Customer success management

This is the motion that keeps accounts, as distinct from diagnosing why they leave, for the churn analysis itself, see revenue:retention. The failure this discipline exists to prevent is finding out at renewal.

Segment coverage before hiring anyone

Coverage is a cost decision and it should be made explicitly rather than by whoever shouts.

• Named coverage for accounts where the revenue justifies a person and the relationship is genuinely complex. Fewer accounts per person than instinct suggests, a manager with sixty accounts is running a queue, not a relationship.
• Pooled coverage for the middle: a team owning a segment, working from signals rather than from a calendar.
• Programmatic coverage for the long tail: in-product guidance, lifecycle messaging, and self-service. This is not a lesser tier, it is the only one that scales, and it usually deserves more investment than it gets.

Assign by what the account needs, not only by what it pays. A large account that is live, stable and happy needs less than a small one mid-implementation.

Build a health score that predicts something

Most health scores are a weighted average of whatever was available, colored red to green, and trusted by nobody. A useful one is built backwards: take accounts that churned and accounts that renewed, and find what actually differed six months out.

• Usage depth and breadth, how many people, how often, how many of the things they bought.
• Trajectory over level. An account at 60% of expected usage and rising is healthier than one at 90% and falling. Level tells you where they are; direction tells you where they are going.
• Relationship coverage, how many people you know, and whether your only contact is the person who bought.
• Support and escalation history, weighted by severity rather than volume.