome needs plays, best practices and thought leadership, not just a pitch to use a specific feature. Listen
Adnan says telling a customer to use a feature is different from giving step-by-step guides, industry-specific best practices, process recommendations and benchmarks. He says Gainsight provides this kind of guidance to Paycor, including webinars and examples of what other customers are doing.
“It's one thing to tell a customer, like, use this feature. It's another thing to help the customer with step-by-step guides”
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Paycor records its sales calls and mines the transcripts to learn what outcomes customers are seeking, but many customers do not understand what they can solve for. Listen
Adnan says sales teams are good at parsing out customer needs during the sale. He notes that many customers do not think about the business outcomes the product can deliver, so CS often has to translate what it hears and ask pointed questions in discovery.
“a lot of our calls are recorded and mine we can mine transcripts and things like that to get that information but not all customers truly understand.”
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Paycor's CS organisation is tiered, with high-touch coverage for strategic and enterprise accounts and mid-market, and a scale-touch digital model for smaller customers. Listen
Adnan says Paycor manages over 35,000 customer relationships with a CS team of almost 100. The partner success team applies the same value realisation mandate to brokers, resellers and franchise accounts, which involve corporate-level relationships and location-level execution.
“We deliver varying levels of high touch engagement models for our strategic and enterprise customers and our mid-market accounts. And then we have a scale touch model coupled with digital motion for our small market customers.”
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Paycor has just released a churn prediction model that flags customers with a high propensity to churn and gives the reasons. Listen
Adnan says the model uses a variety of flags and filters to indicate churn risk, and it provides insight into why a customer might churn. He says the next stage is a propensity-to-buy signal, flagging customers who have a need or use case for a product they do not own.
“we just released a churn prediction model tool, right? So it actually tells us, hey, a customer might have a high propensity to churn based off a variety of different flags and filters.”
Paycor is building a knowledge base from call recordings, transcripts and its knowledge base so an agent could work with customers flagged at risk. Listen
Adnan says the team is in the middle of a large exercise to upload call recordings, call transcripts and the knowledge base into a model. He wants to connect GainSight risk insights with CSM documentation to shorten cycle times on risk and on customer questions. He presents this as work in progress.
“And then as we think about risk, right? You know, we have some of the insights. How do we have an agent automatically work with a customer in the case where there's risk, right?”
Long training sessions are hard to get customers to complete, so Paycor is adding short clips and in-app guidance at key moments. Listen
Adnan says customers are less willing to sit through hour-long or multi-week training to get certified. He says short TikTok- and Instagram-style clips are starting to pick up, and Paycor is using AI and knowledge around key moments of truth to show in-app pop-ups that guide customers.
“I think the hard thing in today's attention economy right is being able to capture anybody's time to really go through complex training and learning.”
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As answer engines spread, community needs to deliver fast, verified answers. Listen
Adnan asks whether customers will wait for a community response or go to an AI tool instead. He says Paycor is looking at infusing its human knowledge and knowledge bases into a model so that answers are quick and verified, while people still value talking to each other. Josh adds that community content also feeds answer engines and learning, creating a flywheel.
“But now how do we get answers quickly to people? That is verified, right?”
Customers were expected to lie about their relationship when asked, but were the opposite when given the chance to talk about it. Listen
Adnan says there was a lot of hesitation at first and the team expected customers to be untruthful. In practice, he says customers were very forthcoming when given the opportunity to describe the relationship and how things stand. This reflects his experience at Paycor and is not a general claim.
“There was a lot of hesitation at first, like customers would kind of lie to you. But it's the exact opposite, right?”
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Paycor uses Gainsight's Copilot for call prep to reduce the manual administrative work before customer calls. Listen
Adnan says Copilot provides call prep insights and helps CSMs prepare for calls with less manual work. He also says AI helps formulate messages in a customer-friendly way. He describes this as an efficiency gain the team is already getting.
“You know, we use co-pilot within GainSight. That's great for call prep, insights, preparing CSMs to cut out some of the manual administrative work of preparing for a call.”
Paycor is looking at Matic to build customer decks and expects to reduce the hour a deck takes to minutes. Listen
Adnan says Paycor is currently looking at Matic and is excited to get it going in the very near future. He says the team knows each deck takes about an hour and expects the tool to cut that down to minutes. This is an evaluation rather than a deployed tool.
“we know every deck takes an hour and we can cut that down to minutes, right?”
He expects AI agents to help first with expansion outreach and renewals, particularly for smaller and month-to-month customers. Listen
Adnan says an agent could reach out to customers when a need appears to gauge interest and then create a lead. He also points to renewals, including month-to-month customers affected by price increases, where he says outbound at Paycor's scale is hard. He frames these as his magic-wand priorities rather than deployed work.
“So obviously, the renewals and expansions, I think are two big ones.”
Paycor's community is limited to certified or invited users, so it is not a broad community for all admins and users. Listen
Adnan says the community is isolated to people certified on the product or invited for deep product knowledge. Paycor is moving toward live small user groups in cities and power hours or webinars built around cohorts. He describes the broader community as a work in progress.
“We have a community, but it's very isolated to people who are certified on the product or invited because they have deep product knowledge.”
He expects AI to be deployed at scale by year end, with the focus on adding customer value and efficiency, and with a first agent live. Listen
Adnan says the roadmap is to map out the AI model, build the use cases and deploy a first agent, possibly a simple one. He says layoffs have been happening across the industry, but Paycor frames the goal as scaling, driving efficiency and adding value to the customer experience.
“And so really getting our AI model mapped out, getting our use cases built out, and then having our first agent deployed, right?”