Customer Lifecycle
This stage is all about welcoming new customers and helping them get started successfully, commonly measured by Time to Value.
Onboarding
Your customer is stuck in a certain phase of their lifecycle, such as implementation or adopting new features. To get ahead of this, you should flag customers early on that seem to be falling behind. To combat this churn monster, you need to first uncover the true stalling point and understand the roadblocks holding up progress.
Stuck
This KPI combines various data points such as product usage, sentiment, support experience, and engagement into one overall measurement that gives us an indicator of the level of risk present with a customer.
Customer Health Score
This person is an enthusiastic supporter of the platform who promotes internal adoption and advocates for expansion.
Champion
"It needs more purple."
Barbara...always
In this stage, customers begin actively using the product and integrating it into their workflows. Success is typically measured with usage & utilization statistics as well as health scores.
Adoption
You either lose your main point of contact or simply never have a strong partner established within the customer's organization. To combat this churn monster, you should proactively reach out to different contacts with the goal of educating, engaging, and inspiring the right people to be bought in on the relationship.
Championless
This KPI measures how likely customers are to recommend us to others and is a good indicator of overall customer sentiment and satisfaction. This metric has a scale of -100 to 100 and is found by subtracting the % of detractors from the % of promoters.
Customer NPS
This person has final purchasing authority. Usually in a leadership or strategic role within the organization.
Decision Maker
"We don't need PowerPoint at all."
Joel
At this stage in their journey, customers begin to see measurable outcomes and truly understand the impact of the product. Customer ROI is a common measure of success at this point.
Value Realization
The customer you’re coaching feels like they already know the topic, but their knowledge of best practices is inaccurate. This hinders progress and increases the chance of mistakes. To combat this churn monster, you should validate the customer's input while also steering them towards more effective usage - backed up with facts, case studies, and other relevant data.
Know It All
This KPI measures how effectively Customer Success Managers are allocating their time across accounts by evaluating the % of time spent on customer work. This metric helps us strike the right balance of productivity and efficiency.
Utilization
This person is a regular user of the platform whose daily work is impacted by the product but likely lacks decision-making authority.
"I did some lumberjack work this weekend."
Freddy
This stage focuses on ensuring customers have what they need to renew their commitment to us. Hint: This is also how we measure success as a Customer Success team!
Retention
A customer is experiencing recurring product or service issues — whether real or perceived — leading to ongoing frustration and potentially long-term trust erosion. The constant troubleshooting diverts focus from achieving goals to putting out fires, complicating the goals of customer success efforts. To combat this churn monster, you first need to understand the root cause of the issues , exactly how it's impacting the customer, and what a perfect solution would look like from their point of view.
Victim
This KPI tracks how engaged customers are in promoting us through references, reviews, or case studies and helps to drive several other outcomes for the business like organic growth and brand credibility.
Advocacy
A contact who expresses dissatisfaction, resistance, or negative sentiment toward the product. May be a churn risk or barrier to adoption.
Detractor
"The positive here is..." ...the master of optimism!
Himanshu
In this stage, we focus on turning customers into advocates, expanding their business, and deepening their relationship with us. We measure success in this stage with Expansion ARR, NPS, and Advocacy.
Loyalty & Growth
Your customer has stopped actively engaging with the tool. Often feeling overwhelmed, lacking time, or not seeing immediate results, they reduce their usage significantly. This may stem from their struggle to integrate the tool into their daily workflow, their inability to understand the tool, or their lack of time to learn how to get more value. To combat this churn monster, you must first uncover the true cause of the behavior & then help them understand the "why" behind the behaviors we want from them.
Slacker
This KPI measures the breadth and depth of product usage & utilization. This is the foundation for any strong partnership and critical for long-term success in a SaaS business.
Adoption
This person is accountable for business outcomes tied to the platform & often defines objectives and tracks performance or ROI.
Business Owner
"I have an enablement kit for that!" - the master of making sure people are always informed and have the resources before pushing anything out to customers.
Karessa