Key takeaways:
- Define a shared customer health vision
- Align incentives and metrics
- Foster cross-functional collaboration
- Shift from reactive to proactive
If you’ve mastered Intro to customer health and getting data you trust and have trustworthy data, congratulations! You’ve set a solid foundation for reducing churn and boosting expansion. Now it’s time to move beyond “firefight” — reacting to customer issues as they flare up – and build a collaborative vision that prevents fires before they start.
The firefighting trap
Firefighting feels productive. A triggers a red flag — low usage, a heated support call, or a missed renewal milestone — and your customer success team swoops in to save the day. But this reactive mode is a churn accelerator. It burns out your CSMs, distracts from growth opportunities, and signals to customers that you’re scrambling, not strategizing.
The root cause? Misalignment. When sales, product, support, and CS operate in silos, each team has its own priorities, metrics, and definition of success. Sales pushes for up-sell, product focuses on new features, and CSMs are left plugging leaks. Without cross-team buy-in, you’re not preventing fires — you’re just dousing them, temporarily.
Step 1: Define a shared customer health vision
Alignment starts with a common goal. At its core, customer success is about ensuring customers achieve their desired outcomes, which drives retention and expansion. But every team needs to internalize this.
A practical way to get started that I’ve seen work well is to gather stakeholders — CS, sales, product, support, marketing, and leadership — for a workshop to define what “healthy” customers look like. Ground the call in reality using trustworthy data. For example, healthy customers might show consistent feature adoption, high NPS scores, and timely renewals. Unhealthy ones might have declining usage or unresolved support tickets.
Translate this into a universal customer health score, visible to all teams. Totango’s customer success platform makes this easy, displaying real-time health metrics in a shared dashboard. When all stakeholders, from account execs to engineers, see the same red, yellow, or green, it fosters accountability. No one can say, “That’s not my problem.”
Step 2: Align incentives and metrics
Misaligned incentives fuel silos. If sales teams are rewarded for closing deals, but not renewals, or if product teams are judged on feature releases, but not adoption, firefighting becomes inevitable. To fix this, tie every team’s KPIs to customer health outcomes.
For sales, include retention metrics in commission structures. A deal isn’t a win if the customer churns in six months. For product, track feature usage and tie it to customer satisfaction. Support should measure resolution speed alongside health score improvements. CSMs should focus on proactive interventions, not reactively chasing the problem of the moment.
Leadership must lead by example. Set company-wide goals, like reducing churn by 15% or increasing expansion revenue by 10%, and cascade them to each department. When teams see their work directly impacts shared success, buy-in grows naturally.
Step 3: Foster cross-functional collaboration
Buy-in requires collaboration, not just agreement. Create structures to keep teams in sync. Start with regular cross-functional meetings, weekly or biweekly, teams review health scores, discuss at-risk accounts, and plan interventions. For instance, if a customer’s usage drops, the product team can clarify if it’s a usability issue, while sales can check for misaligned expectations from the deal.
Technology amplifies this. Platforms like Totango enable shared workflows, allowing teams to assign tasks, track progress, and log interactions in one place. Imagine a scenario: a CSM flags a yellow account, supports investigating a bug, and the product team prioritizes a fix, all coordinated seamlessly. This isn’t hypothetical; companies like SAP use unified platforms to streamline exactly these processes.
Quick tip: Don’t overlook informal collaboration. Encourage “health huddles” — quick, ad-hoc chats where teams brainstorm solutions for urgent issues. Pair this with visibility: when a team’s action saves a customer, celebrate it company-wide. Recognition builds momentum.
Step 4: Shift from reactive to proactive
Firefighting thrives on reaction. To stop it, make proactivity your default. Use your health scores to predict risks before they escalate. For example, if a customer’s onboarding stalls, don’t wait for a complaint. CSMs can trigger a training session, while product managers can simplify the workflow.
Automation is a game changer here. Set up alerts for health score changes or milestones, like a customer nearing renewal. Workflows can automatically assign tasks — like prompting sales to check in on an up-sell opportunity — ensuring no ball gets dropped. This lets teams focus on strategy, not scrambling.
Proactivity also means engaging customers at scale. Marketing can send personalized campaigns to low-engagement users, while support can offer proactive training to prevent issues. When every team contributes to prevention, firefighting becomes the exception, not the rule.
The payoff
Getting cross-team collaboration does more than improve retention–it transforms your SaaS business from reactive to proactive, creating a customer-led growth culture. Cross-team buy-in replaces chaos with clarity, turning churn risks into growth opportunities. Firefighting doesn’t just hurt your customers; it stalls your growth. By aligning teams around a shared vision, common metrics, and proactive tools, you’re not just saving accounts, you’re building a churn-resistant business ready for scale.
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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