Steering Accomplishments: Software Vendors and Customer Success

• In Event: 30216 - Emerging Work Practices in the Age of AI

Abstract

In this article I theorize how it is that software vendors, especially firms that sell subscription software to organizations, manage the evaluations of their customers. I find that in the business-to-business market, firms do not rely on design and marketing practices alone. Rather, over the last two decades, firms started to employ relationship workers who would ensure that customers maintain and grow their usage of a software platform. This practice became known as Customer Success Management, and is an increasingly lucrative profession within the software industry. Through interviews with Customer Success professionals, digital ethnography, and content analysis I theorize how it is that these relationship workers intervene to promote positive evaluations of algorithmic technology. I theorize the work of Customer Success Managers as a practice of steering accomplishments. Using algorithmic systems, vendors collect trace data about their customers. They then use this data to create algorithmic triggers that shape how, when, and why they intervene with relationship work. I find evidence of two common strategies for steering accomplishments: high touch and tech touch. After describing each strategy, I conclude by suggesting directions for a sociology of software evaluations.

Author

• Joshua Eisenstat, New York University