---
name: customer-success-plan
description: Use when asked to write or maintain a customer success plan — an ongoing plan for a specific customer's outcomes after onboarding — distinct from [[customer-onboarding]], which covers only the initial ramp to first value.
---

# Customer Success Plan

A customer success plan is an ongoing plan for a specific customer's
outcomes for as long as the relationship lasts, picking up where
[[customer-onboarding]] leaves off. Where onboarding gets a customer to
first value, a success plan is what keeps them getting value —
tracking their goals, checking in on progress, and catching problems
early enough to actually fix them.

## Key components

- **The customer's stated goals** — what success actually looks like in
  the customer's own words and terms, captured directly from them
  rather than inferred or assumed by the vendor.
- **A regular check-in cadence** — a defined rhythm (monthly,
  quarterly, aligned to the customer's own business cycle) for
  reviewing progress against those goals, rather than only talking when
  something has gone wrong or renewal is approaching.
- **Health indicators tracked over time** — usage trends, support
  ticket patterns, engagement of key stakeholders, and similar signals
  tracked as a trend, not just checked once, so a decline is visible
  before it becomes a crisis.
- **An escalation path** — a defined process for what happens when
  health indicators show the relationship is at risk: who gets
  involved, at what threshold, and with what authority to intervene.

## Relation to renewal

A success plan that's actually been followed — goals tracked, check-ins
held, risks caught early — makes the renewal conversation close to a
formality: both sides already know where things stand and whether value
was delivered. A renewal that instead opens as a fresh negotiation,
with the vendor scrambling to reconstruct what the customer even wanted
in the first place, is usually a sign the success plan existed on paper
only, or didn't exist at all.

## Common pitfalls

- **Success defined by the vendor's own metrics** — measuring the
  relationship purely by usage of the vendor's product, rather than by
  whether the customer actually achieved what they said they wanted,
  can show a "healthy" account that the customer nonetheless doesn't
  renew.
- **Written once at kickoff and never revisited** — a plan drafted
  during onboarding and left untouched stops reflecting the customer's
  goals as their business, priorities, or stakeholders change.
- **Risk signals noticed too late** — checking health indicators only
  right before a renewal date, instead of tracking them continuously,
  means a decline is spotted only after there's no longer time to
  intervene.
- **No escalation path** — health indicators that decline with no
  defined process for who acts on them just sit in a dashboard while
  the relationship quietly deteriorates.
- **One plan template applied to every customer** — treating a small
  self-serve account and a large strategic account identically ignores
  that they need very different check-in cadences and escalation
  thresholds.

## Learn more

- [[customer-onboarding]] for the initial ramp a success plan picks up
  from.
- [[churn-analysis]] for understanding what happens when a success plan
  fails to catch risk in time.
- [[net-promoter-score]] for one common health indicator tracked as
  part of an ongoing success plan.
- [[customer-journey-map]] for placing the success-plan phase within the
  customer's full relationship with the vendor.