Customer Health, Risk, and Renewal
Domain focus
Customer Health, Risk, and Renewal tests how candidates score health, detect risk early, build mitigation plans, and forecast renewals. The exam expects evidence-based judgment rather than optimism or a single red/amber/green label.
Core rules
- A health score is a composite view, not a single metric. Typical inputs are adoption and consumption, outcome progress, support experience, stakeholder sentiment, executive engagement, contract/commercial factors, and relationship strength. Weight inputs by segment and validate the model.
- Distinguish leading and lagging risk. Champion turnover, low active use, missed success-plan milestones, and negative sentiment are leading; a missed payment or a competitor evaluation is lagging.
- Classify risk by category: value (no evidence of outcomes), adoption (low use), relationship (sponsor or champion loss), technical (blocking defect or integration), commercial (budget, pricing, procurement). The category determines the mitigation.
- A risk mitigation plan needs an owner, action, due date, success evidence, and escalation path. 'Monitor' is not a mitigation plan.
- Renewal readiness starts early. Forecast renewal likelihood from evidence: outcome progress, health trend, executive sponsorship, adoption, and procurement status. Separate health risk from renewal risk; a healthy account can still churn for commercial reasons.
- Expansion should follow realized value and stable adoption, not precede them.
- Executive engagement is a risk control: if the economic buyer is unknown or disengaged, the renewal is fragile.
Worked example
A health score falls from green to amber after the customer champion leaves and active usage drops 30%. The CSM classifies this as relationship plus adoption risk, not a support problem. Actions: identify the new business owner within two weeks, re-run an adoption workshop, secure an executive sponsor meeting, and document outcome evidence for the renewal. The renewal forecast moves to 'at risk' until a new sponsor confirms the outcome. Reasoning: the score alone is not the plan; the risk category drives actions, and the forecast reflects evidence rather than the prior green status.
Traps
- Using a single metric such as tickets or NPS as the health score.
- Waiting for the renewal window to start risk work.
- Ignoring champion turnover because the account still pays.
- Treating 'monitor' as a mitigation plan.
- Forecasting renewal from relationship feel instead of evidence.