Customer Success Glossary

Activation Event · Aha Moment · Activated

The point at which a new customer first experiences the core value of the product, often a specific milestone action that predicts long-term retention.

Product Adoption · Feature Adoption · Adoption Rate

The degree to which customers actually use a product and its features in their regular workflow. Sustained adoption is the foundation of retention and expansion.

ARR · MRR · Annual Recurring Revenue

The normalized recurring revenue a subscription business earns, expressed annually (ARR) or monthly (MRR). It is the denominator under almost every other SaaS metric.

Risk Account · Red Account · Churn Risk

A customer showing signals that they may churn or downgrade, flagged early enough that a CSM can intervene before the renewal.

Cross-selling · Multi-product Expansion

Selling an existing customer an additional, complementary product or module beyond the one they originally bought. A path to expansion revenue and stickier accounts.

Customer 360 · 360 View · Account 360

A unified view of everything known about a customer, conversations, product usage, billing, contracts, and support, assembled in one place.

CAC · Acquisition Cost · Cost to Acquire

The fully loaded cost of winning a new customer, including sales and marketing spend. Paired with lifetime value to judge growth efficiency.

Churn · Logo Churn · Gross Churn

The rate at which customers stop paying for a product over a given period. Logo churn counts accounts lost; gross revenue churn counts the recurring revenue lost.

Health Score · Account Health · Customer Health

A composite score that summarizes how likely a customer is to renew, churn, or expand, by combining usage, engagement, sentiment, and support signals into a single number.

LTV · CLV · CLTV

The total gross profit a business expects to earn from a customer over the entire relationship. Compared against acquisition cost to judge whether growth is economical.

CSAT · Satisfaction Score

A metric capturing how satisfied a customer was with a specific interaction or the product overall, usually collected right after a touchpoint like a support ticket.

CSM · Customer Success · Account Manager

The person responsible for a customer realizing value, staying retained, and growing. The CSM owns the relationship between onboarding and renewal.

Engagement · Product Engagement Score · Usage Score

A composite measure of how actively a customer uses a product, combining frequency, breadth, and depth of usage into a single trackable number.

Expansion · Expansion ARR · Account Expansion

Additional recurring revenue earned from existing customers through upsell, cross-sell, or seat growth. It is the engine behind net revenue retention above 100%.

GRR · Gross Dollar Retention

The percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers, excluding any expansion. It can never exceed 100% and represents the true floor of your retention.

NPS · Net Promoter

A loyalty metric based on one question, how likely a customer is to recommend you, scored from -100 to +100. A widely used but lagging gauge of sentiment.

NRR · Net Dollar Retention · NDR

The percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a period, including expansion and contraction, but excluding new customers. Above 100% means the base grows on its own.

Customer Onboarding · Implementation · Time to First Value Motion

The process of getting a new customer set up, trained, and to their first meaningful outcome. The single biggest lever on long-term retention.

Success Playbook · CS Playbook · Engagement Playbook

A predefined, repeatable set of steps a customer success team runs in response to a specific situation, such as an at-risk account or a new onboarding.

PQA · Product Qualified Lead · PQL

An account (or user) whose product usage signals they are ready to buy, upgrade, or expand. The product-led successor to the marketing-qualified lead.

QBR · Business Review · EBR

A recurring structured meeting between a vendor and a customer to review value delivered, align on goals, and plan ahead. A key retention and expansion touchpoint.

Contract Renewal · Renewal Rate

The point at which a customer decides whether to continue their subscription for another term. Renewal rate is the share of up-for-renewal revenue (or logos) that stays.

Sentiment · Customer Sentiment · Tone Analysis

Automatically reading the tone of customer communications, support tickets, emails, and meeting notes, to gauge how a customer feels about the product and relationship.

Signals · Customer Signal · Buying Signal

A discrete, observable event or change that says something about an account, such as a usage drop, a champion leaving, or a negative support thread.

DAU/MAU · Stickiness Ratio · DAU to MAU

How habitual product usage is, most commonly measured as the ratio of daily active users to monthly active users. Higher stickiness means deeper reliance on the product.

TTV · Time to First Value · TTFV

How long it takes a new customer to reach their first meaningful outcome with the product. Shorter time to value strongly predicts retention.

Upselling · Tier Upgrade · Plan Upgrade

Selling an existing customer a higher tier, larger plan, or more capacity of the product they already buy. A core source of expansion revenue.