When we have founded a customer success department within’ our company we’ve first made research on what a customer success team is, which tasks does a customer success manager has, etc. Soon we’ve found out that, within’ customer success departments, an indicator about the status of a customer will be calculated called “Health Score”. Customers will be splitted in green, yellow and red based on measurable and defined KPIs. (key performance indicators) But how to define such KPIs and calculate a Health Score based on these?
First define measurable KPIs! Measurable KPIs could be e.g.
When we had defined these KPIs we’ve realized that it isn’t so easy
This is the key question of this article and often in Customer Success. What means to put these KPIs in a meaningful context to each other and how to do this? One of the key initiatives to put KPIs in a meaningful context to each other is to implement a factor or weightage which can be easily adjusted.
For example: You don’t know how important it is whether a customer has a lot of open invoices? Then try and figure out how the calculation of your Health Score would look like, when you give it no, a low, medium or high weightage and do the same with the next KPI. And so on and so on.
Hint: It’s absolutely normal that you won’t have the perfect calculation right away and need adjustments from time to time. This might also be necessary when priorities have changed or new KPIs will be added. We are happy to help you with it. Write us at info@customer-success-expert.com. This is our consulting company.
Goal: Ideally you will have a calculation with maybe 20% green, 60% yellow and 20% red customers Health Scores.
Hint 2: Nevertheless you will have some outliers! Means that also a customer with a green Health Score might churn. This could have several reasons. Maybe a KPI you don’t measure or something unexpected on customers’ side. E.g.
As you can see, calculating a Health Score might be difficult and complex. Tools might help to calculate the Health Score and with it to predict churn, improve customer satisfaction, etc. And with the raise of customer satisfaction, your possibility to make more business with this customer (cross- and upselling) raises, too. But what is the right tool for you?
There are a lot of tools on the market. Tools which can a lot (automations/ playbooks, etc.), but also cost a lot. Read in the following what is important for you and how to figure out which is the right tool for you.