Customer Success Playbooks

Overview

Customer Success is not reactive support — it is proactive value delivery that drives retention and expansion. This skill builds the CS operating system: Desired Outcome mapping (Lincoln Murphy), health scoring with leading indicators (Gainsight), CSQL identification for expansion, and playbooks per customer lifecycle stage.

When to Use

• "Build our customer success function"
• "Design customer onboarding"
• "Create a health score model"
• "Set up expansion plays"
• "Build QBR templates"
• "Customer comms during outage / incident"
• "CS crisis FAQ for support"
• "Retention crisis — churn wave response"

Authoritative Foundations

• Lincoln Murphy — Desired Outcome framework. Every customer has a Required Outcome and an Appropriate Experience. Success is their outcome, not your feature usage. The Success Gap: customers using the product correctly but still failing.
• Nick Mehta / Gainsight — CS ops at scale: health scores, lifecycle stages, digital-first delivery. Operational layer on Murphy's strategy. → references/lincoln-murphy-customer-success.md
• Allison Pickens — company-wide Customer Success. Treat retention and value delivery as a cross-functional operating model, not a CSM-only responsibility. Align post-sales roles around customer outcomes and use product signals to prioritize human intervention without confusing activity with value.
• Winning by Design SPICED — Post-sale lifecycle: onboarding → adoption → value realization → expansion → renewal.

Step-by-Step Process

Phase 1: Map the Customer Journey

Define stages: Onboarding → Activation (Day 1-7, aha moment) → Habit Formation (Week 2-6, usage signals) → Indispensability (Month 2-6, workflow integration) → Expansion → Renewal. Each stage has a milestone metric.

Phase 2: Build Health Scoring

Score 0-100: product usage (0-40), engagement depth (0-30), relationship health (0-30). Red (<50): immediate CSM outreach. Yellow (50-74): automated nurture. Green (75+): expansion targeting.

Phase 3: Define CSQLs (Customer Success Qualified Leads)

Behavioral signals of expansion readiness: usage nearing plan limits, feature adoption in new department, new stakeholders in meetings, "can we do X?" questions, willingness to be a reference.

Phase 4: Build Playbooks per Stage

• Onboarding play: time-to-first-value target, guided setup, success milestone
• Adoption play: usage monitoring, best practice sharing, feature education
• Expansion play: triggered by CSQLs, framed as "logical next step" not upsell
• Risk play: early warning signals, intervention cadence, executive alignment
• Renewal play: value review, ROI documentation, future roadmap alignment

Phase 5: Incident & Crisis Customer Comms

Canonical: references/crisis-management-playbook.md · Pattern 33 · Executive home: gtm-leadership

Role	CS responsibility
CS captain	Own customer email to affected segment; ticket macros
CSMs	Proactive outreach to red health accounts during outage
Support	Single FAQ source — skills/management-leadership/gtm-leadership/templates/crisis-faq-for-support.md

Sequence: Internal memo → holding statement / status page → affected customer email → FAQ for sales/support.

ACKNOWLEDGE → OWN → ACT → FOLLOW UP in all customer-facing copy. Legal review Sev 3+ before admitting data impact.

Post-incident: Retention play for accounts that churn-threatened; link churn-prevention and Retention stage in references/gtm-lifecycle-stages.md.

Cross-links: customer-onboarding (trust rebuild) · references/gtm-data-exchange-playbook.md (breach path)

Output Format

CS playbook with journey map, health score model, CSQL definitions, and stage-specific play templates.

Quality Check

Before delivering, verify:

• All required sections are complete
• Output matches the user's stated need
• Named frameworks are cited for key recommendations
• No vague claims — every recommendation has a specific action
• Deliverable is ready for operational use, not just conceptual

Common Pitfalls

1. Measuring activity, not outcomes — logins are not value. Map customer Desired Outcomes and measure progress toward them.
2. CS as firefighting — if CSMs only engage when something is wrong, they are reactive support, not customer success.
3. No expansion motion — CS owns the relationship. If expansion lives only in Sales, the customer gets handed off at the worst moment.
4. One-size health score — different segments need different health models. Enterprise cares about executive engagement; SMB cares about time-to-value.

Execution Artifacts

• references/framework-notes.md — named frameworks, citation anchors, and operating assumptions
• templates/output-template.md — copy-paste deliverable structure for the user
• scripts/check-output.py — local checklist validator for required sections This skill includes lightweight artifacts the agent can load on demand:
• references/lincoln-murphy-customer-success.md — Desired Outcome, Success Gap, Gainsight ops (repo root) Canonical lifecycle (repo root): references/gtm-lifecycle-stages.md (Engagement, Retention) · references/lifecycle-metrics-by-stage.md · skills/analytics/gtm-metrics/templates/stage-health-scorecard.md Crisis comms: references/crisis-management-playbook.md · skills/management-leadership/gtm-leadership/templates/crisis-customer-email.md · crisis-faq-for-support.md Use the artifacts when the user asks for an implementation-ready deliverable, a repeatable workflow, or a quality check rather than generic advice.

Implementation Depth

Use this section when the user asks for a finished asset, not a high-level explanation.

Diagnostic Questions

1. What is the primary motion: founder-led, sales-led, product-led, partner-led, or lifecycle-led?
2. Which ICP tier is the output for: small business, mid-market, enterprise, or mixed?
3. What proof is available today: customer stories, usage data, third-party validation, screenshots, or none?
4. What system will execute the work: CRM, sequencer, warehouse, support desk, product analytics, or manual workflow?
5. What decision will the user make from this output: launch, prioritize, route, rewrite, score, coach, or measure?

Framework Application

Map the recommendation explicitly to the named frameworks in this skill:

• Lincoln Murphy Desired Outcome: apply only the part that directly improves the requested deliverable.
• Gainsight CS Index: apply only the part that directly improves the requested deliverable.
• Winning by Design SPICED Post-Sale: apply only the part that directly improves the requested deliverable.
• Allison Pickens company-wide and product-driven CS: apply only the part that directly improves the requested deliverable.

Deliverable Standard

A strong output from this skill includes:

• A crisp diagnosis of the current situation
• A recommended path with tradeoffs, not a generic list
• A concrete artifact the user can use immediately: table, script, checklist, scorecard, sequence, dashboard spec, or implementation plan
• A measurement plan with leading and lagging indicators
• Risks and edge cases called out before execution

Adaptation Rules

• For small business: reduce complexity, shorten time-to-value, and prioritize owner/operator clarity.
• For mid-market: include workflow ownership, handoffs, integrations, and enablement assets.
• For enterprise: include governance, risk, procurement, stakeholder mapping, and proof requirements.

Related Skills

• gtm-leadership: Executive war room and crisis severity (canonical)
• customer-marketing: Public reputation, G2/TR during incidents
• customer-onboarding: Post-incident trust and activation recovery
• churn-prevention: Early warning detection and re-engagement
• expansion-selling: Upsell and cross-sell motions
• qbr-planning: Quarterly business review structure