cco-review

---
name: cco-review
description: Use when gross retention is slipping, before approving CS headcount, or when deciding which customer segments to keep, downgrade, or fire.
category: C-Level Advisory
version: 1.0.0
tools: []
---

# CCO Review — Customer Retention Interrogation

Pressure-test any plan touching customer retention, segmentation, or CS team sizing/hiring with six forcing questions.

## When to run

Before any board narrative that cites a retention number; before approving CS headcount expansion; before re-segmenting the customer base or changing tier definitions; before launching a customer marketing or advocacy program; before a major CS hire (CSM, AM, Implementation, Customer Marketing); when NRR looks great but CSMs report rising churn complaints; or before adding an AM role separate from CSM.

## The six questions

1. **What's the GROSS retention rate — not NRR?** NRR can hide a leaky bucket behind expansion. Healthy GRR is ≥90% at growth stage and ≥95% at scale; if GRR is under 85% while NRR is over 100%, the product is failing 15%+ of customers and expansion is masking it.
2. **What's the #1 reason customers leave?** Use a seven-category taxonomy — product fit, competitor loss, no value realized, pricing, champion left, company event, tactical failure. Preventable churn is product fit + no value realized + tactical failure: over 50% preventable means CS has clear leverage; under 30% means churn is structural (ICP, market, competition).
3. **What's the median time-to-value by segment?** Long TTV in a low tier signals ICP misfit (downgrade or kill); long TTV in a high tier signals broken onboarding (fix the Implementation Manager handoff). TTV is a leading indicator of GRR.
4. **Which customer would you fire today?** An answer of "none" means segmentation is broken — some accounts cost more than they earn (support cost over 50% of ARR plus poor ICP fit). Surface the kill list and route each candidate to one of three paths: non-renewal, downgrade to tech-touch, or raise price to cost-recover.
5. **What's the ARR-per-CSM ratio, and is the model pooled or named?** The wrong model wastes capacity: strategic accounts run named with an executive sponsor at $300K-$1M ARR/CSM; enterprise runs named at $500K-$2M; mid-market runs pooled at $2M-$5M; SMB runs tech-touch above $5M. Size the team to the segment's actual model.
6. **Is CS in the comp plan, and how does it differ from Sales comp?** Misalignment is the leading indicator of CS failure: a typical CS comp split is 70/30 base/variable, with variable weighted roughly 50% gross retention, 30% net retention, 20% activity. Don't comp CSMs on NPS (they'll game it) and don't comp them like Sales (they'll sell instead of serve).

## Output structure

State the decision in one sentence (retention, segmentation, coverage, or next hire), then report: GRR versus vanity NRR, the top churn driver and its share, and preventable-churn percentage; if applicable, tier distribution, kill-list size (count and % of ARR), and upgrade candidates; if applicable, current versus required CSM headcount now and at 12 months, annual cost, and whether the manager-span trigger has fired; if applicable, the next hire and the specific customer outcome it unblocks. Close with a verdict — SHIP, SHARPEN, or BLOCK — and three concrete next steps.

## Related reviews

Route churn rooted in product fit or unrealized value to the product reviewer; route expansion math or comp alignment questions to the revenue reviewer; route CS cost commitments to the finance reviewer; route CS hiring, comp, and ladder questions to the people reviewer. Freeze multi-year CS comp-plan changes for review before signing.