The intelligent use of data is revolutionizing how companies interact with and retain their customers.
Data-driven strategies allow companies to better understand their customers’ behaviors and feelings toward the products or services they offer. These insights help companies identify accounts that may be at risk of churn and opportunities for growth and increased engagement.
The goal is to move beyond reactive support to a proactive, strategic approach where customer interactions are personalized and timely.
By leveraging data effectively, customer success teams can formulate tailored re-engagement strategies that address specific customer needs and pain points, ultimately fostering enduring relationships.
Learn how customer success leaders at 13 tech companies nationwide leverage data to help customers reach their goals.
FEATURED COMPANIES
BigTime Software is a private equity-funded company with offices in Chicago, Phoenix, Boston and Poland committed to helping clients run their professional services firms more efficiently. They provide industry-leading time tracking, billing, and project management software for more than 2,700 professional firms, tracking over $8 billion (USD) of billable time each year. Their flagship product is a SaaS-based system that is custom-built for the professional services industry, and specifically for accounting, architecture and engineering, consulting, creative, government contracting, IT services and law firms.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
Data plays a crucial role in ensuring our customers’ satisfaction. Beyond the more typical leading indicators, such as usage and customer feedback — from NPS, CSAT and so on, at BigTime, we dive deeper into our product features to know where to prioritize outreach. For each customer, we measure five key features used in our platform: time tracking, expenses, tasks input, approvals and invoicing. Our health scoring factors into the amount of these features being used and how they are being utilized. Of those features, invoicing specifically can be a leading indicator of our customers’ health. We have found that customers who process their invoices out of BigTime are much “stickier.”
We use some out-of-the-box metrics to look at various data within invoicing, for example:
- Percentage of invoices done manually versus using our automated calculators
- Types of invoices being created
- Percentage of invoices produced versus projects input
- User personas and what users are creating invoices — and all key features
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
The ability to identify risk and potential churn well in advance of customer renewals is critical for our customer success strategy. We prioritize usage metrics. We monitor how frequently customers are using the software and which features they are utilizing. Any sudden drop in engagement, even outside of specific usage habits, tends to indicate risk.
“Any sudden drop in engagement, even outside of specific usage habits, tends to indicate risk.”
Some examples of data are product key features dropping, when a customer begins invoicing outside of the platform and drop-off on user log-ins or time tracked. We also implemented user feedback outside of CSAT with support tickets. Hearing the customer’s voice directly can provide valuable insights. In addition to our Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys within our platform, there is an in-site portal for feature requests so that our clients can communicate with our product team for new features or improvements.
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
Our theme for this year is customer-centricity. There is a heavy emphasis on providing best-in-class service and putting our clients first. Any data that can give us insight into their sentiment and how we can improve that is incredibly valuable.
A core focus of each CSM is on clients who have a low health score. These are prioritized with the same urgency as clients who are coming up with renewals. For these clients, we take extra steps to ensure that we understand the why behind their low adoption and health. Often, we will have the members of our executive leadership team reach out in tandem with the CSMs to ensure the client knows they are a priority for us. The why is the key driver of our next steps in driving value to our clients, and we have developed playbooks for each type of low-adoption scenario.
Logiwa is a cloud-based fulfillment software provider focused on integrated warehouse management systems (WMS) and fulfillment solutions designed to streamline digital warehouse operations and support high-volume direct-to-consumer businesses.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
We are strongly data-driven in our customer success team here at Logiwa. We primarily track Net Dollar Retention (NDR), upsells, downsells, and churn as a team and at the individual CSM level. We also have predictive metrics for each of these to have visibility into the future. This allows us to pivot quickly and jump in where one of us is having a challenging quarter. The biggest thing we can do for our customers, outside of metrics, is to ensure they get value out of the product and see a healthy return on investment. We take great care in calculating that value and ensuring our customers collaborate in that assessment. We also map that ROI to business outcomes and our customers’ strategic initiatives. The most out-of-the-box metric we track is our customer engagement score.
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
We have a health scoring system for each account that includes system usage and percentage of functionality that is being used, customer relationship and engagement, last meeting date, amount of time elapsed from the last business review, and past purchasing and payment history. We also have a line item for “CSM pulse,” measuring our CSMs’ gut feeling about the account since they have a close relationship with each of our customers. We want to ensure we’re looking at customer health from all angles, which helps us better predict how we can best help our customers grow and succeed.
“We want to ensure we’re looking at customer health from all angles, which helps us better predict how we can best help our customers grow and succeed.”
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
Our metrics showed that some of our customers were not meeting with us regularly, so we changed the format of our meetings and now use a touchpoint deck that encapsulates goals, objectives and usage, as well as issues and enhancement requests. The deck also shows our impact and ROI metrics and provides use cases from other customers that they may not have thought about so that they can grow their own WMS and fulfillment business. That has helped us not only improve our customer engagement but also showcase the value that our customers get from Logiwa.
Upside is a two-sided marketplace that enhances business traffic while providing consumers cash back on everyday purchases, partnering with over 100,000 retailers.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
Key metrics are critical to understanding the health of our customers. We have a set of core metrics that include portfolio penetration, performance and engagement. However, I think it’s important to emphasize bifurcating customer metrics into lagging and leading indicators. Performance and engagement are lagging metrics, while portfolio penetration and stakeholder multi-threading are leading indicators. The leading indicators give us an idea of potential future risks and opportunities. What happens if our primary point of contact leaves the organization? Do we have another advocate to “carry the message”? If they only have half of their portfolio live with us, do they really believe in our value? If so, what are we doing to expand the partnership? These metrics give us a holistic picture of where we are within our customer lifecycle.
“I think it’s important to emphasize bifurcating customer metrics into lagging and leading indicators.”
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
In addition to the metrics mentioned above, we use a prescriptive set of questions that ladder up into different “account verifiers” that give us insight into the understanding of our product, the value proposition and the costs associated with our partnership. These metrics and the core key metrics allow us to better map out customer belief into quadrants from risk to advocacy. Honing in on the accounts most at risk using these metrics provides us the insight to have targeted conversations about the account’s specific belief gaps before the request to churn comes up.
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
We recently launched a new customer, and we were primarily single-threaded throughout the sales process. We quickly realized that our contact had high career aspirations, potentially outside of their organization. The stakeholder mapping and engagement metrics flagged the need to move swiftly to expand our relationships internally to secure long-term agreements and further expansion opportunities. This allowed us to prioritize our asks of the current primary contact and get onsite to “organically” meet additional executive stakeholders and increase the education and future advocacy of the partnership if our primary contact ever left.
BlueConic is a leading customer data platform that liberates first-party data from disparate systems, making it accessible to marketers for enhanced customer engagement across various channels.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
At BlueConic, we prioritize customer satisfaction by nurturing relationships and supporting our customers in achieving their goals. We utilize various metrics to gauge effectiveness, including CSAT and NPS, alongside behavioral data like usage patterns and engagement levels. Health scores amalgamate factors like product usage and support inquiries to evaluate overall relationship health and predict churn risks.
Additionally, we track qualitative metrics like sentiment analysis and interaction assessments to grasp customers’ emotional connection. We are committed to leveraging data-driven insights to continuously enhance the customer experience and drive long-term success using conventional metrics and innovative approaches.
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
To identify churn risks, we use tailored metrics that focus on understanding the customer journey. Key indicators, such as engagement levels, feature adoption and platform activity, allow us to pinpoint areas of concern. For instance, a decline in engagement or the neglect of vital features may signal dissatisfaction. By analyzing behavior patterns, product usage and direct feedback, we gain valuable insights into customer sentiments and the challenges they may be facing. Additionally, we consider leading indicators like contract renewals, expansion opportunities and stakeholder changes. These insights enable us to address concerns and maintain customer value proactively. Our goal is to mitigate risk through data-driven insights, ensuring long-term satisfaction and strong relationships.
“Our goal is to mitigate risk through data-driven insights, ensuring long-term satisfaction and strong relationships.”
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
One instance that stands out is when we noticed a concerning trend in our customer data, showing decreased interaction from a particular group of users. Instead of applying a blanket solution, we dove into the data to grasp this segment’s unique challenges and requirements. By thoroughly analyzing their usage habits and activities on our platform, we pinpointed a common issue that seemed to be causing dissatisfaction among them.
Using this valuable insight, we customized our re-engagement strategy to directly tackle these concerns. Instead of sending them generic emails or messages, we crafted personalized communications tailored to address their pain points and offer precise solutions. This approach not only reignited the interest of many of these customers but also deepened our connections with them by demonstrating our commitment to understanding their needs and supporting their success.
Ylopo provides a comprehensive digital marketing platform designed specifically for real estate agents in the United States, utilizing big data and AI to enhance lead generation and customer engagement.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
We created a custom metric called “Client Readiness.” It’s a combination of important meetings, trainings and configurations that we identified as critical to our client’s ability to fully optimize their usage of our platform early on and set them up for long-term success with our platform.
We look for 100 percent readiness by the time the client has been live for 90 days. We track revenue retraction and expansion very closely. We look at clients who are not spending on lead generation, remarketing or our AI tools. These are clear signs they’re not fully utilizing our platform’s full capabilities and taking advantage of our value-add services. We have quarterly surveys where we receive clients’ NPS and CSAT, which help us measure client satisfaction and execute action plans to address any concerning feedback. Another metric that is difficult to track but is paramount to the success of our product is our clients’ “speed to lead.” There are industry best practices for working internet leads at a specific cadence and timing, which can greatly improve or hurt the client’s chances of converting the lead.
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
When clients pause or drop their budgets significantly, we see this as a red flag and follow up to learn more with the goal to recover the spend and keep them on track with their goals. As a real estate marketing technology company, spending on lead generation is the key to success and ROI — they’ve got to spend money to make money. We also track clients who have not imported any or all of their CRM leads into Ylopo and, as a result, are missing out on lead engagement opportunities. Our remarketing products are the fastest track to ROI to help resurrect dormant leads through listing alerts and targeted marketing ads.
“When clients pause or drop their budgets significantly, we see this as a red flag and follow up to learn more with the goal to recover the spend and keep them on track with their goals.”
Furthermore, clients who do not log into our software or access our self-service features are not optimizing the platform and tools at their disposal. Therefore, they won’t see the full value of our software. We also track their engagement with our training courses, especially their initial “Go-Live Training,” which is paramount to complete in order to know how to use the platform. Another big risk factor are unresponsive clients. We know that no news is not good news, and the next time we hear from them, it will likely be their cancellation notice.
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
As many start-ups experience, we have a ton of valuable data available in different locations and limited resources to curate them all in a beautiful report. We recently developed an account review Google Sheet template that aggregates key data points into a unified report. This report, easily convertible to PDF, serves as a foundation for in-depth account reviews conducted by our client success managers.
By presenting this consolidated data to clients, we highlight areas where they’re not fully utilizing the platform, thereby uncovering opportunities for increased engagement and optimization of their marketing efforts. We also create incentives for our clients around the adoption of unused products, features and services. This approach has enabled us to tailor our re-engagement strategies effectively, leading to increased client spending and retention by directly addressing platform usage and marketing performance gaps, ultimately fostering stronger customer relationships.
GitLab provides a comprehensive DevSecOps platform that empowers organizations to develop, secure and operate software efficiently, distinguished by its fully remote work culture and open-source collaboration model.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
The key metrics I track when it comes to my customers are:
- Product usage metrics, which help me identify how much and how fast the customer has adopted areas within the product or identify risk if there’s been slow to no adoption. This also helps me determine risk and whether the customer can find value in the product or identify what blockers are preventing it.
- Customer engagement level, which helps track the growth of a strong partnership and collaboration between me and the customer.
- Support ticket resolution, which helps track customers engaging support to resolve their issues, and customers were able to get the help they needed.
- Feature requests and bug requests help track whether our development teams are pushing features and bug fixes that the customer cares about to help them accelerate their adoption and find value quicker.
- Business review metrics for how often the customer has gotten one and who attended help track that we’re aligned with their business outcomes and to make sure we’re focused on what they care about.
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
We prioritize low engagement levels from the customer, low adoption rate and low product usage metrics to identify such accounts.
“By proactively helping the customer overcome obstacles, we have strengthened our partnership.”
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
Product usage metrics have provided me with insight into identifying potential areas of slow adoption and devising strategies to reach out to customers to understand any blockers hindering their adoption. I have then crafted a mutual success plan and collaborated with our team to find solutions to assist the customer with their blockers. By proactively helping the customer overcome obstacles, we have strengthened our partnership.
Qualtrics specializes in experience management software, empowering organizations to enhance customer, employee, product and brand experiences through comprehensive data analysis and insights.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
IG: The main KPIs I use for my clients are:
- FCR (First Call Resolution), which measures if I was able to solve the issue on the same call
- 48-hour resolution, which means if we can solve the issue in less than 48 hours
- CSAT is a metric we use as feedback
- Top 2 box, which refers to the percentage of positive feedback that we receive from our customers
PO: I believe the most important KPI used for my interactions is the CSAT with the support interaction. Along this KPI, the Top 2 box for this CSAT is the percentage of the customers that answer between four to five scores. One outside-the-box metric is the percentage of specialty tickets taken — the section of the Qualtrics platform involves specific processes. We receive additional training to help out with these tickets. These types of interactions tend to be more critical to the client’s usage of the platform.
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
IG: I always keep an eye on the CSAT and Top 2 Box since feedback is really important to measure the quality of our support and understanding of where we can improve.
PO: The CSAT metrics — product, interaction and overall — and CES, along with the additional comments for unsatisfied customers, usually have the same trends where they mention specific challenges we can take action on.
“I look for what feedback our clients give us, either for repeating a good interaction or to avoid a negative one.”
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
IG: Each time that I receive a CSAT in my inbox, I keep it in a special folder to analyze at the end of each month. I look for what feedback our clients give us, either for repeating a good interaction or to avoid a negative one.
PO: When I have a challenging interaction, I try to take the customer’s feedback as an area of opportunity. Normally, the KPIs and metrics don’t give specific information on my interaction because of how the client felt at the time. But, the product CSAT always indicates whether they like the platform. Additional comments help people who have something positive or negative to express.
Artera is a patient communication platform that enhances healthcare delivery by enabling secure, multilingual messaging across multiple channels between patients and their healthcare teams.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
We’re dedicated to maximizing customer value through tailored success plans that identify our customers’ top priorities, roadblocks and key performance indicators.
One of the biggest challenges we hear from our customers is the amount of manual work it takes their staff to perform common everyday tasks. As a result, one of the key metrics we track is “Staff Hours Saved,” which is a decrease in manual effort for our customers by automating their workflows. The less time staff has to spend on administrative tasks, the more time they have to focus on direct patient care.
Another metric we track is “Patient Response Rates,” which shows how engaged our customers’ patients are; based on this information, we can customize outreach to ensure all messaging that’s going out to patients is clear, concise, friendly and sent to the patient at appropriate times. We can also use this metric as leverage for use case expansion. If patient response rates are high, this shows us that patients will likely be just as receptive to receiving more of their healthcare information easily via text as well. Engaged, responsive patients equal lower no-show rates, and lower no-show rates equal happy customers.
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
We are in lockstep with our customers every step of the way following the implementation and formal transition to the success team, identifying and understanding their needs and reviewing their unique success plans and KPIs regularly to help them achieve the desired outcomes.
“We are in lockstep with customers every step of the way following the implementation and formal transition to the success team.”
This includes tracking adoption rates and usage data, which helps us stay proactive with our customers, ensuring there’s not a significant dip in usage of our platform. To make it as easy as possible for our CSMs to keep track of this data, especially for CSMs that have large books of business, we have automated this risk tracking by configuring our data platform to send CSMs notifications when their customer’s usage data drops below a certain threshold. This will trigger a “call to action” for the CSM to further dive into the data, identify the cause of the drop in usage and be proactive in their outreach to customers to mitigate the potential risk.
Additionally, through this usage data, we can proactively identify opportunities for customers to use our platform to a greater extent, giving them ideas and recommendations to help fill more gaps in their workflows and deliver great customer service.
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
One customer accidentally turned off a feature that ended up affecting their patient care — and, therefore, revenue for their organization. We noticed the significant dip in their usage data and reached out proactively to let them know before they even caught the mistake on their side. They were extremely grateful that we caught this mistake quickly and were able to turn things back on immediately, helping out both their patients and their organization.
Finch integrates and streamlines employer systems like HR, payroll, benefits and employee identity into a single API, simplifying the complexity of employment infrastructure for more accessible data management.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
Until I’m forced to become half computer, I can only handle so many inputs. I try to limit key metrics to a list of seven metrics: adoption, utilization rate, NPS or CSAT, internal sentiment, multi-threading, value pillar footprint and revenue opportunity.
The closest to an “outside-the-box” metric we consider is whether our customers fall into “outlier” buckets for support experience. This means that while their key metrics may be performing well, we’d have a significant concern if a customer surfaces issues where we respond in the 90th percentile, which is the slowest time to resolve. We prioritize support experience metrics across ticket volumes, frequencies, multi-touch rates and resolution times.
As we continue to evolve, each of the above will factor into an evolving weighted health score for customers.
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
There are a lot of variables that factor into churn potential. During the implementation period, we monitor customers’ target adoption thresholds across our integration options and connection volumes across those integrations and connection frequency each week. Staying consistent with the key metrics referenced above, we prioritize the following beyond the implementation stage:
- Increasing adoption and utilization rates: How effectively are they using the product?
- Collecting NPS and CSAT scores: How do they feel about the product and service?
- Success Sentiment: How do we feel about their experience?
- Improving the spread of critical contacts: How ingrained are we in their organization? Do we have good relationships?
- Cementing the measurable value they receive from Finch: Can we quantify our impact on their core metrics or goals? If so, how are we trending toward making an impact?
If any of these are not meeting our target goals or are trending negatively, the account is in danger of churning.
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
At the end of the day, it’s important to marry our quantifiable metrics with the anecdotal inputs that our developer success team can surface. There is no one way to approach this, but I tend to use the metrics described in the previous prompts to help shine a light on opportunities and problem areas. Suppose the data tells us that a group of customers is primed for growth. In that case, I will want to validate that intelligence with our success team’s perspective and develop a relevant strategy that helps our customers grow.
“If our metrics or subjective details tell us that a customer’s experience is degraded, I will want to get involved personally.”
Similarly, if our metrics or subjective details tell us that a customer’s experience is degraded, I will want to get involved personally. Partnering with our success team, we’ll leverage inputs across adoption, utilization, NPS, our existing relationships and the value our customer aims to unlock, and devise the right narrative and roadmap to get them back to a healthy pace. If the issues are centered around product adoption or confidence, we’ll pull in the right engineering or product team members to map their explicit pain points to improvements we’re investing in on their behalf.
Iodine Software leverages artificial intelligence to automate complex clinical tasks, enhancing clinical documentation and patient care efficiency for healthcare providers.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
- Customer satisfaction: We measure through CSAT surveys and CS leadership engagement touch points throughout the customer journey.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): This helps us gauge customer loyalty and the likelihood of our key customer decision-makers and leaders recommending our company to others.
- Key performance indicators: We track and benchmark key areas of utilization across our suite of solutions that are most meaningful to our customers and demonstrate the most value and impact our solutions provide to their organization.
- Customer retention rate: We measure how many customers continue to partner with our company annually.
- Customer churn rate: On the contrary, we also measure the percentage of customers who discontinue their partnership with us annually.
Outside-the-box metrics that we track:
- Customer advocacy: We track and monitor who actively promotes and serves as customer references, which are leveraged across existing customers and new prospects, as well as partner with our CS organization to develop testimonials, case studies and webinars.
- Customer onboarding success: We monitor how effectively our CX organization is able to implement new customers.
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
We continuously monitor key performance metrics and overall interaction levels to identify customers who are showing decreased engagement with our solutions. A decrease in usage frequency could indicate a lack of value being derived from our solutions, potentially leading to churn.
“A decrease in usage frequency could indicate a lack of value being derived from our solutions, potentially leading to churn.”
ROI and financial impact (FI) metrics: In addition to KPIs, evaluating the overall return our customers are receiving by utilizing our solutions is critical to their evaluation of success, so we want to routinely evaluate these metrics for any customer at risk of churn.
Relying on evaluation ratings and comments from our NPS surveys, a declining NPS score may suggest that an account is considering churning.
We actively solicit and review feedback from accounts to understand their likes, dislikes and pain points. Addressing and prioritizing our customer concerns promptly can help prevent churn. Additionally, we have established an account health scoring system that integrates multiple data points to provide a holistic view of account health.
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
Specifically, by analyzing their usage patterns and trends, we are able to target customers based on their level of engagement with our solutions and propose refresher training, engage leaders and users to review product roadmap and enhancement discussions and potentially increase the frequency of our meeting cadences.
We have also used satisfaction survey data to identify pain points and areas for improvement, which we then address through updates and enhancements to our engagement strategy, product roadmap and CX processes.
By leveraging data to tailor our re-engagement strategy, we have successfully nurtured customer relationships, increased customer satisfaction and improved customer retention rates.
Quantum Metric offers a digital intelligence platform that enables businesses to adopt Continuous Product Design, enhancing user experience by providing real-time, actionable insights across web and mobile applications.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
- ROI: We have mechanisms to calculate the ROI for each customer from day one, enabling us to monitor our effectiveness in fulfilling their expectations.
- Adoption metrics: Our approach to measuring adoption is twofold, emphasizing both breadth and ‘stickiness.’
- Annual recurring revenue (ARR) per user: We closely monitor the ARR per user in the platform. We have a threshold that we aim for which indicates both cost-efficiency and high utility.
- Daily Active Users (DAU) to Monthly Active Users (MAU) Ratio: The DAU to Monthly MAU ratio offers insights into Quantum Metric’s stickiness within our client organizations. A healthy DAU to MAU ratio indicates that we’ve become a mission-critical part of our customers’ daily operations.
- Time to Value: Rapid value realization post-contract is critical for SaaS platforms like Quantum Metric. We measure the ‘Time to Value’ for new clients to ensure they benefit from our platform’s capabilities as quickly as possible.
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
When we’re trying to spot accounts that might be at risk of churning, we focus on two areas: ROI and how much they’re using Quantum Metric. At the end of the day, our clients signed up with Quantum Metric to see a good return on their spending. If an account doesn’t see the expected benefits, that’s a red flag. With adoption metrics, we closely monitor how much and how effectively they’re using Quantum Metric via a few metrics:
- ARR per user (breadth): A high ARR per user indicates that we don’t have the breadth of adoption we strive for.
- Maturity of Usage (depth): We use a combination of metrics to paint the picture of how mature customers are in their usage of Quantum Metric. We aim to ensure customers are comfortable using the platform’s full capabilities to fulfill their needs. Consistently basic usage is an indicator that opportunity is being left on the table.
- DAU to MAU Ratio: This tells us how regularly users are incorporating Quantum Metric in their day-to-day. A high ratio means the product is becoming a daily habit, which is good. A low ratio could indicate trouble.
“If an account doesn’t see the expected benefits, that’s a red flag.”
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
A particular account was flagged as a churn risk based on adoption health. It was clear the client wasn’t seeing the expected value, partly because their usage of the platform was limited to basic features, which underutilized Quantum Metric’s capabilities.
Tailored Reengagement Plan:
- Strategic Realignment: We met with our champion to discuss opportunities for the team to derive more value from the platform and aligned around an enablement plan that showed exactly how we planned to upskill their teams to self-serve on that value.
- Tailored Enablement: We set up tailored training sessions focusing on the usage of Quantum Metric to deliver outcomes supporting their specific business goals. These sessions helped them see the potential impact on their ROI by leveraging the full breadth of the platform.
- Outcome: This strategy led to a noticeable decrease in the client’s ARR per user, indicating that more users were deriving value. More importantly, we saw an increase in the maturity of platform usage. The enhanced value and support transformed their perception of Quantum Metric, solidifying our relationship and reducing their churn risk.
TravelPerk streamlines corporate travel management with an integrated platform that simplifies booking and managing expenses and offers flexible cancellation policies, making business travel more efficient and less stressful.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
It depends on each client and what I’m trying to accomplish with them. Is the goal to be strategic about upselling some of our ancillary products? Is the goal to achieve more opportunities for mutual growth? Are there challenges they’ve had with the product or service, and if so, can I use data to lessen their negative perception of those challenges?
To answer the question more specifically, the key metrics for me should always be about the partnership. Metrics like travel data, CSAT and NPS scores, and gross margin are examples of just some of the metrics I can use. Still, it comes down to what metrics will guide me to things to help my customer save money, improve operational efficiency and internal processes, build their trust in the product and service, and have a more streamlined travel program. What metrics will empower me to make sales to my customers when it comes to upselling and driving more revenue? Every situation is unique.
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
We’ve built a great internal dashboard for this purpose. It assigns a customer health score using different metrics, including some of the points below. At the enterprise account level, the goal is to have a good enough relationship with the client that a potential churn is brought to my attention well before the decision is actually made. However, some of the data I use to predict a potential churn includes the following:
- Customer Care Data and SLA metrics: Are we meeting the SLAs for them on a regular basis?
- ‘Good’ NPS and CSAT ratings versus ‘Bad’ ratings
- Travel Spend: Are there concerning and unexpected dips in spend on the platform?
- User Data: Has there been a concerning dip in active users on the platform?
“A successful partnership should always be the driving goal.”
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
A successful partnership should always be the driving goal. A recent example involved a client who wasn’t performing well and wasn’t very receptive to hopping on a call to discuss the performance. Ultimately, sending a few data-driven emails did the trick.
In the emails I attached simple reporting showing:
- Their average flight prices for a few of their booking windows — the number of days before a flight departs— were quite high. The recommendation was to encourage travelers to book their flights in windows that have lower average ticket prices.
- Their approvers were taking a long time, on average, to approve trips. I told them this can lead to more friction because flight prices can increase or flights can sell out. The lower the average time to approve is, the less friction there is.
I shared these metrics and told them I had a lot of other data we could go through to help them succeed with their travel program. The result was not only a revived relationship but also a clear path to a more successful and satisfying travel program for them.
LogicGate offers a robust governance, risk, and compliance platform known as Risk Cloud, designed with a no-code interface to enable organizations to effectively understand, manage and mitigate risks through a centralized framework.
What are the key metrics you track when it comes to your customers? Are there any “outside-the-box” metrics you track?
We recently worked with our customer success and strategy team to revamp our customer health score — a thorough collection of data manually captured by our team and data from Risk Cloud, LogicGate’s platform.
Without getting into the nitty-gritty details of how usage is tracked and deciphered within our platform, our high-level metrics include:
- Customer Sentiment: How do we “feel” the customer is doing?
- Customer Personas and Contacts: Do we have one or more documented contacts within the personas that we care most about — executive sponsor, champion or administrator — and do we have a relationship with them?
- Customer Engagement: How often do we meet with the customer?
- Platform Usage: How much is the customer using our platform? Are there any applications that have been set up but have now been abandoned and have not been used recently? Are our administrators using Risk Cloud consistently? How many do we have active? Is their usage trending up or down?
We also look at “outside-the-box” contract-related metrics, including recent expansion, changes in renewal terms and whether we are multi-threaded into different departments.
Which metrics do you prioritize when identifying accounts that might be in danger of churning?
The biggest indicators of potential churn that we’ve found are:
- Usage: This is likely obvious, but is the customer using our platform? If usage is down or it is not being used consistently, it is an automatic red flag.
- Engagement: Has the customer been skipping meetings, asking us to reschedule often or fully ghosting us? If so, we need to escalate as soon as possible.
- Contacts: We need to have engagement or some sort of relationship with an executive at the customer, especially given the macro trend of recent budget cuts. Are we speaking to a decision maker, or do we have any relationship with one? If not, and even if our day-to-day contact loves us, we will likely be on the budget-cut floor. This is most critical within the year of renewal.
Give an example of how you used this data to tailor your re-engagement strategy or otherwise improve and nurture customer relationships.
If usage drops, we like to be pretty direct in bringing this up with the customer and offer our support. If we have a call, we will let them know that we have noticed they haven’t used ‘X’ application recently, or we have noticed usage is down in ‘Y’ application, and then ask what may be going on that is causing that.
“In most cases, when framed as our team wanting to understand, be a good partner and offer our support, [customers] are willing to tell us what may be happening.”
In most cases, when framed as our team wanting to understand, be a good partner and offer our support to the customer, they are willing to tell us what may be happening. From there, we can either look to invest in training and services to make required configuration changes or, if the problem is that we are no longer solving a compelling problem, look to pivot to understand what might be the next biggest problem that our software can help solve.
