EP016: Launching Uncommon

Jay and Jeff debrief last week's AI Show & Tell — 150 customer leaders watching four real builds in production. A custom CS platform in Claude Code. A sales reference agent. Renewal workflows that adapt to customer health.Plus the launch of Uncommon, a new community for AI-forward customer leaders: https://www.chiefcustomerofficer.io/uncommonJoin us live for AI Demo Day on May 27 at 2pm ET: https://luma.com/i3kbo9m2KEY TAKEAWAYSBuild, don't buy: A CS leader stood up her own CS platform in Claude Code in two weeks. Her token costs are already lower than the SaaS subscriptions she replaced.The data layer is the moat: Whether you centralize via a data lake or wire connectors through MCP, your data architecture is the foundation everything else stands on.Every department needs a builder: Instead of departmental software, every team needs an ops person — or a manager — who can build with AI.From soft to hard agents: Most early use cases just surface information. The real lift comes from agents that draft, schedule, and act on your behalf.Renewal workflows that adapt: A 90-day renewal flow that reshuffles tasks based on customer health markers beats any generic checklist.Skills belong at the team level: Stop emailing markdown files around. Treat skills like internal products with owners, evals, and version control.Company-as-code: Balboa OS lives in markdown, distributed via GitHub to OneDrive to every team member's machine. Update once, push to all.Humans are still a moat: Automate the prep, but human relationships and judgment are not getting commoditized any time soon.CHAPTERS00:00 - Welcome and morning chaos02:32 - Why we ran an AI Show & Tell04:30 - A custom CS platform built in Claude Code08:20 - Data security, privacy, and the engineering layer12:50 - Every department needs an ops person who can build14:52 - The data layer as the real foundation16:50 - An AI-powered sales reference agent19:17 - Jeff's Fathom-to-PlanHat task automation23:54 - A renewal workflow that adapts to health markers27:27 - Skills, coaching, and enterprise-wide sharing30:14 - Balboa OS: turning your company into code33:20 - Why evals matter as models change35:00 - Launching Uncommon for AI-forward CS leaders42:10 - Why "Uncommon"? Bold decisions create the advantageAbout the Show: Chief Customer Officer Podcast is a show about real strategies for customer-led growth in the AI era—from leaders actually executing, not just talking about it.Your Hosts:Jay Nathan – CEO of Balboa Solutions and Co-Founder of ChiefCustomerOfficer.ioJeff Breunsbach – Head of Customer Success at Junction and Co-Founder of ChiefCustomerOfficer.io