CRM: Analyze, Apply, and Optimize Customer Success Course

Lesson 1 • Stakeholder Roles in CS Teams

Identify internal and external stakeholders who influence customer outcomes. Clarify how CS collaborates with sales, product, and support functions.

Lesson 2 • Defining Customer Success Today

Establish what customer success means in modern SaaS and service businesses. Contrast it with customer support and account management to clarify scope.

Lesson 3 • The Customer Lifecycle Framework

Map the end-to-end customer journey from acquisition through renewal. Identify CS touchpoints at each stage to guide intervention timing.

Lesson 1 • Configuring CRM for CS Workflows

Set up views, fields, and pipelines that reflect the customer lifecycle. Align CRM configuration with the lifecycle stages introduced in Chapter 1.

Lesson 2 • Data Quality and Governance

Prevent data decay that undermines CS decisions by establishing ownership and validation rules. Link data quality directly to health score accuracy.

Lesson 3 • CRM Integrations for CS Teams

Connect CRM to product usage, billing, and support tools to create a unified customer view. Identify integration patterns that reduce manual data entry.

Lesson 4 • Logging and Tracking Customer Interactions

Establish consistent activity logging practices that create an auditable customer history. Demonstrate how logged data feeds health scoring and reporting.

Lesson 1 • Cohort and Trend Analysis

Analyze customer cohorts over time to detect retention trends and benchmark performance. Use trend data to inform CS strategy adjustments.

Lesson 2 • Dashboards and Reporting Fundamentals

Build CRM reports and dashboards that give CS leaders real-time portfolio visibility. Connect each report to a specific CS decision or workflow.

Lesson 3 • Segmentation Strategies for CS

Divide the customer base into meaningful groups that drive differentiated engagement. Apply firmographic, behavioral, and lifecycle criteria to segmentation.

Lesson 4 • Identifying Churn and Expansion Signals

Recognize leading indicators of churn and upsell readiness within CRM and product data. Translate signals into prioritized CSM action queues.

Lesson 1 • Onboarding Playbooks in CRM

Codify onboarding steps as CRM playbooks that ensure consistency across CSMs. Automate task creation and reminders to reduce manual coordination overhead.

Lesson 2 • Measuring and Improving Onboarding

Evaluate onboarding effectiveness using time-to-value, completion rates, and early health scores. Use findings to iterate on playbook design continuously.

Lesson 3 • Onboarding Program Design Principles

Establish the goals, milestones, and success criteria that define a strong onboarding program. Anchor design decisions to the time-to-value metric from Chapter 1.

Lesson 4 • Customer Kickoff Execution

Run a structured kickoff meeting that aligns customer goals with product capabilities. Capture outcomes in CRM to trigger subsequent onboarding tasks.

Lesson 1 • Executive Business Reviews

Structure and deliver EBRs that demonstrate ROI and deepen executive relationships. Prepare data-driven narratives using CRM reports built in Chapter 3.

Lesson 2 • At-Risk Customer Intervention

Respond to churn signals identified in Chapter 3 with structured save playbooks. Escalate appropriately and document outcomes to improve future interventions.

Lesson 3 • Designing Engagement Cadences

Build tiered outreach schedules matched to customer segment and health status. Automate low-touch cadences while preserving high-touch capacity for strategic accounts.

Lesson 4 • Voice of the Customer Programs

Collect, analyze, and act on customer feedback to improve retention and product fit. Feed survey results back into CRM health scores and product roadmaps.

Lesson 1 • Identifying Expansion Opportunities

Use usage data, health scores, and stakeholder signals to surface upsell candidates. Build CRM views that surface expansion-ready accounts automatically.

Lesson 2 • Land-and-Expand Motion Design

Build a repeatable land-and-expand strategy that grows accounts systematically over time. Align CS, sales, and product teams around shared expansion goals.

Lesson 3 • Expansion Revenue Fundamentals

Define upsell, cross-sell, and expansion revenue and their impact on NRR from Chapter 1. Distinguish CS-led expansion from sales-led motions.

Lesson 4 • Managing Expansion in CRM

Track expansion opportunities through a dedicated CRM pipeline with stage-specific criteria. Forecast expansion revenue accurately using weighted pipeline methods.

Lesson 1 • Playbook Standardization and Governance

Create a library of approved CS playbooks that enforce consistent execution across the team. Establish a governance process for playbook creation, review, and retirement.

Lesson 2 • Continuous Process Improvement

Apply structured improvement cycles to CS processes using data from CRM and team feedback. Prioritize improvements by impact on retention, efficiency, and CSM experience.

Lesson 3 • Capacity Planning and Book of Business

Determine optimal CSM-to-account ratios and distribute accounts equitably across the team. Use CRM data to model capacity and flag overloaded CSMs.

Lesson 4 • CS Operations Role and Scope

Define CS Ops as the function that enables CSMs through tooling, data, and process design. Distinguish CS Ops responsibilities from CSM execution responsibilities.

Lesson 1 • Scaling CS for Growth Stages

Adapt CS models as the company moves from startup to growth to enterprise scale. Identify the inflection points that require structural and process changes.

Lesson 2 • CS Team Performance Management

Design CSM scorecards that balance retention, expansion, and activity metrics fairly. Use CRM data to run objective performance reviews and coaching sessions.

Lesson 3 • Building the CS Business Case

Quantify the ROI of CS investments using retention, expansion, and efficiency data. Present compelling business cases that secure budget and headcount.

Lesson 4 • Optimizing the CS Tech Stack

Evaluate, select, and rationalize CS tools against team maturity and business needs. Avoid tool sprawl by aligning each platform to a specific CS outcome.

Lesson 5 • Cross-Functional CS Influence

Use customer insights from CRM to influence product roadmaps, marketing, and sales strategy. Build feedback loops that make CS a strategic voice in the organization.