Kustomer's Shift to Outcome-Based Pricing for AI

This case study was created from an episode of the Product Marketing Adventure Podcast. It has been adapted into Dusted's case study format to preserve and showcase the guest's real-world experience. Written to preserve the voice of the true author, Nupur Bhade Vilas.

I lead product marketing at Kustomer, an AI-powered CX platform that puts data at the core so businesses can deliver personalized, proactive, and relevant customer interactions. In today's market, AI is transforming every function—including customer experience—with far higher personalization and self-service. Traditional SaaS pricing followed the Salesforce seat- or license-based model. With so much of CX now automated and optimized by AI, that structure no longer consistently aligns with the value customers actually receive. CX is also seasonal, with clear spikes around events like Black Friday and the December holidays rather than steady year-round usage.

Pricing is a lever PMMs rarely own end-to-end; it often sits in finance, product, or sales. When I had the chance to drive a full pricing transformation at Kustomer, the core problem was clear: per-seat licensing forced customers to pay for capacity they might not fully use, while our value was increasingly delivered through outcomes the platform produced. We needed a model that felt fair, protected margins amid rising AI and hosting costs, and still gave sales usable discounting and packaging levers. Leadership alignment, competitive norms, customer willingness-to-pay, and a seamless cross-functional rollout all had to be solved before we could replace the status quo.