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The 45% Problem: Why Unit4 Cut Mid-Touch and Bet on AI ft. Jean de Villiers
[Un]Churned – The No. 1 Podcast for Customer RetentionShow Notes
No one celebrates a new ERP. No champagne. Just groans. Jean de Villiers, Chief Customer Officer at Unit4, wants to flip that script.
Jean shares they have kept customers for 20+ years in an industry built on dread. Secret? He runs customer success like a business, not a cost center. He cut the safe middle option. He's betting big on AI agents. And he trains his whole team to have the uncomfortable conversations most people avoid. In this episode of Unchurned, Jean sits down with host Josh Schachter to unpack the playbook: why 45% of what customers pay for goes unused, how high-touch service drives a 50-point gap in customer promotion, and what it really takes to make people love the software they're supposed to hate.
Josh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.com
--- What You'll Learn - Why Unit4 runs CS as a profit center, not a cost - How to hit 30% contribution margin to EBITDA in post-sales - Why Unit4 cut mid-touch and kept only high and digital - Packaging every service into a self-serve catalog - Building an agentic digital CSM that feels high-touch - The 50-point NPS gap between high-touch and self-serve - Why 45% consumption is ERP's dirty secret - Training non-sellers on the Challenger Sale method - How AI plus human domain expertise wins together
--- Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.
--- Timestamps 0:00 - Preview and Introduction 1:44 - Meet Jean de Villiers 2:45 - What Unit4 does and its four verticals 4:32 - Customers who stay 20+ years 6:32 - The org structure of post-sales 7:32 - Running CS as a profit center under PE 8:50 - Why they cut mid-touch 9:45 - Packaging services into a catalog 12:20 - The agentic digital CSM vision 13:53 - Success For You: the high-touch subscription 18:12 - Sunsetting on-premise product, migrating to cloud & Ava 21:50 - The 45% consumption problem 23:57 - The 50-point NPS difference 25:30 - Challenger Sale training for everyone 31:40 - Wrap-up
--- Where to Find the Guest Jean de Villiers (Unit4): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeandevilliers/
--- Where to Find Josh: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/ Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/
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Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.
Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.
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