Tracking Customer Health

Steve Bernstein

Hi @Ronald Krisak -- There's a whitepaper on a methodology and SaaS system for customer health that is accurate, prevents churn, and is strengthens relationships through regular (and automated) customer engagement. Might check it out, and I'd love to know what you think!  https://waypointgroup.org/whitepapers/silver-bullet-customer-health-scoring/

Steve Bernstein

Hi @Will Pagden -- There's a whitepaper that describes the methodology and process for accurately capturing sentiment directly from the customer relationship and I'd love to know what you think... The mantra is "request feedback (engage!) the right people in the account at the right time with the right questions to drive the right actions."  We routinely see 80%+ response rates, which makes sentiment actionable and predictie (non-responders are disengaged, and silent accounts are far more likely to churn!): 

https://waypointgroup.org/whitepapers/silver-bullet-customer-health-scoring/

Steve Bernstein

@Matt Moody and @Matt Myszkowski (hello to the Matts!) -- Couldn't agree more that the current "kitchen sink" approach evangelized by vendors isn't the right way. Our experience is that engaging the right contacts at the right time in the right way to capture sentiment (with "why") provides actionable information for the CSM to do their job better. What's more, engaging the right contacts to provide feedback also allows the rest of the company to hear the voice-of-the-customer. With the right communication and engagement methods we see 80%+ response rate all the time, and gain a valuable indicator of relationship strength from the STAKEHOLDERS that matter most, providing a predictor of churn (silent accounts are ~14x more likely to churn!). I'd love to know what you think of the approach, and this whitepaper provides some templates/tools to help drive the method... what do you think of this?
https://waypointgroup.org/whitepapers/silver-bullet-customer-health-scoring/

Ronald Krisak

@Steve Bernstein  thanks!  I will definitely check that out.

Ed Powers

@Matt Moody, are you using regression analysis to validate and reduce number of factors in your health score?  I've found it works better than correlation. 

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Ed Powers
Consultant
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-19-2020 09:41
From: Matt Moody
Subject: Tracking Customer Health

I think the biggest issue with Customer Health Scores is that when you dive into the statistics, the health score is often only moderately correlated with actual success outcomes. If you break down each factor that comprises your customer health score and measure correlation to positive outcomes then you can see where vanity metrics have crept in and are weighing down the health score.

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Matt Moody
CEO/Founder
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-18-2020 09:49
From: Matt Myszkowski
Subject: Tracking Customer Health

I have been thinking a lot around Customer Health recently - it used to be a defining element of your customer success strategy as a CS leader but I am unsure it still is.

How do you all measure the success of your Customer Health Scoring? How much time do you invest in it, and does it reap the rewards? I used to think Customer Health was a critical component but now I get more value from seeing how strong our value realisation articulation is in our Business Reviews. I.E. How we delivered value, have we articulated it and does the customer acknowledge it?

Slightly off topic but keen on thoughts.

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Matt Myszkowski
VP, Customer Success Management, EMEA
SAP

Original Message:
Sent: 07-22-2020 17:45
From: Archive User
Subject: Tracking Customer Health

Hi, I'm looking for recommendations of a Customer Health tracker that can plug in to various other CRM systems.  Looking for something a bit more focused on Customer Health than Salesforce.  Any recommendation from the community?

Steve Bernstein

Our customers generally use 3 main factors in the ACCOUNT Relationship health score (different from end-user health):
1. Footprint:  Extent to which the contacts in Salesforce represent the buying process, i.e. Do we even know who the "right" contacts are in the account?  For example, a typical stakeholder team for a Tier 2 account *might* be made up of 1 Decision Maker/Budget Holder, 1 Champion, 1 Admin, and 5 "Power Users" (your definitions will vary but this is for illustration purposes). So then looking at "Account A" as a Tier 2 account, does it have the contacts identified for those persona? If yes then great! If no then the CSM should engage the Champion to develop the list.

2. Engagement: Once the contacts are defined, are those contacts "engaged" with you? We measure engagement by participation in conversations that YOU start (many thanks to @David Ellin for a great concise definition) because just looking at product utilization and/or downloads (from non-users) or other activity is still on *their* terms. So ask these contacts to help you help them by giving some feedback that you are 100% committed to addressing... if they don't participate then you know something about the strength of the relationship.

3. Sentiment: With their feedback in hand, it's easy to see if they are a detractor, passive, or promoter. And don't forget about those non-responders because they are far more toxic because they are telling you they don't care to see an improvement.

What do you think???  There's a cool whitepaper I can provide if more detail is of interest.  Putting it all together, here's what it looks like (each circle is an account, and circle size is the account's relative ARR/ACV/"Value" -- the idea is to move accounts up and to the right and green!)

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Steve Bernstein
Head of Voice-Of-Customer Programs at Waypoint Research Group
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-23-2020 13:34
From: Matt Moody
Subject: Tracking Customer Health

What all do you take into account for your health scores?

matmoody

We did at first. I think using a simple regression model or just looking at correlation are GREAT as a starting point. It's much better method than basing health on the vanity metrics that get included into Health Scores from the big vendors. Those health scores are totally subjective, so a regression model would be much better.

Now, I'm going to geek out a bit because I love this stuff...
- We use an ensemble classifier. This gives us a very robust "Win Probability" for renewal.
- THEN... we apply a genetic algorithm to see which modifications we could make to improve the Win Probability. This is the coolest piece as you can see answers to... "strategic account review help? executive call? When? should we switch accoung mgrs/csm?" etc and how they impact the Win Probability.

(Win Probability > Health Score)

Ed Powers

Oohhh--you're doing the COOL stuff, @Matt Moody!! I'd love to hear more about that.

matmoody

Here's a link to my calendar if you want to find a time to chat. Happy to share how we do it! https://calendly.com/bellwethr-intro/win-probability?month=2020-08

PauloBotura

Hi!

Does anyone know if it is possible to automate such correlational analysis in Gainsight? (Given that the information from ticketing system to flow towards gainsight is properly setup). Are there such tools in GS that would allow this? 

matmoody

Not sure about gainsight. If something like this is helpful and a few people would like to use it I can whip together a little web app that does it for you (free of course).

Steve Bernstein

Me too, please!  I'd love to see how your health scoring is working and perhaps we can collaborate on automation as well.  I'm at steveb@waypointgroup.org

Matt Myszkowski

Thanks Steve - playing catch-up on messages today so will take a read of this.

Cheers for sharing and your response. As much as this is a CHS discussion/thread, your point on engaging the right person, at the right time, in the right context applies to my views on C-Sat surveying. You then get relevant and actionable insights that drive continuous business improvements not just an avalanche of "noise" that is largely irrelevant and hard to respond to and action improvements.

Nicholas Ayala

@John Bosch do you see your team migrating from ChurnZero to Gainsight once the team grows?  

John Bosch

@Nicholas Ayala - there is no need to change yet and I think we can use churnZero very successfully for a while as we have not started to take advantage of some of the automation we can add yet.  Later on down the line, I'm sure our use cases will change and we might need to review again.