that “green” account might be churning...

I read recently about a CSM who lost an enterprise customer. They found out via a one-line email, two weeks before renewal. The kicker? The account was marked "green" in the CRM because the automated health score said so.

This isn't just an unfortunate anecdote; it's a symptom of a dangerous trend in Customer Success: over-reliance on automated metrics at the expense of genuine partnership and commercial awareness.

Several problems are laid bare here:

Vendor, Not Partner

If an enterprise customer cancels with a one-line email, you weren't their partner. You were just another vendor. A true partner relationship involves deeper communication; they would have picked up the phone, given a warning, or engaged in a discussion long before sending a termination notice.

Assume Risk Until Proven Green

Accounts without a strong Executive Buyer relationship (someone who can and will defend your solution internally, especially to the CFO) are yellow, if not red, by default. Period. In today's economy, where no budget is truly safe, a pessimistic forecast grounded in real relationships is far more valuable than an optimistic one based on usage data alone. This Executive Buyer connection must be part of your health score for strategic accounts.

Rethink the CSM Role (If This is Normal)

The CSM thought the account was safe based on a proxy metric and never saw the cancellation coming. If this scenario feels familiar, it’s time to challenge the standards for your CSM team. We need to hold enterprise CSMs and their leaders accountable for more than just activity… specifically, the ability to accurately forecast, just like Sales.

If Customer Success survives and thrives as a strategic function, it will be because it leans into commercial skill building. Relying solely on automated scores and avoiding commercial realities pushes CS towards being a free professional service or support function. There's nothing inherently wrong with services, but let's call it what it is and accept the margin implications, rather than pretending it's strategic success when churn happens unexpectedly.

Scaling with AI? Sure, it's important. But mastering the fundamentals of deep customer relationships, executive alignment, and commercial forecasting is arguably more impactful right now. Don't chase shiny AI objects before fixing the foundational issues revealed by that one-line cancellation email.

What are you doing to connect customer data with the deep relationships and commercial skills needed to truly retain and grow customers in 2025?

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