Glossary

Customer Success Glossary

Clear, practical definitions of the metrics, concepts, and strategies that drive customer success. Whether you are building your first CS program or scaling an enterprise team, this glossary is your reference guide.

A

Account Expansion

Account expansion is the strategic process of growing the revenue and footprint within an existing customer account through upsells, cross-sells, increased usage, additional seats, and new department or business unit adoption. It is a coordinated effort between customer success, sales, and product teams.

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Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) is the annualized value of all active subscription contracts. It represents the predictable, recurring revenue a company expects to earn over the next 12 months, excluding one-time fees, professional services, and variable usage charges.

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C

Churn Rate

Churn rate is the percentage of customers or revenue lost during a specific time period. Customer churn (logo churn) counts the number of customers lost, while revenue churn measures the dollar value of lost recurring revenue.

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Cross-sell

A cross-sell occurs when an existing customer purchases an additional, complementary product or module from your company. Unlike upselling (which deepens usage within one product), cross-selling broadens the customer relationship across multiple product lines.

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Customer Advocacy

Customer advocacy is the practice of cultivating customers who actively promote your product to peers, participate in case studies, provide references, speak at events, and leave positive reviews. Advocacy programs formalize and incentivize these behaviors.

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Customer Effort Score (CES)

Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how easy or difficult it is for customers to accomplish a specific task, such as resolving a support issue, completing onboarding, or using a feature. CES is typically captured via a post-interaction survey on a 1-7 scale where lower scores indicate less effort.

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Customer Health Score

A customer health score is a composite metric that aggregates multiple signals — such as product usage, support ticket trends, NPS responses, engagement frequency, and contract status — into a single indicator of account health. Scores are typically displayed as a color or numeric scale.

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Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is the process of visualizing and documenting every touchpoint, interaction, and experience a customer has with your company from initial awareness through long-term advocacy. Journey maps identify key milestones, emotional states, pain points, and opportunities for improvement at each stage of the lifecycle.

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Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account throughout their entire relationship. It is typically calculated as average revenue per account multiplied by average customer lifespan, minus the cost of serving that customer.

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Customer Onboarding

Customer onboarding is the structured process of guiding new customers from initial purchase to successfully using a product and achieving their first value milestone. It encompasses account setup, training, data migration, integration configuration, and success plan creation.

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Customer Retention Rate

Customer retention rate measures the percentage of customers a company retains over a specific period. It is calculated by taking the number of customers at the end of a period, subtracting new customers acquired during that period, and dividing by the number of customers at the start of the period.

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Customer Risk Assessment

Customer risk assessment is the process of evaluating and scoring the likelihood that a customer will churn, downgrade, or fail to renew. It combines quantitative signals (usage decline, support ticket spikes, payment delays) with qualitative signals (executive sponsor changes, competitive evaluations, negative sentiment) to produce an overall risk profile.

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Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) measures how satisfied customers are with a specific interaction, feature, or overall experience. It is typically captured via a short survey asking customers to rate their satisfaction on a 1-5 scale, with results expressed as the percentage of satisfied responses (4 and 5).

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Customer Segmentation

Customer segmentation is the practice of dividing a customer base into distinct groups based on shared characteristics such as ARR tier, industry, lifecycle stage, health score, product usage patterns, or strategic value. Segmentation enables differentiated service models and resource allocation.

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Customer Success Manager (CSM)

A Customer Success Manager (CSM) is a professional responsible for ensuring customers achieve their desired outcomes while using a product or service. CSMs serve as the primary point of contact for assigned accounts, managing onboarding, adoption, renewals, and expansion throughout the customer lifecycle.

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E

Escalation Management

Escalation management is the structured process of identifying, prioritizing, and resolving critical customer issues that exceed the scope of standard support or CSM intervention. It involves defined escalation paths, severity levels, response time SLAs, and cross-functional coordination between CS, support, engineering, and leadership.

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Executive Business Review (EBR)

An Executive Business Review (EBR) is a strategic meeting between your company's leadership and a customer's executive stakeholders, focused on long-term partnership value, strategic alignment, and future roadmap. Unlike QBRs which are operational, EBRs are high-level discussions about business outcomes, industry trends, and mutual growth opportunities.

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Expansion Revenue

Expansion revenue is the additional recurring revenue generated from existing customers through upsells (higher-tier plans), cross-sells (additional products), and increased usage or seat count. It is the primary driver of net revenue retention above 100%.

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F

Feature Adoption Rate

Feature adoption rate measures the percentage of customers or users who actively use a specific product feature within a given time period. It is calculated by dividing the number of users who have used a feature by the total number of users who have access to it.

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G

Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)

Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) measures the percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a period, excluding any expansion revenue. GRR only accounts for contractions and churn, so it can never exceed 100%.

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L

Logo Churn

Logo churn (also called customer churn or logo attrition) measures the number or percentage of customer accounts that cancel or fail to renew their subscription during a given period. Unlike revenue churn, logo churn treats every lost customer equally regardless of their contract value.

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M

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the predictable revenue a company expects to earn each month from active subscriptions. MRR is calculated by summing the monthly-normalized value of all recurring charges across the customer base.

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Multi-threading

Multi-threading is the practice of building relationships with multiple stakeholders across different roles and levels within a customer organization, rather than relying on a single point of contact. A well-multi-threaded account has connections spanning end users, managers, executives, and cross-functional influencers.

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N

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer loyalty metric that measures how likely customers are to recommend your product to others on a 0-10 scale. Respondents are classified as Promoters (9-10), Passives (7-8), or Detractors (0-6), and NPS is calculated as the percentage of Promoters minus the percentage of Detractors.

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Net Revenue Retention (NRR)

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) measures the percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a given period, accounting for expansions, contractions, and churn. An NRR above 100% means existing customers are generating more revenue than they were at the start of the period.

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P

Playbook

A customer success playbook is a standardized, repeatable set of actions and touchpoints designed to guide CSMs through specific customer scenarios. Playbooks codify best practices for common situations such as onboarding, renewal preparation, churn risk mitigation, escalation handling, and expansion conversations.

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Product Adoption

Product adoption measures the extent to which customers are actively using your product's core features and integrating it into their daily workflows. It encompasses breadth of adoption (how many features are used), depth of adoption (how intensively features are used), and frequency of use across the customer organization.

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Q

Quarterly Business Review (QBR)

A Quarterly Business Review (QBR) is a structured meeting between a customer success team and a customer's key stakeholders, held every quarter. QBRs review progress against goals, demonstrate value delivered, address challenges, and align on priorities for the upcoming quarter.

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R

Renewal Rate

Renewal rate is the percentage of customers or revenue that successfully renews at the end of their contract term. Customer renewal rate counts the number of accounts that renew, while revenue renewal rate measures the dollar value of renewed contracts relative to the total eligible for renewal.

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Revenue Churn

Revenue churn measures the recurring revenue lost from existing customers during a specific period due to cancellations, downgrades, and contractions. It is typically expressed as a percentage of starting MRR or ARR. Net revenue churn also factors in expansion revenue.

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T

Time to Value (TTV)

Time to Value (TTV) measures the duration between a customer's initial purchase or sign-up and the moment they first realize meaningful value from the product. TTV is typically measured in days and tracked against defined value milestones specific to each product.

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U

Upsell

An upsell occurs when an existing customer upgrades to a higher-tier plan, adds more seats or capacity, or purchases premium features within the same product line. Upselling increases the contract value by expanding the customer's investment in capabilities they are already using.

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V

Voice of the Customer (VoC)

Voice of the Customer (VoC) is a systematic approach to capturing, analyzing, and acting on customer feedback from multiple channels — including surveys, support tickets, product reviews, social media, sales calls, and CSM interactions. VoC programs aggregate qualitative and quantitative signals to understand customer needs, expectations, and pain points.

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See these metrics in action across our platform features, explore real-world use cases, or check our customer success blog for deeper insights.

“Understanding customer success metrics is the foundation of every high-performing CS team — from churn rate to NRR, these numbers tell the story of your customer relationships.”
— AmplifyCS

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