Boomi highlights business thought leaders, the trends they see, and the interesting things their organizations are doing. We focus especially on how they view rapid advances in AI.
There’s a phrase that’s core to how Anand Mehta thinks about the role of customer success teams. Never waste a good escalation.
Whenever a customer flags an urgent, high-stakes problem, that’s the moment Boomi can prove its promise to always have their back is more than just words.
“Anytime someone reaches out with an urgent concern, it’s a chance to climb into the foxhole with them, work shoulder-to-shoulder, and find a solution,” said Mehta, the Chief Customer Officer at Boomi. “Once you do help, they will never forget how we were there for them. Escalations are inevitable. So people need to know they can trust you to be there for them when they happen.”
Technology might be the foundation of any customer-vendor relationship in software. But Mehta believes something else is just as essential – the human element.
“When somebody buys a tech product, they’re putting their neck on the line because they have a lot of options,” he said. “Our belief at Boomi is they need to know we’re invested in them.”
Mehta is responsible for the customer-facing aspects of Boomi, focusing on product adoption, technical success, and business value. He took time to explain how Boomi uses AI in customer success, why the business places such an emphasis on human interactions, and a valuable lesson he learned early in his career as a high school teacher. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
What makes a Customer Success team so important?
Anand Mehta: It’s about providing value-added services and content to the customer. It’s all related to how they can get every penny of value out of Boomi. We want them to squeeze every drop of juice out of what they bought. Everything we do is crafted with that in mind. It’s “How do we help the customer feel like they’re getting five or 10 times their investment in Boomi?” When that happens, it builds trust.
Why is Boomi a good partner?
Anand Mehta: We just firmly believe that we have to be there, all the time. It starts with our CEO, Steve Lucas, who is fantastic at this. Anytime someone reaches out to him, he replies within five minutes to say: “My team is on it. Call me if you need anything.” People know that he’s incredibly responsive and that he cares. Our team has really taken that same approach. It goes back to that idea of getting into the foxhole. It just goes such a long way when people know you really support what they’re doing. It strengthens those personal relationships.
How has AI changed Customer Success?
Anand Mehta: It’s definitely changed our customers’ expectations of us. They expect information to be much more customized and curated so that it’s pertinent to them. They want to know specifically how the new products we’re releasing can be relevant to them. Generic slide decks about the roadmap and release updates really just don’t scratch that itch anymore. So, AI like Claude gives us the ability to have a really specific conversation with every customer about their usage of Boomi, why what we’re doing is really valuable to them, and how they’ll benefit from it. We’re more productive and better able to meet customers where they are. In today’s world, this is a way for us to use AI to create better human interactions and provide more empathy.
Can you give an example of how your team uses AI to help customers?
Anand Mehta: Onboarding is one. We’ve built agents that help us scrape all the information we’ve learned from the sales cycle. They look through Gong, Clari, Salesforce, Slack, and any other system where we have information about why the customer selected Boomi and what they’re hoping to achieve. An agent distills that and creates a handover document for everyone who will work with that new customer, including the customer success manager. It gives them a really simple way to see all the pertinent information in a prioritized, organized format. The worst thing that can happen is for a customer to spend months talking to Boomi about what they’re looking for, and evaluating and validating how our tool can help them. And then on the first day, someone in customer success says, “OK, so what do you want to do with Boomi?” That can be a sour experience. AI helps us change how we engage with customers. We’ve done our homework, and we come in with a point of view on exactly how to help and support the customer. It definitely drives more meaningful conversations from the jump.
You were a high school teacher for one year. Is there something from that experience you’ve carried with you?
Anand Mehta: I taught algebra, economics, and U.S. history. What I learned is that it’s important to simplify things to the most basic principle that anybody can understand. That’s really a superpower. You need to figure out a way, without using a lot of jargon, to communicate something. Or you’re just wasting everyone’s time. It was important when I was a teacher, and it’s been really important throughout my life. It’s similar to something I heard when I worked at McKinsey. They would say there are plenty of smart people who can create fancy models. But there are not a lot of people who can take a 10-page spreadsheet and simplify it into one slide that you can explain in one minute. But that’s what you need to do to engage with a board or a CEO.
How do you apply that idea in your day-to-day?
Anand Mehta: It’s about bringing value to every single conversation. Whenever someone engages with us, we need to make sure that every minute is worth their time because that’s how we earn the next conversation and then the next one. We have an incredible product. We have amazing tools at our fingertips. But it still comes back to helping people understand and learn.
What role does AI have in your personal life?
Anand Mehta: My wife and I are careful not to rely too much on AI at home. We have three young boys, and we definitely talk about how powerful, valuable, and important AI is. But we emphasize that you need to use it in the context of your own critical thinking. They’re still trying to figure out things like how to craft good sentence structure when they write. That can get short-circuited if all you’re doing is writing half-sentences and letting ChatGPT complete everything for you. It’s also so easy to just find information with AI. We have to tell them not to take it at face value. Those are important conversations because they’re hearing about AI all the time. So they’re wondering what it is and how it works. We just want to emphasize that it complements human thinking. It’s not meant to displace it.
Up Close With Anand Mehta
Role: Boomi Chief Customer Officer
Home: A native of Ohio, he now lives in Denver
Family: Married with three sons
Education: Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Emory University; MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management
Career: Joined Boomi in February 2025. Previous roles included serving as a principal at Rubicon Technology Partners, executive roles at iCIMS, Marketo, and the Zayo Group, and as an associate principal at McKinsey & Company.
Interests: He’s a big sports fan, and that includes professional wrestling, which he laughingly refers to as a “guilty pleasure.”
Not all tech companies lean in to providing resources that help customers succeed. Find out how Boomi does it in our guide to Boomi Enterprise Platform adoption resources.