1. Phase 1: Decide what “customer health” actually means to your business. 1.1. Is customer health a metric you want to use to predict churn, or is it a metric used by customer success to focus their efforts on the right clients. 1.2. How often do you want to (or can) update your customer health score? 1.3. What elements do you want to look at? - Usage, - Engagement, - NPS score, - Length of time as a customer, - Executive alignment. 1.4. What are the weights of the score? 1.5. Is it only quantitative information, or also qualitative? 2. Phase 2: Put your health score into practice. 2.1. Get buy-in from your executive team. 2.2. Gain adoption from the teams. 2.3. Begin using health as a measure of performance for customer success and product teams. 3. Phase 3: Analyze and iterate. 3.1. Are we calculating the health score often enough? How frequently is it changing? 3.2. Are each of our metrics something the teams can influence? Are we looking at the most impactful metrics? 3.3. Are our weights correct? 4. Phase 4: Revise and repeat.

1. The phases of building
a robust customer
health score
SUMMER LINDMAN,
Head of Customer Success
@ Talkable

2. Referral marketing platform for e-commerce companies
Founded in 2012
200+ customers
70+ employees in SF and UA

3. Why do we need a
customer health score?
Companies measure customer health to speed up and scale
communication, prioritization, decision making and forecasting of their
customer success operations.
~Totango
It's a useful metric for understanding a customer's overall health, as well
as the health trends for a segment of accounts or the business as a whole.
~ George Szundi from Natero
Establishing a customer health score allows CSMs to identify at-risk
accounts before they churn, as well as highlight which accounts are
hitting key metrics known to increase the value their product provides.
~Brooke Goodbary, CS Consultant

4. One size, does not fit all

5. LIFECYCLE STAGE SERVICE TIER
BUSINESS SEGMENT INDUSTRY
Customer health is
different for everyone

6. Defining
customer
health
01

7. predict churn both
focus CSMs on
right accounts
What’s the outcome i’m
trying to achieve?

8. Deciding what
actually means
Numerical score (scale 0-100)
RED / YELLOW / GREEN
A-F
"customer health"

9. Defining the categories

10. Qualitative vs. quantitative
Overall Product Usage
License Utilization
Support Tickets
NPS / CSAT
Contact Shift
Executive Engagement
Reference Calls
Product Feedback

11. Leading vs. lagging
ROI or Business Results
Profitability
Overall Customer Business Health
Regular Payments
Growth of the Account ($$)
Length of Time As Customer

12. Endless Possibilities...
Start With What You Know!

13. Put it Into
Action
02

14. Start Small
Consider all of the elements that make a
customer successful and not successful
Choose no more than 6 categories
Prioritize
Do you have access to the data?
How often will I be able to update this?
Is this data quantifiable?

16. What’s Next?
Involve your CSMs in building out the MVP
Make sure there is a playbook or clear action associated
with each factor - if a customer hasn’t been logging in,
what will you do to get them to do so?
Who gets notified when the score changes?
How do you use the score internally and with your
customers?

17. Review,
Revise &
Repeat
03

18. DO
THINK IDEA TRY
KEEP
DOING
DO
AGAIN
AND
AGAIN
SUCCESS

19. Key Questions to Ask:
Are we getting a lot of false positives?
False negatives?
Is this process scalable?
Can we automate this?
Are each of the metrics something the
team can influence?
Is the prioritization correct?
Are we looking at the right elements?

20. You Have to Start Somewhere.
Overwhelmed? This process can
open up a world of possibilities...

21. Key Takeaways:
1. Start Small (No more than 6 categories)
2. Keep in Mind What You Already Know
Works Well (or Doesn’t)
3. Focus on Leading Indicators
4. Customer Health → Churn Prediction
5. You Have to Start Somewhere
6. Review, Revise, Repeat

22. Thank you!