Customer Success · Enterprise account management

Customer Success
Portfolio

How I keep enterprise accounts on the renewal path — health scoring, mutual success plans, and the executive rhythms that turn a signed SOW into a renewed one.

Two accounts to reference. JPMorgan Chase at Oracle (Tier-1 strategic account, 95%+ SLA on 130+ concurrent Service Requests) and Broward County’s 20+ department SaaS rollout (100% on-time milestones, 100% adoption in 3 months). Below: how I run them, the seven artifacts I ship every quarter, and the numbers pulled from real Service Value Reviews.

The Approach

Customer Success is value realization, not vibes.

Every account has a number attached to renewal — ARR, seats, contract value. My job is to make sure that number gets renewed because the customer measurably got what they paid for. That’s a process, not a personality.

Phase 01
Land

Executive handoff from Sales. Mutual success plan ratified in the first 30 days. Sponsor + champion + detractor mapped by name.

Phase 02
Adopt

Onboarding playbook run against milestones. Health score published weekly. Bad news travels fast; churn signals get raised before the CFO does.

Phase 03
Realize

Quarterly Business Review focused on outcomes the sponsor cares about — not features. Executive Business Review annually with C-suite; renewal-signal detection begins.

Phase 04
Renew

Renewal playbook starts 120 days out. Expansion signals surfaced to Sales 90 days before renewal. Closing brief handed to the account team as an expansion motion, not a maintenance ticket.

Featured Accounts

Two signature accounts.

One Fortune 10 external client, one internal SaaS rollout to 20+ departments. Numbers are real — from Service Value Reviews and adoption dashboards.

The Artifacts

Seven working documents that keep customers on the renewal path.

Not templates. The actual shape of what I ship every week, month, and quarter. Anonymized where legal requires it; numbers on the sample are illustrative.

QBR Deck — Quarterly Business Review. Sent to the sponsor 48 hours before the meeting. Every slot in the agenda maps to outcomes the sponsor cares about — not feature ships or SR counts.

Standard QBR agenda — 60 minutes
Q3 Business Review · Enterprise Account
01 · Value delivered this quarter

Not: features shipped.
Yes: the two business outcomes we committed to at last QBR. What moved. By how much.

02 · Health snapshot

Overall health score with trend line. Adoption, engagement, support, and executive-sponsor engagement broken out. Red/yellow items called out with owner + ETA.

03 · What we’re watching

The one or two signals we’re watching (adoption plateau, sponsor turnover, competing initiative). Sponsors respect being told what’s uncertain.

04 · Roadmap alignment

What’s on the vendor roadmap that maps to the customer’s stated priorities. Two things we’d recommend they adopt next quarter, with rationale.

05 · Mutual success plan check-in

The three success criteria we ratified at Land. Progress on each. What’s needed from us, what’s needed from them.

06 · Asks & decisions

Two asks max. Each with a proposed decision the sponsor can nod on in the room. No open questions.

Account Health Tracker. Refreshed every Monday. The one place I look before every stakeholder call. Signal changes trigger action, not another meeting.

Health scorecard — Q3 Week 8
Overall Amber · trending green
Overall
82/100
+4 from last week · green trend
Adoption
74
Flat · watch — power users only
Engagement
88
+6 · QBR attendance up
Support Load
61
−8 · SR spike from Sev-2 escalation
Sponsor Engagement
91
Weekly touch, EBR calendared
NPS (last survey)
42
+7 QoQ · response rate 68%

Support Load red is a leading indicator, not a lagging one. Sev-2 escalation resolved 07/09; watch for downstream ticket normalization over next 2 weeks.

Onboarding Playbook — first 90 days. Every enterprise account gets the same skeleton, custom-fit to their sponsor’s priorities. Time-to-value is the single measurable metric — most accounts hit first value inside 30 days.

90-day onboarding skeleton
Enterprise onboarding — standard playbook
Week Milestone Owner Success Criteria Status
W1 Kickoff + Mutual Success Plan drafted CSM + Sponsor 3 success criteria ratified; RACI signed Complete
W2 Executive stakeholder map + champion identification CSM Sponsor / champion / detractor named Complete
W3–4 Technical enablement + admin training Solutions Engineer 2 admin power users certified Complete
W5–6 Pilot cohort deployment (20–50 users) CSM + Champion 80%+ pilot engagement in first 2 weeks In progress
W7–8 First-value moment — measurable outcome Sponsor One committed metric moves 5%+ from baseline In progress
W9–10 Broader rollout planning + change management brief CSM + Change Lead Rollout plan approved by exec sponsor Upcoming
W11–12 90-day Health Review + roadmap alignment CSM + Sponsor Health score baseline established; Q2 priorities set Upcoming

Mutual Success Plan. Signed at Land. Reviewed at every QBR. The single source of truth for “what does success actually look like for this customer” — because success is different for every account, even at the same ARR band.

Mutual Success Plan — Q3 progress review
Three success criteria, ratified at Land
Success Criterion 01

Reduce time-to-first-hire from 42 to 28 days.
Baseline · 42 days
Current · 34 days
Progress: 57% — on track. Two workflow automations shipped; interviewer scheduling next.

Success Criterion 02

Improve reporting cycle from 5 days to same-day.
Baseline · 5 days
Current · 2 days
Progress: 60% — on track. Dashboard consolidation complete; live-refresh in QA.

Success Criterion 03

Increase self-service adoption by 40%.
Baseline · 22%
Current · 34%
Progress: 30% — at risk. Change management fatigue observed; new cohort strategy launching W9.

Executive Sponsor

CHRO (Client) & VP CS (Vendor). Both signed at Land. Both review at monthly cadence. Neither has changed since kickoff — single largest predictor of renewal.

Executive Business Review — annual. C-suite only. 90 minutes. Different from QBR: strategic, not tactical. The one meeting per year where we ask “is this relationship still doing what it needs to do?”

EBR agenda — strategic executive review
Annual EBR · C-suite session
01 · Year in review

The 3 outcomes we committed to at last EBR. How they moved. What we’d do differently.

02 · Strategic alignment

Where the client is going as a business over the next 18 months, and how the platform maps to it. This is a listening slot as much as a telling slot.

03 · Realized value (executive framing)

Dollars, hours, headcount — whatever the C-suite measures. Not usage stats. Explicit ROI narrative.

04 · Year ahead

Three commitments for the next 12 months, tied to the client’s stated business priorities. Ratified by both sponsors in the room.

05 · Executive-to-executive relationship

Vendor CEO / SVP shows up. Not a talking part — a listening one. Sponsors get 10 minutes to say what’s been hard.

06 · Expansion narrative (if warranted)

Only if the health + success plan supports it. Never introduced as an ask — framed as “here’s what the roadmap looks like based on where you’re going.”

Renewal Playbook — T-120 days. Renewal work starts four months before the contract date, not four weeks. By T-60 the answer is already yes or no; the only question is expansion or hold.

Renewal cadence — T-minus 120 days
Standard renewal motion
Timeline Motion Owner Signal to watch
T-120 Renewal readiness health check — formal risk assessment across 6 health dimensions. CSM Any red for >2 weeks becomes an escalation to sponsor.
T-90 Executive sponsor sync — explicit conversation about renewal intent. CSM + Sponsor Non-committal answer = churn risk. Ask directly; don’t infer.
T-75 Expansion or hold decision. Loop in Sales if expansion; loop in Retention if hold. CSM + Account Exec Champion turnover in last 90 days is the single strongest signal.
T-60 Renewal narrative drafted — the story we’ll tell the buying committee. CSM Value realized this year; roadmap alignment next year; three references.
T-45 Commercial terms proposed. QBR-slot conversation, not surprise email. Account Exec Procurement pushback usually signals sponsor not fully bought in yet.
T-30 Renewal papered. Handoff document to Post-Renewal CSM (if account transitions). CSM + Legal Day 1 of the new term should feel like day 366 of the old one.
T-0 Renewal signed. Closing brief written for the account team — expansion motion, not celebration. CSM The next renewal starts today.

Champion Map. Every enterprise account is a set of humans, not a company. The map surfaces who’s fighting for the account internally, who’s neutral, and who’s a threat — updated every time we hear anything material.

Stakeholder champion map
Client executive & buying committee
Executive Sponsor · Champion
CHRO
Signed the deal. Publicly attributes time-to-hire improvement to the platform. Attended every QBR. High renewal confidence.
Operational Champion · Champion
VP People Operations
Power user. Cascades wins to other VPs. First person the CHRO calls when it works. Would defend a renewal to Procurement.
Technical Owner · Neutral
Head of IT
Cares about SSO, SLA, and integrations. Currently satisfied. Would go red on us fast if security posture slipped.
Detractor · Detractor
Head of Finance
Owns Procurement. Ran alternative-vendor bake-off before renewal last year. Watch closely at T-90; needs a hard ROI number.
New Stakeholder · Unknown
Interim VP Ops
Joined April. No relationship yet. Scheduled 30-min intro W9. Will become high-priority if they stay past interim.
Board-Level Support
Board Member (retired CFO)
Former customer at prior company. Advocated for us in Board conversations. Not touched directly — sponsor briefs quarterly.
Correspondence

The motion that keeps customers.

This is the customer-success motion I bring to post-sale delivery at Coupa. The portfolio stays up as a reference for fellow CSMs and EMs building their own artifacts.

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