When churn spikes, the Customer Success team usually takes the blame.
But Customer Success cannot save a client who was sold the wrong product.
They cannot save a client whose expectations were wildly mismanaged during the sales cycle.
Retention is determined long before the contract is signed.
The Customer Success Scapegoat
In most SaaS companies, Sales and CS operate in complete silos.
Sales is incentivized to close anything that breathes.
CS is left to clean up the mess when the product doesn't deliver the promised ROI.
This creates a leaky bucket where Net Revenue Retention (NRR) hovers below 100%.
Operationalizing Customer Health
I build revenue architecture that connects the entire customer journey.
That means aligning Sales compensation with long-term retention metrics, not just the initial signature.
It means building a quantitative Customer Health Score in the CRM based on actual product usage telemetry, not just CS sentiment.
We intervene structurally when health dips, rather than waiting for a cancellation email.
The 110% NRR Engine
By aligning incentives and creating a single source of truth for customer data, the dynamic shifts.
I used this methodology to increase a client's NRR from 98% to 110%.
They stopped replacing lost revenue and started compounding growth.