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The Surprising Way Microsoft Does Customer Success at Scale ft. Pradeep Raman (Microsoft)
[Un]Churned – The No. 1 Podcast for Customer RetentionShow Notes
Heading to Vegas this May? Join Josh at Pulse 2026 and come say hi—your oversized fluorescent daiquiri is on him. No catch. Grab your ticket at gainsightpulse.com and use code UNCHURNED for a special rate.
When your customer success org covers all of Azure — Microsoft's $60B+ cloud business — "deployment" isn't a checkbox. It's a global operation spanning thousands of projects, 180+ people, and a fully invested delivery model where Microsoft does the first leg of the journey for free.
Pradeep Raman, Vice President, Customer Success at Microsoft, breaks down Microsoft's "commit to consume" metric, why they staff at N-1 by design, how agentic AI is replacing intake teams internally, and why no customer celebrates signing a contract — only deploying one.
Pradeep who has spent over 27 years with Microsoft started in consulting, learned new tech on plane rides to customer sites, once asked Bill Gates to pin a customer's logo to his shirt (security wasn't thrilled), and now runs the CS strategy and Cloud Accelerate Factory for Azure.
--- Timestamps 0:00 - Preview & introduction 1:24 - Meet Pradeep Raman & his 27-year run at Microsoft 3:25 - The Bill Gates pin story 4:30 - What "VP of CS" means at Microsoft's scale 6:45 - Cloud Accelerate Factory: free deployment for all Azure customers 10:45 - "No customer celebrates signing an agreement" 11:48 - Goal-setting & OKRs: Commit to Consume & Next Best Action 15:25 - Agentic AI and modernization as top priorities 16:37 - Building AI enablement inside the CS team 20:40 - "I didn't think I'd survive 20 minutes of the interview"
--- What You’ll Learn - How Microsoft measures CS with a single "commit to consume" KPI — and why it changes everything - What the Cloud Accelerate Factory is and why Microsoft offers free hands-on deployment to any Azure customer - Microsoft's N-1 staffing philosophy: hire fewer people than needed, then make it work - How Pradeep's team is using custom agentic AI (analyst agents, architect agents) to scale internal processes - Why AI transformation fails when your data and apps sit in legacy environments - The evolution of CS at Microsoft — from sales support function to growth engine
--- Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.
--- Where to Find the Guest Pradeep Raman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pradeep-raman-41a12a11/
--- 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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