Re-Structuring Around Health Score

Anna Alley

Hey Everyone,

With the introduction of a health score for the first time, we're being asked now how we're going to "re-structure" our limited CSM team based on now having the score. I'm curious what different methodologies others might have used after introducing a health score to their teams for the first time. 

Did anyone re-structure in order to have a "SWAT" team focused on Yellow/Red health (especially when we think about digital channels)?

Thanks,

Shari Srebnick

Hi Anna,

I have a small team (3 CSM's) and introduced a health score at the beginning of Q3.  I didn't re-structure anything, nor implement a "SWAT" team.  What I did do was train and educate the team on "why" and the "how" behind the score, how to use it as a predictor to help re-prioritize where to put your efforts.

Additionally, it's important to share with the team what metrics or data make up your health score.  In our case, I started with a few key metrics to prevent overcomplicating it.  For example, we used usage data based on what we define as a healthy usage benchmark, # of support tickets, days to renewal, and overall CSM sentiment.  If all of this is being weighted and calculated accurately, it should be equivalent to the risk level the CSM manually applies (low, med, high).

We look at our business as a whole in our team standup and individually in our 1:1's and use the health score here as well.  What do you have renewing in the next quarter, half year?  Where can we be proactive?  Do we need to bring in other stakeholders to help make this account "healthy" again? 

Last, we use the health score to assist in understanding where to go next, and apply playbooks based on what metric(s) made the account "unhealthy".  The playbooks are automated and triggered by the change in health.

I hope this helps!

Ed Powers

Agree with @Shari Srebnick on this. Be careful you don't set yourself up to be 100% reactive. Yes, if you have meaty accounts on the brink of canceling and you can turn them around, then do so, but focus as much effort as you can on preventing churn instead. Analyze data to uncover root causes and take action upstream so you don't have to deal with churn downstream. Several process improvement methods such as Six Sigma provide a helpful framework for doing this.

Jarren Pinchuck

Hi @Anna Alley,

This seems to me like a case of the tail wagging the dog.
Health scoring is an important part of any CS team but as I am sure many CS leaders will tell you, it's also one of the most challenging. In my experience, health scores are continually evolving and changing with your business. If you restructure your team every time you change your health score it could cause chaos.

You say you have a limited CSM team which seems like even more of a reason not to structure your team to specifically focus based on health score. By doing this you are also not exposing your team to as many areas of CS as you should be. Each CSM should know how to deal with a range of customers in various stages of their lifecycle. 

I'd ask the question, what would we (they) want to achieve by structuring the team based on health scoring? If the answer is to better focus on churn or risk customers, there are many efficient and effective ways of doing this without having a single, dedicated resource.

Anna Alley

Hey Jarren,

Thank you for the response! You're definitely in line with my thoughts as well. This was something that was "proposed" by a different leader, so I wanted to ensure I didn't have a blind spot that I just wasn't thinking about, but the responses so far have confirmed my opinion. The problem they're trying to solve with that idea was better impact on churn/at risk customers.

Steve Bernstein

Hi @Anna Alley -- I'm confused by the idea of including the CSM's sentiment in the health score. I know they have perspective, but wouldn't you rather (or also) have the account's ACTUAL sentiment, straight from all the right contacts (stakeholders, end users, etc), along with a clear description of what they feel is working well and what needs improvement? Since B2B is all about relationships with the right people in the right companies/accounts, it's important to know who ALL your advocates and detractors are, and why (backed with quantitative data that explains why), to drive the right 1:1 and 1:Many actions.

With good/simple processes, our customers see response rates of 80%+ which not only provides great actionability at the account level, but also clearly identifies accounts at risk since we also know that silent accounts can be ~14x more likely to churn than accounts that are providing you feedback. You also get highly trustworthy (representative!!) insight in the aggregate to help you drive the most important "1:Many" improvement initiatives (e.g. for product improvement priorities, onboarding and support processes, etc).

I'm happy to tell you more about the processes we employ and show how companies use the feedback data to align around customer needs and expectations.

/Steve

Carl Hoffmann

Hi Anna,

If I remember correctly, health scores were not used by our CSMs as a criterion for restructuring the team, which was ~3-5 CSMs when NPS was introduced.  I'd agree with everyone else so far that you don't really need to restructure for all the reasons mentioned so far, especially if you share the methodology behind the scores with your team.  By doing that, you also get the benefit of feedback from your team on the quality of the data behind the score.

Health scores are defined by the inputed data (scores, open ended questions, etc.), the source of the data (customers or internal?), and how the query for feedback is presented (asking the right questions).  Like Jarren Pinchuck said, health scores are continually evolving and changing with your business, so I would say to also periodically review your methodology to fine tune the quality of the score, as you scale.