Sales-CS collaboration, process adherence, and the real-world adoption of AI-powered call insight tools
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Civis operates in the SaaS sector with a focus on driving both sales and customer success (CS) outcomes. James, representing Civis, is responsible for enabling cross-team collaboration and ensuring that customer-facing teams leverage technology to improve process and outcomes.
* "Champion as a persona is becoming so core to our business..."
* The company is scaling and needs systems that unify data and insight flows between teams.
Civis set out to create a 'kundli' (profile) of their champions and drive adherence to onboarding and discovery checklists across Sales and CS. The goal was to enable better customer understanding, handoffs, and win rates.
* "We had some grand vision... to create a checklist... and bring that back into good use."
* Unifying call insights and making them actionable is a core focus for the team.
Civis faces challenges typical of scaling SaaS teams: mixed tool usage, fragmented data, and the need for privacy controls. The organization’s motion involves deep collaboration between Sales and CS, with overlapping customer touchpoints and shared responsibilities for onboarding and ongoing engagement.
* "For some customers, a larger one of ours, IBM... started using it."
* Balancing visibility and privacy is an ongoing concern.
Civis’ attempts to build process adherence and champion profiles have not scaled. Adoption is low, and the insights generated are not being consumed meaningfully due to lack of integration and clear workflows.
* "It ended up being used as a note taker..."
* "We've not been able to build bearings around those [data/checklists]."
Without process adherence and actionable insights, Civis risks missing key discovery opportunities, duplicating work, and losing context during handoffs. The cost is both operational and strategic: lower win rates, less effective onboarding, and reduced ability to coach reps.
* "If you can't drive event per champion, then there's no point in taking to the next quarter."
* "Manual data has so much inaccuracies... they will miss out on the corners here and there."
Relying on Zime as a glorified note taker (or on manual entry in internal tools) has not delivered the intended value. Integration gaps and process ambiguity mean the system is seen as an extra step, not a source of leverage.
* "Is $50 worth a fee to pay for a note taker, which $20 commodity?"
* "We could not derive value what I had set out to for the CSF team."
Civis’ ideal solution goes beyond notes. They want robust HubSpot integration, admin controls for privacy and access, customizable email formats, and real process adherence support. The ability for leaders to leave call comments for feedback and to enable cross-team visibility without compromising privacy are key asks.
* "The ideal scenario is AE should be able to see CSM calls..."
* "We want to build that into the A dashboard."
Civis was attracted to Zime’s promise of playbook-driven insights, discovery measurement, and sales-CS alignment. Zime’s flexibility in pricing, willingness to co-develop features, and focus on outcomes (not just call recording) remain differentiators. The team agreed to extend the pilot with clearer objectives and more tactical testing.
* "If the outcome is to drive win rates and discovery, we are the best company."
* Zime committed to rapid feature improvements and pilot extension to validate value.