25 Customer Success OKRs for Adoption, Retention, Expansion, and Time-to-Value

Customer success (CS) involves much more than just responding to support tickets and handling renewals. Customer success teams work to enable clients achieve significant business results, accelerate product adoption, minimize churn rates, and find avenues for continual growth. One of the most efficient ways of integrating these initiatives into an organization’s strategy is by using customer success OKRs.

If you’re looking for practical customer success OKR examples, this guide presents measurable objectives and Key Results that may be customized throughout the customer journey. Whether you are aiming at onboarding, product adoption, retention, customer health, or growth, these examples will allow the CS team’s OKRs to go from being just a means of tracking actions to making a measurable impact on business.

How Customer Success OKRs Differ from Customer-Health KPIs

The concepts of customer success OKRs and customer-health KPIs are often discussed as if they were the same, but they are different. Health indicators measure the operational performance of customers and their current behaviors, while OKRs help improve their future behaviors and performance.

Health score, churn, and NRR as ongoing metrics

Customer health score, churn, NRR, renewal rate, and customer lifetime value, among others, represent some of the KPIs that customer success leaders can use to monitor customer health. However, these KPIs cannot answer the question of how to improve results in the future.

Using OKRs to change customer behavior or operating performance

OKRs are not KPIs because they are focused on achieving measurable results. For instance, an OKR can focus on improving the use of key features instead of simply monitoring the usage of a product. Instead of measuring churn rate by itself, customer adoption OKRs focus on identifying risks earlier or improving the onboarding process.

Shared ownership across CS, product, and sales

Many customer results can be produced through collaboration with different departments. A product team can impact how customers adopt certain features, the sales team can form customer expectations during the sale, and the customer success managers can lead onboarding and the customer journey. The best CS team OKRs will take this collaboration into account and promote accountability across different departments.

Five Customer Success OKRs for Onboarding and Time-to-Value

A successful onboarding process is the root of effective customer relationship building. Successful onboarding OKRs allow customers to perceive the value earlier, decrease implementation times, and increase confidence during the crucial stages of the journey.

Faster implementation

Objective: Speed up customer process implementation without losing quality.

Key Results:

• Decrease average implementation period by 20%.

• Cover 90% of implementation processes within deadlines.

• Decrease delays during implementation caused by internal processes.

• Improve customer satisfaction regarding the process.

Onboarding completion

Objective: Increase the number of completed formalized onboarding processes.

Key Results:

• Achieve a 95% success rate for the completed onboarding process.

• Increase the number of participants in onboarding sessions.

• Complete all necessary onboarding stages within the first month.

• Decrease the number of incomplete onboarding processes by 25%.

First-value milestone

Objective: Help clients reach their first measurable outcome faster.

Key Results:

• Reduce time needed to achieve the first measurable outcome by 25%.

• Increase the number of clients who reach their success milestone within 30 days.

• Track the first success milestones for every new account.

• Improve clients’ confidence levels after onboarding.

Customer readiness

Objective: Prepare customers for sustainable product success.

Key Results:

• Ensure that successful plans are implemented for all key customers.

• Train the main customer administrators before implementation is concluded.

• Achieve a 20% increase in consumer readiness assessment scores.

• Enhance adoption preparedness before product introduction.

Handoff quality

Objective: Improve the transition from sales to customer success.

Key Results:

• Hold official transfer meetings with 100% of new clients.

• Eliminate onboarding issues due to incomplete sales details.

• Increase customer satisfaction regarding the transfer process.

• Make sure that customer success managers are supplied with complete implementation documents before commencing the process.

Five Customer Success OKRs for Adoption and Engagement

The onboarding experience is the first step of the entire customer success journey. The ongoing success of the client is determined by continued product usage, ongoing use of important product features, and increasing customer usage throughout their organizations. Therefore, successful customer adoption of OKRs concentrates on providing better product experience instead of only using standard usage metrics.

Core-feature adoption

Objective: Introduce and increase usage of the most important features of the product.

Key Results:

• Increase the usage of core features by 20%.

• Achieve 90% usage of at least 3 main features by new customers.

• Decrease the number of customers who are using only minimal functionalities of the product.

• Conduct quarterly adoption assessments of key customers.

Active-user depth

Objective: To encourage the usage of the product among the existing accounts.

Key Results:

• Increasing the number of active users by 15% on a weekly basis.

• Increasing the average usage of features per user.

• Improving the completion of key workflows.

• Decreasing inactive users in strategic accounts by 20%.

Account engagement

Objective: To contribute to the continuing engagement of the stakeholders of the customers.

Key Results:

• Performing quarterly business reviews (QBRs) for 95% of strategic accounts.

• Boosting participation in customer success meetings by 20%.

• Enhancing customer engagement metrics.

• Increase the number of participants in customer training and education programs.

Multi-team usage

Objective: To convince the clients to use the product more efficiently while collaborating with various departments.

Key Results:

• Ensuring a 25% increase in the accounts enjoying the product from different departments.

• Identifying different growth areas in every contact.

• Increasing the number of champions per department.

• Improving cross-functional use of the product by the business customers.

Adoption of newly launched capabilities

Objective: To promote the acceptance of product innovations.

Key Results:

• Obtain 60% acceptance of innovations within 3 months after the introduction of developments.

• Perform customer education campaigns for all important feature releases.

• Inform customers about new functions via webinars and product news.

• Receive feedback from consumers after product launches.

Five Customer Success OKRs for Retention and Customer Health

Customer retention depends on identifying risks early, ensuring that interactions with customers are always fruitful, and achieving successful business results over time. The customer retention OKRs are necessary for customer success teams to minimize avoidable attrition and to develop partnerships for the future period.

Gross retention

Objective: Improve gross customer retention within the portfolio.

Key Results:

• Increase the gross retention rate by 5%.

• Increase renewal rates among the key clients.

• Minimize the number of customers leaving the market in the most important segments.

• Conduct planning for the renewal at least 120 days before the end of any contracts.

Risk detection

Objective: Define the customer risks before they become an issue for renewal.

Key Results:

• Start health score reviews for all accounts under management every month.

• Detect at-risk customers at least 90 days before the renewal process takes place.

• Reduce the number of unresolved high-risk accounts by 25%.

• Increase the number of proactive replies to the clients whose loyalty is weakening.

Save-plan effectiveness

Objective: Increase the successful recovery of customers in the risk zone.

Key Results:

• Create documented success plans for all high-risk clients.

• Increase the success of save-plans by 20%.

• Minimize preventable churn among managed accounts.

• Conduct executive reviews of critical renewal risks.

Executive sponsorship

Objective: Enhance the relationship of executives with strategic customers.

Key Results:

• Register executive sponsorship for each enterprise account.

• Conduct twice-a-year executive business reviews.

• Increase the involvement of executives in the renewal process.

• Boost the confidence of clients in planning long-term partnerships.

Reduction in preventable churn

Objective: Mitigate any losses due to manageable problems.

Key Results:

• To decrease the instances of preventable churn by 20%.

• Tackle recurring onboarding and adoption problems before renewal.

• Increase the customer health indexes of key accounts.

• Boost the level of customer satisfaction with the process of ongoing success management.

Five Customer Success OKRs for Support and Service Delivery

Provision of excellent support to customers is crucial to the success of customers. However, settling issues is only a part of the story. Essentially, effective usage of customer success OKRs can lead to better customer experience through reducing the efforts required, preventing the same issues from occurring repeatedly, and enabling customers to handle issues with less difficulty.

Resolution time

Objective: To deal with requests from customers more quickly.

Key Results:

• Cut the average time of resolution down by 25%.

• Dealing with 90% of cases is done within the set service-level agreements (SLA).

• Reduce the backlog of open support tickets by 20%.

• Ensure that clients are happy with the resolution of their cases.

First-contact resolution

Objective: To increase the number of requests solved at first contact.

Key Results:

• Make the level of first-contact resolution higher by 15%.

• Lower the number of repeated calls by customers.

• Make sure that all agents acquire relevant knowledge of the products.

• Improve customer confidence in initial support interactions.

Escalation reduction

Objective: To lower the number of unnecessary escalations.

Key Results:

• Cut down on Tier 2 and Tier 3 levels of escalations by 20%.

• Pinpoint 5 main reasons for escalations that happen on a regular basis.

• Improve frontline assistance.

• Conduct monthly reviews of escalated cases.

Knowledge-base deflection

Objective: To help customers tackle frequent challenges via self-service channels.

Key Results:

• Enhance the utilization of the knowledge base by 30%.

• Reduce recurring assistance queries by 20%.

• Release new support articles addressing frequently asked questions.

• Make customers more satisfied with self-service capabilities.

Customer-effort reduction

Objective: Make it easier for customers to complete common tasks and resolve problems.

Key Results:

• Decrease Customer Effort Score (CES) by 15%.

• Make the top 5 customer operational procedures identified through reviews simpler.

• Enhance customers’ satisfaction with customer service.

• Reduce recurring contact due to unresolved issues.

Five Customer Success OKRs for Expansion and Advocacy

The concept of customer success is not just an extension of renewing contracts. Strong relationships with customers can create possibilities for growth in business accounts, opportunities for the company to develop new products and services, referrals from customers, and advocacy. The goals of customer success OKRs will support the company in the process of obtaining more value for customers and building long-lasting relationships with clients.

Expansion readiness

Objective: To enlighten customers before breaking into new markets.

Key Results:

• Complete expansion readiness assessments for all strategic accounts.

• Spot opportunities for expansion at 90% of enterprise accounts.

• Increase the volume of leads generated by Customer Success by 20%.

• Hold quarterly account growth planning sessions.

Cross-sell adoption

Objective: To address the issue of adoption of new goods and services complementary to the products sold.

Key Results:

• The percentage of cross-sold products has increased and amounted to 15% of revenues.

• Recommendations for the promotion and selling of new goods have been provided in the course of quarterly meetings.

• The company has achieved improvements in the rate of adoption of goods by consumers within 90 days.

• Track cross-functional product usage across expanding accounts.

Reference customers

Objective: Improve the number of advocates within the existing customer pool.

Key Results:

• The number of customers referring products and services has increased by 25%.

• New advocates have been hired quarterly.

• Involvement of customers in the reference program has improved.

• Satisfaction level of existing advocates remains high.

Customer stories

Objective: Provide evidence of real customer success through case studies.

Key Results:

• Publish one case study per month.

• Create case studies for key industry markets.

• Encourage customers to take part in webinars and public speaking engagements.

• Establish metrics for the business results of each published case study.

Renewal-to-expansion conversion

Objective: Increase revenue after a successful renewal.

Key Results:

• Increase renewal-to-expansion conversion rate by 15%.

• Identify opportunities for expansion before each strategic renewal.

• Improve efforts on customer success and sales in terms of renewal planning.

• Increase revenue from existing customers due to expansion efforts.

How to Choose Customer Success Key Results

The best customer success OKRs are accompanied by Key Results. They assess significant customer results rather than ordinary operations. Good Key Results allow teams to know if they’re generating valuable customer benefits.

Behavioral adoption versus login counts

Logging into a product doesn’t necessarily mean customers are benefiting from it. Effective customer adoption OKRs indicate important actions like completing crucial processes, using beneficial features, increasing usage from other departments, and related activities.

Leading signals versus churn

Measuring results when it’s time to renew the contract is too late in many cases. Predictors, such as completing the onboarding process, using the features of the product, getting the customer health rate, communicating with the customer, and related activities, help the team notice risks before they bring churn. Using both predictors and results guarantees a more complete picture of customer success.

Account-level versus user-level metrics

Specific metrics are used for different goals. User-level metrics serve to evaluate people’s involvement with a product, whereas metrics at the account level give a broader understanding of customers’ health. The best CS team OKRs balance both perspectives.

Shared KRs with product and sales

Customer success rarely works in isolation. Many of the results that can be achieved depend on cooperation with Product, Sales, Marketing, and Support departments. Success metrics connected to customer success (e.g., lower implementation time, increased product usage, and related activities) help to drive cross-functional accountability. As a result, customer success becomes significant.

Common Customer Success OKR Mistakes

Even well-planned customer success OKRs can become useless if they concentrate on the wrong indicators. Here is a list of common mistakes that should be avoided in order to create customer success objectives that drive improvement at different stages of the consumer experience:

Using NPS as the only outcome

Net promoter score (NPS) is a useful measure of customer satisfaction, but it’s not a sufficient performance indicator. Good customer success programs monitor several other indicators as well, such as retention, product adoption, time-to-value, and effort.

Measuring activity volume

While increasing customer meetings, sending more emails, or increasing the number of phone calls made can contribute to customer success, these metrics need to be monitored. Faster onboarding, better adoption rates, improved customer health, or lower churn are some of the parameters of customer success.

Holding CS responsible for product failures

Customer success teams may play a role in improving adoption and customer relations, but they are not responsible for poor product quality. Proper role allocation between Customer Support, Product, Engineering, and Customer Success teams means everyone will keep track of the issues in their field and create more realistic OKRs.

Counting logins as adoption

Logins do add value; however, they are limited in providing any insights about the customer. Customer adoption OKRs should focus on product use statistics, features adopted, and workflow accomplished, and whether customers have achieved their goals.

Combining retention and expansion without segmentation

Even though retention and expansion efforts are highly interrelated, the nature of these objectives is different. The organizations that measure the performance of renewals and the performance of expansion revenues separately will find potential areas for improvement and will create effective customer retention OKRs.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are customer success OKRs?

Customer success OKRs are performance indicators that help companies achieve their goals of customer onboarding, steady service delivery, improved customer retention, keeping customer satisfaction at a higher level, customer expansion, and increasing long-term customer value.

Is churn a KPI or a Key Result?

Churn can be considered a Key Performance Indicator as it demonstrates how a company performs over time, but reducing avoidable churn might also serve as a Key Result as it contributes to the overall achievement of customer success goals.

Can NRR be an OKR?

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is a Key Performance Indicator highlighting the health of the company’s recurring revenue. NRR can be presented as a Key Result in the context of specific activities aimed at improving customer engagement and satisfaction.

How should CS and sales share OKRs?

Customer Success team and the Sales department should share OKRs in relation to customer onboarding, renewals, expansion, establishing relationships at the executive level, and overall customer growth. Sharing OKRs contributes to improved communication and closer relations between the teams.

What is a good onboarding OKR?

A good onboarding OKR is primarily focused on delivering value to customers as fast as possible. An objective could be aimed at reducing the time taken to deliver the solution, while Key Results might demonstrate improvements in terms of onboarding success, speed of implementation, and preparations for sales-to-CS hand-offs.