Why NPS alone isn't enough for customer success

Dear Customer Success, we were wrong. We owe you an apology. For too long, the industry has placed the burden of customer churn squarely on your shoulders. But our latest research reveals a hard truth: churn is not a Customer Success problem. Our Q3 2025 Report reveals that issues such as sales overpromising, product gaps, and billing friction significantly impact customer retention – factors far beyond your direct control. And yet, you're often left cleaning up messes you didn't create. It's time we shift the focus to a company-wide approach to retention. If you'd like to review this report for yourself, analyzing 3.2 billion words of customer conversations, please drop me a DM or comment below. #CustomerSuccess #CS #Retention #OpenLetter

Glad to see there's extensive data supporting what I and many other folks in customer-facing roles have been saying for years now: #customerretention is a #crossfunctional issue, and every department has a role to play. You cannot simply put a function (or worse, a single person) into the position of "official customer carer" and expect anything resembling real #customercentricity or #customerledgrowth. #Sales, #Product, #CustomerSuccess, #Support and #Marketing all need to be aligned on goals, KPIs and what the actual customer relationship is. Otherwise, you get missed opportunities, duplicated work, internal competition for credit, and a disjointed customer experience that puts renewals at risk. Need help bringing your customer-facing roles from dysfunctional to cross-functional? Let's talk!

This is spot on 👇 Churn is not just a Customer Success problem, it’s a company-wide game. We’re just the goalie 🥅 I firmly believe there needs to be a Customer Experience mastermind ensuring every part of the journey is seamless and enjoyable. That means: 🪩Sales setting the right expectations 🪩Implementation and onboarding being smooth 🪩Adoption and support driving real value 🪩Billing and finance friction being removed Every touchpoint matters. Messaging should always be aligned, consistent, and customer-centric. From what you say to the platform you say it on. Retention isn’t a department. It’s a shared responsibility and a mindset.

This is an interesting report, as it confirms my strongest belief in terms of customer success: Customer success is not a department, it's a philosophy. Every department in a company needs to put their customer hats on and understand what contributes to a negative experience. CSMs and Customer Support are not the only reasons for churn. True, you can hold CSMs accountable for the churn number, but accountability without empowerment to move things internally because other departments are not also accountable for churn makes it almost impossible to achieve. CSMs don't own the product roadmap. CSMs don't oversell. CSMs don't implement. Everyone in the company should be help accountable for retention. Only by doing this will you get 100% alignment towards customer success.

What makes our report different isn’t just the conclusion—it's the methodology. Unlike traditional surveys or expert interviews, which are limited to specific segments or titles, our analysis is based on raw, unsolicited customer data. No opinions. No anecdotes. Just real signals. We processed over 3.2 billion words from 31 million customer conversations across email, calls, chats, and tickets—paired with telemetry data from dozens of business systems. This isn’t a snapshot. It was a system-wide diagnostic.

😑 <- me, "shocked." The issue isn't the data; it's the fact that companies have it and refuse to address it. Qualitative data -- aka, "voice of the customer" needs to hold as much weight (if not more) as hit-or-miss surveys / CSATs / etc. Believe the CSM's. And then work on the things they've identified / reported. It's that simple.

Can I get an amen from my CS friends on this?! 🙌🏻 #validation Bottom line: customer-centric cultures in which every function recognizes and cares about how they impact retention (& is measured by it) will win. It needs to be an all hands on deck, wholistic approach to delivering a customer experience that makes it a no brainer for our customers to stay.

While it’s reassuring for Customer Success to see data showing churn often originates outside our direct control, I still believe CS must own the customer relationship. Our role is to understand the full picture—whether the issue stems from sales promises, product gaps, or billing friction—and work proactively across teams to resolve it. Insights like this report help us pinpoint root causes and drive broader organizational alignment, but ultimately, I’ll always see retention and customer success as inseparable.

This research really reinforces something we’ve seen across many organizations: churn isn’t the failure of one department, it’s the byproduct of misalignment across the business. If 27% of churn comes from customer experience, 27% from product gaps, and 24% from sales & marketing overpromising, then the answer isn’t to assign blame—it’s to create connective tissue between teams. In operating systems like EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), that alignment is baked into the framework. Here are a few actionable ways CS, Sales & Marketing, and Product can work together under a shared operating rhythm: 1️⃣ Shared Scorecard Metrics – Instead of siloed KPIs, track joint metrics like Net Revenue Retention, Expansion %, and Onboarding Time. When churn is on the scorecard, all teams own it. 2️⃣ Quarterly Rocks (Cross-Functional) – In EOS, Rocks define the big priorities. Imagine Sales, CS, and Product committing to a joint Rock like “reduce onboarding friction by 20%” or “launch a feature bundle that closes the top 3 churn reasons.” That builds accountability. 3️⃣ Level 10 Meetings with Voice of the Customer – CS brings the real customer narrative; Sales adds pre-sale expectations; Product weighs in on roadmap. When this dialogue occurs weekly, gaps close more quickly. 4️⃣ Customer Journey Mapping – Mapping handoffs in detail (from Sales promise → CS onboarding → Product delivery) exposes friction. Rebuilding those touchpoints collaboratively is where the real change happens. Integrating Product Feedback Loops – Too often, product feedback dies in tickets. A disciplined process—CS documents issues in a shared system, Product reviews them in their sprint planning, Sales validates demand with prospects—creates a closed loop. 5️⃣ Retention becomes everyone’s business when the system forces the conversations, not just when CS shouts the loudest. The companies that thrive in 2025 will be the ones that treat churn like an operating system issue, not a departmental issue.

Company-wide focus on retention is super important and so many leaders don’t really understand what the scope of that looks like — often citing their confusion even around why x, y or z roles should be involved, and overly-concerned about having too many people in the room. There are ways to resolve those concerns while still keeping everyone in focus 👥. Building on that, I actually don’t think these stats are surprising at all 📊! So much research about a solid GTM plan shows that poor GTM ➡️ EMPLOYEE churn 🚪 and that alone speaks to the need for uniformity in reaching goals across the entire company. As an aside … these stats show you get over 30% opportunity to resolve retention issues by simply improving the product as far I see it: product gaps, onboarding and implementation can all be largely (not entirely of course) resolved with in-app improvements including features but also UX (ease of use), tours, guides, and other communications that are there when they’re really needed — the right time ⏱️ and the right place 📍 can be everything for success. And when you resolve that, you're also likely resolving a large part of the overall customer experience as well. Thoughts? #CustomerRetention #GTM #ProductMarketing #SaaS #Churn #CustomerExperience #Leadership #Retention  #Onboarding, #UXDesign, #RevenueRetention #PMM #pmf #messaging #leadership