How To Improve Retention with Proactive Risk Management

Parul Bhandari (Startup Advisor, CustomerXSuccess),  Diane Gordon (Growth-Stage Advisor, CustomerGrowth Consulting), Seth Dovev (VP CS Syncro, former ZoomInfo) left to right 

I had the pleasure of joining a powerhouse panel on proactive risk management in Customer Success. And more specifically, how we can prevent churn before it ever starts. If you are a visual learner, you can scroll down to watch the full session on YouTube.

Otherwise, here’s a quick download of the insights we shared and the lessons I left the (virtual) room thinking about.

Start with the Big Lesson: Don’t Just Fight Fires

When asked what advice I’d give myself five years ago, my answer was simple:

“Don’t just fight fires, build the fire department.”

That mindset shift is everything. In Customer Success, we’re often pulled into reactive motions, putting out fires, chasing down escalations, and hopping on emergency calls. But if we’re ever going to scale CS effectively, we have to shift from heroics to systems. That means investing in playbooks, automating early warnings, and operationalizing customer value. This all ensures that the team isn’t constantly running around with hoses, but proactively making sure nothing ignites in the first place.

Early Warnings Only Matter If You Act on Them

During the webinar, I shared a bit about how we build systems to assess and mitigate risk at scale. One key takeaway: Early warning signals are only useful if they drive real action.

Sure, you’ve got your usage data, NPS, and sentiment trackers but what happens when a customer looks “green” across all of them and then still churns?

It’s painful. And it’s why we need to go deeper. In my experience, the best risk indicators fall into three buckets:

• Value & adoption gaps: Is the customer actually achieving what they signed up for?

• Performance or reliability issues: Is the tech doing what it’s supposed to?

• Commercial risk: Are we aligned with the buyer’s priorities and budget reality?

  
  

If you can’t pinpoint which of those is triggering risk, your team will struggle to respond effectively.

Diane and Parul Dropped Gold

I’ve got to give a huge shoutout to my fellow panelists, Diane Gordon and Parul Bhandari, who each brought frameworks I’m already thinking about applying with my team.

Diane emphasized the need to align every stage of the customer journey with two lenses: Do they feel valued? And are they receiving value? 

She reminded us that a “great experience” isn’t enough. Customers will still churn if they don’t see business results. That really hit home. CS leaders should be mapping adoption directly to customer-defined outcomes, not just to our own internal milestones.

Parul introduced her H.E.L.P. Framework, which I absolutely loved:

• Health scores that actually predict risk

• Escalations (both positive and negative) that are clearly defined

• Lagging indicators that are still useful if balanced properly

• Performance expectations mapped out across the customer’s maturity curve

  
  

Her point about stakeholder changes being one of the biggest overlooked risk signals? Nailed it. Even healthy accounts can go sideways if a new buyer walks in the door with different priorities.

Tools That Help Us Be Better

I’d be remiss not to mention the incredible walkthrough from Nigel Hammond, founder of Foresight. His platform helps teams measure customer value through the customer’s own lens, not just our internal usage data.

Foresight’s value assessments and stakeholder-level insights give teams a way to understand:

• Where value is or isn’t being realized

• What specific business outcomes customers are prioritizing

• What actions to take at both the account and organizational level

  
  

It’s the kind of tool that aligns perfectly with the fire department philosophy I mentioned earlier, giving CS teams proactive signals they can act on before risk turns into churn.

Final Thoughts

This conversation reinforced what I’ve been thinking about since stepping into my new role at Synchro: Customer Success isn’t about reacting faster but designing smarter. Risk is inevitable, but chaos doesn’t have to be.

The key is this:

Build systems that catch signals early, define clear escalation paths, and anchor everything to the outcomes that matter most to your customer.

Big thanks to Jared for organizing the event, and to CS Angel and Foresight for making it happen. If you missed the live session, I highly recommend connecting with the speakers on LinkedIn. This was one of those webinars where the chat was just as rich as the content.

Watch the full session on YouTube and be sure to share it with anyone else who might find this content useful.

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