Putting your customer health scores to work

Originally published on inSided.com on February 28, 2022.

Welcome to another week of Burn the Churn! This week, we’re starting a new phase of our Customer Health Challenge: endurance. We’ve been building up to this moment, setting our foundation and focusing on our core muscles. Now, it’s time to build our stamina and implement these tips consistently. 

In an ideal world, your team would have a playbook for each scenario of your customer journey. But if your company isn’t as mature, here’s some guidance on how you can leverage your customer health scores whether they are red, yellow, or green. We’ll be referencing Gainsight’s D.E.A.R. (deployment, engagement, adoption, and ROI) framework to better understand some main leading indicators and how to act on them. Let’s go!

If you have a red health score…

Your customer needs immediate attention. Before reaching out to ask what the problem is, look at what indicators might be causing a detractor score. Depending on how you weigh these variables in your scoring methodology, the issue might tell you something different from someone else’s health scoring model. But despite what your indicators are saying, it’s important to assess and bring in your expert Customer Success Managers to come up with a solution specific to what the pain points are. By having your expert CSMs reach out shows this isn’t any other conversation or check-in. Detractors can often just need a little extra TLC.

Red scores using the D.E.A.R. framework

• Deployment
  • This means your customer has not done the basic setup. Continue to reach out to see if there’s anything you can do to answer questions or even offer additional training if necessary.
• Engagement
  • This means there have been no calls with key executives or attendance in monthly meetings. If you are struggling to get in touch with your main POC, it’s good to initiate a call with an executive. This outreach will not only help you deal with poor communication but it could uncover if the company has undergone any changes that could be affecting who or how they are using your product. Maybe there was an acquisition or maybe the contact you had no longer works at the company. Escalating the communication further up can help you get clarity.
• Adoption
  • Adoption can be broken out by depth (how often your user licenses are active in the last 10 days) and breadth (no. of features that are being used). If you have a customer with a red adoption score, it could mean they are not logging in at all or only interacting with one feature. Again, reaching out to see where you can help them better understand the features through whitepapers or related blog content is a good approach to improving adoption scores. If you have inactive users, you should also reach out and see if there is additional assistance needed.
• ROI
  • This means your customer didn’t get any value in the last year (which will be measured differently for every company). In order to collect this type of information, deploy a customer survey every six months to keep track of your customers’ goals and measure if they are met.

If your health scores are yellow…

This is your warning sign to check-in to make sure your customer is experiencing any issues with your tool. Like a red health score, look into the variables such as usage data, adoption of new features, and support tickets to see if there is a noticeable issue the customer is having. You want to be as proactive as possible and come to your customer with solutions and not have them have to rehash things you should know already.

Yellow scores using the D.E.A.R. framework

• Deployment
  • For deployment, this is really a matter of whether your customer has checked this off their list or not. There’s no yellow score. It will be red or green.
• Engagement
  • This means you have engagement with one persona (either an executive or your main POC) within the last 90 days. Although, you should always look to find ways to make this communication more useful for your customer. Don’t be scared to ask if they are finding meetings useful. If the response is “no,” you can reshape what is being discussed and the agenda items, which will improve engagement.
• Adoption
  • This means your users are logging into their accounts between 1-3 days a week and using some features. If you notice that some users are underutilizing a feature that would help them meet their goals, send them an email about that feature, with an explanation of how it ties in to their KPIs.
• ROI
  • Similarly to deployment, for ROI, there will either be a red or green categorization.

If your health scores are green…

Don’t sleep on your healthy customers. These customers can be huge advocates for your company and be perfect candidates for cross-selling and upselling. Sometimes your energy is better spent with a happy customer vs. trying to get an unsatisfied customer back.

Green scores using the D.E.A.R. framework

• Deployment
  • This means your customer has completed the basic set up. Was it an easy process for them? Would you change anything in the future? Keep these notes in mind when the opportunity arises to onboard additional users.
• Engagement
  • This means you have not only engaged with one persona within the last 90 days via a call but also in monthly meetings. If conversations are productive and you have the attention of your main POC and someone at the executive level, it means you should always make sure new features or rollouts are included in these organic conversations instead of waiting until the renewal period to get buy-in.
• Adoption
  • This means your customers are using your product at least four days a week and utilizing most of the features. If you notice this, then there might be a complementary product your customer would be interested in based on the depth of usage of a specific feature. If all of your licenses are active every day, you may want to ask if it’s time to increase the number of licenses.
• ROI
  • This means your customer has achieved at least one goal in the last year. If these goals are being met, why not see if your customer wants to scale up and use other services based on your previous success.

If customer health was a destination, then your scoring system is your Google Maps. You need to utilize these scores, in order to have smarter and more value-driven conversations with customers. If your scoring system isn’t predicting churn accurately, then it might be time to look at how you are weighing certain metrics.

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