Customer Success Playbook

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name: customer-success-playbook description: Design onboarding sequences, build customer health scores, analyze churn risk, and plan account expansion. Use when creating CS playbooks, building health scoring models, diagnosing at-risk accounts, or designing renewal strategies. tags: [customer-success, churn, onboarding, retention]

Customer Success Playbook

Comprehensive framework for customer lifecycle management — from onboarding through expansion and renewal. Build health scores, predict churn, design intervention playbooks, and maximize net revenue retention.

Use this skill when

• Designing customer onboarding sequences (30/60/90-day plans)
• Building or refining a customer health scoring model
• Diagnosing at-risk accounts and designing intervention playbooks
• Planning account expansion (upsell/cross-sell motions)
• Structuring Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs)
• Analyzing churn patterns and leading indicators
• Designing renewal processes

Do not use this skill when

• Handling individual support tickets (use customer-service-ticket-resolution)
• Building support knowledge base articles (use customer-service-knowledge-base)
• Analyzing support metrics only (use customer-service-support-metrics)
• Designing the product itself based on user research (use product skills)

Instructions

1. Define lifecycle stages for your customer base.
2. Build the health score model using the composite scoring framework.
3. Design onboarding playbook with time-to-first-value (TTFV) milestones.
4. Set up churn early warning system with trigger-based interventions.
5. Create expansion playbook with signal identification and motion templates.
6. Structure QBR cadence using the QBR template.

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Customer Lifecycle Stages

Stage	Duration	Key Objective	Primary Metric
Onboarding	Day 0-30	Achieve first value milestone	Time-to-First-Value (TTFV)
Adoption	Day 30-90	Embed into daily workflow	DAU/WAU ratio, feature breadth
Value Realization	Day 90-180	Prove ROI to stakeholders	ROI documented, NPS score
Expansion	Day 180+	Grow usage and spend	Expansion revenue, seat growth
Renewal	90 days before renewal	Secure renewal commitment	Renewal rate, multi-year conversion
At-Risk	Any time	Prevent churn	Health score recovery, save rate
Churned	Post-cancellation	Learn and potentially win back	Churn reason analysis, win-back rate

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Customer Health Score Model

Composite score from 6 dimensions, weighted by predictive power:

Dimension	Weight	Inputs	Score (0-10)	Weighted
Product Usage	25%	DAU/WAU ratio, session duration, core feature adoption
Feature Adoption	20%	% of purchased features actively used, depth of integration
Support Health	15%	Ticket volume trend, CSAT on tickets, escalation frequency
Engagement	15%	Executive sponsor activity, QBR attendance, community participation
Billing Health	15%	Payment on time, no disputes, contract value trend
Sentiment	10%	NPS/CSAT score, qualitative feedback, renewal intent signals
Total	100%			/100

Health Bands:

Band	Score	Action	Cadence
Healthy	75-100	Expansion focus	Monthly check-in
Neutral	50-74	Monitor closely	Bi-weekly check-in
At-Risk	25-49	Intervention playbook	Weekly check-in
Critical	0-24	Executive escalation	Daily engagement

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Onboarding Playbook (30/60/90)

Day 0-7: Kickoff & Setup

• Welcome email with named CSM introduction
• Kickoff call: confirm goals, success criteria, stakeholders
• Technical setup: SSO, integrations, data migration
• Admin training session
• Define Time-to-First-Value (TTFV) milestone

Day 7-30: First Value

• User training (role-based, not feature-based)
• TTFV milestone achieved — user completes core workflow
• Adoption check: >50% of licensed users active
• Feedback survey: onboarding experience (1-5 scale)
• Escalate blockers to product/engineering if TTFV not met

Day 30-60: Habit Formation

• Usage review: identify power users and laggards
• Second training wave for advanced features
• Introduce community/self-serve resources
• Champion identification — who is advocating internally?
• Check: DAU/WAU ratio >30%

Day 60-90: Value Confirmation

• First QBR or business review
• ROI documentation: quantified value delivered
• Executive sponsor briefing with ROI data
• Transition from onboarding to steady-state CS
• NPS survey
• Onboarding complete: health score baselined

TTFV Targets by Segment:

Segment	TTFV Target	Definition of "First Value"
Self-Serve / SMB	<24 hours	User completes core action
Mid-Market	<14 days	Team workflow operational
Enterprise	<30 days	Department-level adoption

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Churn Risk Framework

Leading Indicators (Early Warning Signals)

Signal	Severity	Detection Method
Login frequency drops >30% WoW	High	Product analytics
Executive sponsor leaves company	Critical	LinkedIn monitoring, CRM update
Support ticket volume spikes 3x	High	Support system alerts
NPS score drops below 6	Medium	Survey results
Payment failure / dispute	High	Billing system alerts
Feature adoption plateaus at <30%	Medium	Usage analytics
No engagement with CSM for 30+ days	Medium	CRM activity tracking
Competitor evaluation signals	Critical	Sales intel, community mentions

Intervention Playbooks

Yellow (Score 25-49):

1. CSM schedules immediate check-in call
2. Usage analysis — identify specific drop-off points
3. Offer re-training or implementation support
4. Create 30-day recovery plan with milestones
5. Escalate to CS Manager if no improvement in 2 weeks

Red (Score 0-24):

1. CS Manager or VP CS takes over account
2. Executive-to-executive outreach within 48 hours
3. Offer concessions if appropriate (contract flexibility, free services)
4. Create weekly recovery cadence
5. If save fails, conduct structured exit interview for churn analysis

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Expansion Planning

Expansion Signals

Signal	Motion	Timing
Usage hitting >80% of limits	Upsell (higher tier)	When 70% capacity reached
Team requesting adjacent features	Cross-sell (add-on module)	During QBR or feature request
New department asking for access	Land & expand (new business unit)	When internal referral surfaces
Multi-year renewal discussion	Upsell (commitment discount)	90 days before renewal
Champion promoted to exec role	Strategic expand	Within 30 days of role change

QBR Structure

## Quarterly Business Review — [Customer] — Q[X] [Year]

### 1. Value Delivered (15 min)
- Key metrics achieved vs. goals
- ROI quantification
- Success stories / wins

### 2. Product Roadmap Alignment (10 min)
- Upcoming features relevant to customer
- Customer feedback incorporated into roadmap

### 3. Usage & Adoption Review (10 min)
- Health score trend
- Adoption metrics by team/department
- Areas for improvement

### 4. Strategic Planning (15 min)
- Customer's upcoming priorities
- How we can support their goals
- Expansion opportunities

### 5. Action Items (10 min)
- Owner + deadline for each item
- Next QBR date

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Output Template: At-Risk Account Brief

# At-Risk Account Brief — [Customer Name]

**Health Score:** [X]/100 (Band: [Critical/At-Risk])
**ARR:** $[X] | **Contract Renewal:** [Date]
**CSM:** [Name] | **Escalation Owner:** [Name]

## Risk Summary
- **Primary risk factor:** [description]
- **Duration of decline:** [X weeks/months]
- **Churn probability:** [High/Medium] based on [data points]

## Timeline of Decline
| Date | Event | Health Impact |
|------|-------|--------------|
| | | |

## Intervention Plan
| Action | Owner | Deadline | Status |
|--------|-------|----------|--------|
| | | | |

## Save / Loss Outcome
- **Outcome:** [Saved / Churned / Downgraded]
- **Root cause:** [...]
- **Lesson learned:** [...]

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Common Mistakes

• Reactive CS — only engaging when churn signals appear instead of proactive lifecycle management
• Vanity health scores — scores that feel good but don't actually predict churn (validate with historical data)
• Ignoring TTFV — if customers don't get value in the first 30 days, they rarely recover
• One-size-fits-all onboarding — SMB, mid-market, and enterprise need fundamentally different approaches
• CSM as support escalation — CS should be strategic, not a secondary support channel
• No executive sponsor relationship — if your champion leaves and you have no exec relationship, the account is at risk

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Additional Resources

• Related skills: revenue-operations (NRR alignment), analytics-tracking (instrumentation for health scoring)
• Gainsight — CS operations best practices
• Lincoln Murphy — customer success methodology