Author's note: Customer Success Operations

Why this volume exists

The decision to leave is frequently made long before the renewal date, sometimes before any money changes hands, and it degrades through every touch point in between. A business that measures only at the end holds one data point about a process that had dozens.

The case it opens with

The instrument that would have caught it is a health reading, numbered and consistently defined, taken at every touch point from first awareness through to advocacy. I have implemented it repeatedly, and across twenty years and businesses from startups to ten figures I have never once found a business already doing it.

Where the evidence went against me

Chapter 13 is the part of this book most worth reading, and it argues against me. It presents randomized field evidence that acting on a high risk score is frequently ineffective and can cause the churn it was meant to prevent. In the same body of work, a genuinely helpful phone call moved churn from 6.4 percent to 10.0. I conceded it rather than rebutting it, because the alternative was to publish advice the evidence does not support.

What was cut

Four widely quoted retention statistics do not survive contact with their own sources, and they are named rather than quietly dropped. The note on method lists what else came out and why.

Where to read it

Principles of Practice, Volume V: Customer Success Operations. Six Months, and the Decision Already Made Published by the National Board of Operations Professionals. The publisher page for this volume carries the full description and how it maps to the standard.