Expansion works when eligibility, timing, and value narrative are explicit. Eligibility = adoption threshold + business context. Timing = observed usage plateau or unlocked capability. Narrative = “outcome next” not “more features.” Track win rate and payback against this criteria or change it.
Support resolves issues; Digital CS drives behavior change at scale. Think three loops: 1) Teach the next action (contextual nudges beat blasts) 2) Detect risk early (silence and strange patterns both matter) 3) Reward progress (show momentum) If ops, data, and CS are aligned, these loops reduce human workload while improving outcomes.
Customer Success is a company-wide strategy to maximize customer outcomes and, as a result, durable revenue (retention and expansion). In practice it integrates product knowledge, domain expertise, and relationship management into repeatable programs. The simplest test: do customers achieve the outcomes they hired the product for, and can we demonstrate that with data over time?
Involuntary churn is failure to collect (payment issues, expired cards). Voluntary churn is a decision (no value, no budget, switching). The fixes differ. Involuntary churn is mostly ops and billing hygiene. Voluntary churn is product–market fit, onboarding, and value communications. Separate the streams in your reporting or you’ll chase the wrong problems.
Playbooks without outcomes turn into activity reports. Start with 2–3 customer outcomes you can measure (time-to-first-value, usage depth, key feature adoption). Then write plays that move those, and instrument the deltas. If a play can’t be tied to a metric next week, it’s not ready.
Journey maps are user-facing narratives that show what the person sees and feels. Service blueprints add the “backstage” layers: people, processes, and systems that create those moments. A practical pattern is: map one critical path end-to-end as a journey, then layer a blueprint to expose owners and measurement. That’s usually enough to run a focused…
Attractive aggregate metrics can conceal the details we need to make informed decisions. Separate activity from effect and keep the math boring and consistent. Useful, defensible formulas: