When this skill is activated, always start your first response with the 🧢 emoji.

Customer Success Playbook

Customer Success (CS) is the discipline of ensuring customers achieve their desired outcomes using your product - making churn prevention a byproduct of genuine value delivery rather than a reactive damage-control function. This skill covers the full CS operating model: health scoring, onboarding design, churn prediction, expansion identification, QBR execution, segmentation, and team performance measurement.

When to use this skill

Trigger this skill when the user:

• Needs to build or improve a customer health scoring system
• Wants to design or audit an onboarding playbook
• Asks how to predict, detect, or prevent customer churn
• Needs to identify expansion and upsell opportunities
• Wants to run effective Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs)
• Asks how to segment customers by value or risk tier
• Needs to define CS team KPIs or OKRs
• Is working on NRR (Net Revenue Retention) or GRR (Gross Revenue Retention) improvement

Do NOT trigger this skill for:

• Product roadmap prioritization driven purely by engineering constraints (use product-strategy skills)
• Sales prospecting, lead scoring, or new logo acquisition (pre-sale belongs to sales enablement)

Key principles

1. Proactive, not reactive - CS that only responds to support tickets is account management, not customer success. Intervene before customers feel pain. The best save is the one that never needed saving.

2. Health scores drive action - A health score that lives in a dashboard but never triggers a workflow is decoration. Every health band must have an associated motion: what the CSM does, when, and how. Score without action is noise.

3. Onboarding determines lifetime value - The first 30-90 days set the trajectory for the entire customer relationship. Customers who reach their first "aha moment" quickly retain at 2-3x the rate of those who struggle. Invest disproportionately in time-to-value.

4. Expansion is earned, not sold - Upsells from customers who haven't achieved their desired outcomes produce churn, not growth. Expansion should follow proven value, not quota pressure. The signal to expand is the customer asking for more, not the CSM pitching more.

5. Segment by value and risk - Not all customers deserve the same coverage model. High-ARR accounts need white-glove, human-led success. Low-ARR accounts need scalable, tech-touch programs. Mismatching coverage to tier burns CSM capacity on accounts that can't justify the cost and underserves accounts that need attention.

Core concepts

The CS lifecycle

Every customer moves through predictable phases, each with distinct success criteria:

Health score components

A well-designed health score is a weighted composite of leading indicators that predict renewal probability. Common dimensions and typical weights:

See references/health-score-model.md for the detailed weighted model and threshold design.

Churn indicators

Leading indicators (intervene now):

• Login frequency drops >30% week-over-week for 2+ consecutive weeks
• Champion or executive sponsor changes roles or leaves
• Support ticket volume spikes with CSAT below 3/5
• Renewal conversation not started within 90-day window
• Customer misses two consecutive scheduled CSM touchpoints

Lagging indicators (harder to reverse):

• Customer requests data export
• Customer asks about contract termination clauses
• NPS drops to detractor (0-6) territory

Expansion signals

• Usage ceiling - Feature utilization approaching licensed limit (>80% of seats used)
• Adjacent pain - Customer raising problems the upsell product directly solves
• Organizational spread - Multiple departments asking for access beyond the pilot team
• Renewal enthusiasm - Customer signs renewal early or references product in internal materials
• Executive sponsorship shift - C-suite starts attending success calls

Common tasks

Build a customer health scoring system

Design a weighted, multi-dimensional model that produces a single score (0-100) and a color-coded band (Red / Yellow / Green) with automatic CSM action triggers.

Step 1 - Define dimensions and weights. Select 4-6 dimensions relevant to your business. Product usage should carry the highest weight (30-40%) because it is objective and hardest to fake.

Step 2 - Normalize each dimension to 0-100. Map each raw metric to a 0-100 sub-score using thresholds. Example for usage:

• <20% of seats active in last 30 days = 0
• 20-49% = 40, 50-74% = 70, 75-100% = 100

Step 3 - Apply weights and compute composite. health_score = (usage * 0.35) + (engagement * 0.25) + (outcomes * 0.20) + (support * 0.10) + (relationship * 0.10)

Step 4 - Define bands and mandatory actions.

Step 5 - Build a feedback loop. Compare health score 90 days prior to renewal against actual renewal outcome. Tune weights until model achieves >75% predictive accuracy for churn.

See references/health-score-model.md for the full scoring template.

Design an onboarding playbook

Onboarding ends when the customer achieves their first committed outcome, not when technical setup is complete. Structure around milestones, not calendar dates.

Milestone 1 - Technical kickoff (Days 1-7)

• Stakeholder alignment: map goals to product capabilities
• Technical setup complete: integrations, SSO, data imports
• Success plan signed: 3-5 measurable goals with target dates

Milestone 2 - First value realization (Days 14-30)

• Core use case live with real data
• At least 3 active users beyond the champion
• Customer can demonstrate the product unaided

Milestone 3 - Team adoption (Days 30-60)

• 60% of licensed seats active

• Secondary use case identified or live

Milestone 4 - Outcome confirmation (Days 60-90)

• At least one success plan goal achieved or measurably progressing
• EBR scheduled with executive sponsor
• Expansion signals documented for account plan

Predict and prevent churn - early warning system

Tiered alert triggers:

Save plan template:

1. Root cause analysis - what drove the score down?
2. Executive alignment - is there internal will to stay?
3. Remediation actions - concrete steps with owners and dates
4. Success criteria - what does "sa