Justin sits down with Allison Skidmore, Chief Customer Officer at Optimizely, the world's first operating system for marketing teams.

Allison brings a rich perspective shaped by stints at Adobe, Stackla, Gigya, and SAP across Asia Pacific before landing in the US to lead customer success at Optimizely. This episode explores how AI is fundamentally reshaping the marketer's daily workflow, what great onboarding looks like in an AI-native world, and what the CCO role must become as organizations race to stay ahead.

Episode Notes & Key Topics

1. Allison's Career Journey

• Started in SEM at a Sydney agency later acquired by Adobe, rode the wave of digital marketing's early SaaS transition.
• Spent six years at Adobe running customer success across Asia Pacific, building offshore teams and subscription services models.
• Moved through Stackla and Gigya (acquired by SAP nine months in), then scaled the CS role across all SAP lines of business in APAC.
• Joined Optimizely two years ago after reconnecting with CEO Alex Atzberger, bringing global enterprise CS experience to a fast-growing martech platform.

2. What Stays the Same in Customer Success

• The sales-to-CS handover friction is timeless: it never goes away regardless of company size or stage.
• Digital-first customer engagement (email, offshore teams, automation) has been a constant scaling challenge for decades.
• The shift from time-and-materials professional services to subscription models remains a dominant trend.
• Tech advancements create the inflection points: AI is today's example.

3. AI and the Marketer's Day-in-the-Life

• Allison paints a vivid picture: by 10 AM, an AI-enabled marketer has completed a full week's worth of work.
• Optimizely's Opal AI product is provisioned across the entire team, enabling agent building, workflow automation, and access to tools like Claude and Gemini.
• The opportunity is not just efficiency, it's the ability to pull forward backlogged work and shrink implementation timelines (e.g., from 12 months to 3).
• The companies moving fastest are the ones blocking calendar time to train their teams on prompting and agent-building, not just giving access.

4. Reimagining Onboarding and the Customer Journey

• Allison's framework: great onboarding is the seamless alignment of three channels, human-to-human touchpoints, email marketing, and in-product experience.
• Customers now expect to self-serve answers (just like asking AI instead of calling a mechanic), human-heavy onboarding alone no longer cuts it.
• Consistency is the key: the message the customer gets in the product, in their inbox, and from their CSM should be identical, no basic repeats, no skipped steps.

5. The Evolving Role of the CCO

• The C-suite fundamentals don't change: stay curious, solve problems, skate to where the puck is going.
• Today, the puck is AI. If you can't build an agent, you can't expect your team to.
• Allison is actively realigning roles, KPIs, and commissions around AI-native execution.
• The CCO who can't leverage AI to scale themselves and reimagine their business will become extinct, just like Blockbuster.
• Lego is the positive model: reinvention again and again.

6. What's Top of Mind for 2026

• AI continues to dominate, but the customer journey evolution is a close second.
• Consumers are shifting from Google to ChatGPT and similar tools, which means brands must optimize for GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), not just SEO.
• Personalization is entering a new era: every touchpoint, not just the website.

Brent Krempges, Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight, joins the show to unpack the next evolution of Customer Success in an AI-first world.

After 12+ years at Gainsight, from implementation to global pre-sales to CCO, Brent shares how CS is shifting from seat-based software to outcome-driven operating models. We dive into AI-driven health scores, renewal agents, sentiment analysis, and the looming “retention reckoning” facing AI-native companies.

• AI will elevate — not eliminate — the importance of services.
• Floor-Deployed Engineers (FDEs) signal a return to high-touch value realization.
• Health scores are getting smarter, but “watermelon accounts” will always exist.
• Sentiment analysis from transcripts and email may replace traditional NPS.
• Many AI companies haven’t hit their renewal reality yet.
• Retention pressure is coming — especially for growth-at-all-costs AI startups.
• Before deploying agents, companies must rebuild foundational lifecycle processes.
• Think of agents as “50 interns” — would they know what to do?

In this episode of the Thread Podcast, Justin Vandehey sits down with Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, Chief Revenue Officer of Condé Nast, to explore how one of the world’s most iconic media companies is navigating transformation in the age of AI.

Elizabeth shares lessons from her career spanning media, advertising, and technology, including leadership roles at Yahoo, Snap, and Viacom, and explains why trusted brands, human creativity, and editorial authority are becoming more valuable, not less, as AI accelerates content creation.

The conversation covers how Condé Nast is using AI responsibly to enhance, not replace premium content, how revenue teams are being unified across advertising, commerce, subscriptions, and live events, and what it takes to lead teams through constant transformation with curiosity, accountability, and gratitude.

This episode is a masterclass in modern GTM leadership at the intersection of creativity, technology, and trust.

Chapters

00:00 – Welcome & Elizabeth’s Career Journey
From media and entertainment to technology and back to Condé Nast.

04:40 – Why Condé Nast, Why Now
The opportunity to lead revenue at an iconic, trust-driven brand.

07:30 – AI and the Future of Premium Content
Why AI can’t replace human creativity, taste, and editorial authority.

11:45 – Creation vs. Curation in an AI World
How Condé Nast separates content creation from AI-powered enhancement.

15:30 – Using AI to Improve Consumer Experience
Real examples from Bon Appétit and The New Yorker.

19:30 – Why LLMs Reward Credibility Over Volume
How AI changes the economics of SEO, expertise, and originality.

23:40 – Unifying Revenue Across Silos
Bringing advertising, commerce, subscriptions, and events into one revenue org.

27:50 – Leading Through Transformation
Elizabeth’s leadership framework: curiosity, accountability, and gratitude.

32:30 – What’s Next for Condé Nast & Premium Media
Why trusted brands will accelerate over the next 12–24 months.

Key Highlights & Takeaways

• AI should enhance content, not replace human voice or judgment.
• Trust, credibility, and editorial authority are premium assets in an AI era.
• LLMs reward expertise and originality, not volume or SEO tricks.
• Revenue transformation requires visibility, shared data, and cohesion across teams.
• The best leaders embrace constant change with curiosity and accountability.
• Premium media’s value proposition strengthens as information becomes noisier.