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How do we know whether a customer is healthy?

22 accounts tracked · 4 status bands · reviewed weekly

❤️ Churn is a lagging indicator, it tells you what already happened. A health score exists to catch the problem while there's still time to do something about it.

🔴 CRITICAL 🟠 AT RISK 🟢 HEALTHY 🔵 THRIVING

Leading vs. lagging indicators

Leading Lagging
What it tells you What's likely to happen next What already happened
Examples Usage decline, sentiment shift on a call, champion goes quiet Churn, missed renewal, downgrade
Why it matters Gives the CSM time to act Only useful for reporting after the fact

Most health scores fail for the same reason: they lean too heavily on lagging signals like ticket volume or NPS, which tend to stay green right up until the customer is already gone. A score that's weighted toward leading indicators buys the CSM actual runway to intervene.

The four signal categories

  1. Product usage — login frequency, feature depth, activation trend
  2. Relationship health — champion stability, executive sponsorship, whether more than one person at the account actually engages
  3. Support load — ticket volume, severity, and whether the same issue keeps resurfacing
  4. Commercial signals — payment timeliness, contract changes, usage against plan limits

Not every signal deserves equal weight. Product usage is usually the strongest predictor, so it's common to weight it around 40-50% of the total score, with the other three categories splitting the rest.

Score bands and what they trigger

Band Score Action
🔴 Critical 0-40 Immediate intervention, escalate internally
🟠 At risk 41-60 Proactive outreach this week, not next
🟢 Healthy 61-80 Standard cadence, keep monitoring
🔵 Thriving 81-100 Expansion conversation, they're ready

Early warning signals worth watching