4 steps to building confidence with customer health:
- Centralize your data sources, but start small
- Ensure accuracy to avoid decisioning on bad data
- Make it actionable by combining data with context
- Go beyond customer success, instill the value of customer health at the company level
In the fast-paced world of SaaS, holding onto customers and annual recurring revenue (ARR) can feel like carrying around a leaky bucket! As an expert in customer success and retention, I’ve learned firsthand that the foundation of any churn reduction strategy lies in one critical element: trustworthy data. Without accurate, actionable insights into your customers’ behaviors, needs, and risks, you’re navigating blind.
Why trustworthy data matters
Imagine you’re a doctor diagnosing a patient. If your tools — blood tests, X-rays, or vitals — are unreliable, your treatment plan is guesswork at best. The same applies to managing customer health. Data is your diagnostic tool, revealing who’s thriving, who’s at risk, and who’s silently slipping away. Many customers I work with have reduced churn by up to 20% when they leverage data they can trust, while simultaneously boosting expansion revenue. Yet, many SaaS businesses struggle with fragmented, incomplete, or outdated data, leading to missed opportunities and costly missteps.
Trustworthy data does more than highlight problems, it empowers customer success and account managers to create proactive solutions. It tells you when a customer’s product usage drops, when their support tickets spike, or when their sentiment shifts in a key stakeholder meeting. Achieving this level of clarity requires a deliberate approach to data collection, integration, and governance, and here are 4 steps to get you started.
Step 1: Centralize data sources (hint: start small)
The first hurdle to trustworthy data is fragmentation. Customer information lives across disjointed systems — CRMs like Salesforce, support platforms like Zendesk, billing tools like Stripe, and product analytics like Pendo. Each holds a piece of the puzzle, but without unification, you’re left with blind spots.
Start small by identifying the top 3 sources of data that predict churn. Don’t make the mistake of integrating everything at once. Prioritize metrics that matter, like feature adoption, time-to-value, or net promoter scores (NPS). Avoid vanity metrics that look impressive but don’t correlate with retention. A good rule of thumb: if a data point doesn’t inform a specific action, it’s noise, not signal.
Customer success platforms like Totango excel here, pulling data from multiple touch points to create a 360-degree view of each customer. For example, usage metrics from your product can reveal adoption trends, while support ticket data flags potential frustrations. By centralizing these inputs, you eliminate silos and ensure every team — CSMs, sales, product — works from the same truth.
Step 2: Ensure data accuracy
Centralized data is only as good as its quality. Inaccurate or outdated information can mislead even the best-intentioned teams. I’ve seen companies chase “at-risk” accounts that were actually healthy, simply because a data sync failed or a manual entry was incorrect.
To ensure accuracy, implement automated data collection wherever possible. Manual inputs, like CSMs logging meeting notes in a spreadsheet, are prone to errors and inconsistencies. Use APIs or native integrations to pull real-time data from your tools. Totango’s platform can automatically track product usage or billing changes, reducing reliance on human intervention.
Regular audits are equally critical. Schedule quarterly reviews to spot anomalies like sudden drops in usage that might signal a tracking issue, not a customer problem. Cross-reference data with customer feedback to validate trends. If your platform shows low engagement, but a recent survey indicates high satisfaction, something’s off. Dig deeper to reconcile the disconnect.
Step 3: Make data actionable
Trustworthy data isn’t just accurate — it’s usable. Raw numbers or complex dashboards can overwhelm teams, leading to analysis paralysis. The goal is to translate data into clear, prioritized actions.
Start by defining customer health scores. These aggregate key metrics, like usage frequency, support interactions, payment history, into a single, intuitive indicator (e.g., green, yellow, red). But don’t stop at a score. Pair it with context, asking questions like:
- Why is this customer in the red?
- Are they struggling with onboarding?
- Is key feature underutilized?
Next, automate alerts for critical changes. If a customer’s health score drops or misses a renewal milestone, your team should know instantly, not during a weekly review. Automation ensures timely interventions, like reaching out to a disengaged user before they churn.
Step 4: Build a data-driven culture
Technology alone doesn’t solve the data trust problem, people do. Your teams must embrace data as a strategic asset, not a nice-to-have. Train CSMs to interpret health scores and act on insights, not just follow scripts. Encourage sales and product teams to use the same data to align their efforts with customer needs.
Leadership plays a pivotal role here. Set KPIs tied to data-driven outcomes, like reducing time-to-resolution for at-risk accounts. Celebrate wins when teams use data to save a customer or drive up-sell. Over time, this builds a culture where trust in data becomes second nature.
The Payoff
Getting to the first stage of customer health — trustworthy data — isn’t glamorous, but it’s transformative. With clean, centralized, actionable insights, you can spot risks early, prioritize resources effectively, and deliver personalized experiences that keep customers loyal. Waystar, using Totango, unified data to reduce churn by 20% by identifying at-risk accounts faster. That’s revenue saved and growth unlocked.
As you build this foundation, you’re not just reducing churn, you’re setting the stage for deeper collaboration and proactive strategies, which we explore in the next stage of unlocking customer health to drive results.
Recurring revenue is a rhythm — not one note. It’s a commitment to continuous improvement and innovation, led by the customers you’ve got. So, they meet their goals, and you meet yours.
Learn how Totango can help your business put revenue on repeat.
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