8 mins read

How to Create and Use a Customer Health Score

Munish Gandhi
Founder

Maintaining customer satisfaction is one of the hardest things to do. You’ve got to juggle a lot, from product performance, engagement levels, feedback, and renewals to the never-ending churn-risk storm. That’s where a Customer Health Score (CHS) comes in to save the day. 

Customer Health Score is your magical power for customer success. With the right CHS, you can predict behavior, intervene at the right time, and make customer retention your superpower.

Through this article, we’ll dive deeper into Customer Health Scores and learn how to craft and use it like a pro.

What is the Customer Health Score?

Before you get too excited, let’s break down exactly what a Customer Health Score (CHS) is. Simply put, a CHS is a metric that tells you how "healthy" a customer is, based on their behavior, usage, and satisfaction with your product or service. 

It’s like a medical check-up for your customer relationships. It is just like a gauge for predicting customer actions like renewals, cancellations, or upsells.

Customer Health Score provides a snapshot of your customer's current state by combining various metrics, such as product usage, support interactions, and customer feedback. It’s a tool to understand how well your customers are engaged, how likely they will churn, or whether they’ll become your next loyal advocates.

By tracking these health scores, you can avoid potential problems and make smarter, data-driven decisions to improve your customer success strategy.

Why is it Important for you to Create a Customer Health Score?

Alright, I know what you're thinking, “Why do I need to track customer health? Are we running a hospital here?” Well, not exactly. However, a Customer Health Score is your go-to tool for diagnosing the well-being of your customer relationships. 

It’s like a fitness tracker, but instead of counting steps, it tracks engagement, satisfaction, and, most importantly, churn risks.

But, creating a health score manually can be tricky. It involves pulling data from various sources, like customer engagement, survey responses, support tickets, and product usage, and then figuring out how to combine it. Statisfy simplifies this process by automatically capturing and analyzing these metrics using AI. Instead of guesswork, Statisfy delivers real-time, accurate health scores tailored to your customers.

So, why should you bother with this magical little number? Let’s see how a Customer Health Score can seriously level up your business.

  • Health scores help forecast what your customers are likely to do next. Are they about to renew their subscription? Will they cancel soon? With accurate health scores, you can anticipate these behaviors and act accordingly.
  •  If you spot an at-risk customer early, you can intervene before they churn. Conversely, customers with a high health score could be the perfect candidates for upsells or cross-sells. 
  • A well-structured health score gives you the power to retain customers and grow your revenue.

Improving customer retention by just 5% can boost revenue by up to 95%. (HubSpot) A tool like Statisfy ensures you stay ahead, predicting what’s next and taking the right action at the right time.

Creating and monitoring a health score isn’t just about knowing where you stand with your customers. It’s about predicting what’s coming next before it hits you like a ton of bricks.

Step to Create a Customer Health Score

Creating a customer health score isn’t as daunting as it sounds. You can build a system that helps you predict customer behavior and drive success with a few key steps.

Step 1: Select Customer Health Score Metrics

The first step to creating a Customer Health Score is deciding which metrics will make up that score. This is your data foundation; the right metrics will tell you everything about your customer’s satisfaction and engagement levels. 

Some of the most valuable ones to consider are:

  • How frequently is the customer using your product? High usage often signals satisfaction and engagement, while low usage could indicate dissatisfaction or a lack of value.
  • Positive feedback or Net Promoter Scores (NPS) provide insights into customer satisfaction. Negative feedback is equally important, don’t ignore it!
  • How often does the customer reach out to support? Frequent inquiries could indicate product issues or unmet needs.
  • Has the customer renewed their subscription in the past? Renewal trends can help forecast future behavior.
  • How well has the customer adopted your product? Are they using all the features or just the basics?

Once you’ve selected your metrics, you’re one step closer to a comprehensive health score.

Step 2: Outline Positive and Negative Indicators

Not all metrics are created equal. Some will positively impact your health score like frequent product usage, while others may be red flags, such as low NPS scores or high support ticket volumes. Now, you need to categorize your metrics into positive and negative indicators.

Positive Indicators

Happy customers tend to engage often, provide positive feedback, and renew their subscriptions. Metrics like high usage, positive feedback, and on-time payments should boost the score.

Negative Indicators 

If a customer hasn’t logged into the platform in weeks or has submitted several support tickets in the past month, those are red flags. These metrics could lower the score and indicate potential churn.

For example, if customers consistently use your product, give positive feedback, and renew on time, their health score will reflect that. However, if they complain frequently, have low engagement, and don’t renew, their score will likely be lower.

Step 3:  Assign Weights to Metrics

Not all metrics are equal; some will have more predictive power regarding customer behavior. It is like choosing the star players for your team; you want to give the most importance to those metrics that move the needle for customer retention. 

Here's how to assign those all-important weights:

  • Look back at your customer behavior and identify which metrics have historically had the biggest impact on churn, renewals, and engagement.
  • If product usage tends to predict whether customers renew, give it a higher weight, e.g., 40%. If satisfaction scores follow behind, they might only account for 20%.
  • Weights might differ depending on customer segments. For example, enterprise customers might value support ticket frequency more than smaller accounts, so adjust accordingly.
  • Platforms like Statisfy use advanced analytics and AI to determine weights and predict an overall health score by analyzing all relevant factors. Unlike static models, Statisfy’s AI personalizes the weights for each customer, taking into account their specific segment, industry, and other unique characteristics. This ensures accurate and dynamic scores that adapt to customer behavior.
  • Weights aren’t set in stone. As you gather more data, you may need to adjust your weights to reflect changes in customer behavior or new insights. With Statisfy, this happens automatically, keeping your scores relevant and reliable. 

By assigning the right weight to each metric, you ensure that your Customer Health Score reflects the most critical factors impacting customer satisfaction and retention. 

Step 4: Segment Customers for Specific Insights

One-size-fits-all doesn’t work in customer success. You need to segment your customers to get specific insights relevant to each group. 

Consider segmenting based on the following:

  • Company Size: Different strategies may apply to small businesses versus enterprise clients.
  • Industry: A SaaS company in the healthcare space will have different needs than one in finance or education.
  • Customer Journey Stage: A new customer’s health score may be impacted by different factors than a long-time user.

Statisfy can help with segmentation too; by looking at customer behavior patterns across these different groups, it can highlight trends that may not be obvious from a broad, one-size-fits-all health score. 

This allows you to take more targeted actions for each group, leading to better outcomes.

Chart or table 

Example Customer Health Score by Segment

Now that you have a roadmap for creating your Customer Health Score, it’s time to move beyond the basics and consider leveraging this data for strategic action. After all, a health score is only as valuable as the insights you can extract.

How Can You Leverage Customer Health Scores?

Using customer health scores isn’t just about knowing which customers are doing well. It’s about spotting opportunities, predicting outcomes, and making more brilliant moves. 

Here are some ways you can use the health scores to your advantage:

  1. By analyzing health scores, you can predict future revenues and customer renewals. 

For example, a high health score across many customers may indicate substantial revenue in the coming months.

  1. Integrate your customer health scores with your CRM and ERP systems to get a full 360-degree view of your customers. This combined data lets you easily see how your health score correlates with purchase history, support tickets, or upsell opportunities, making it easier to identify which customers need attention.

Leveraging customer health scores as part of your larger customer success strategy helps you move from reactive to proactive. With tools like Statisfy, you can spot churn risks early and automate engagement actions based on the customer’s health score.

Continuous Improvement in Customer Health Scores

Creating a Customer Health Score is just the beginning. Now comes the real fun: keeping it fresh and ensuring it evolves as your business and customer behaviors change. Like your business strategy, your health score needs regular check-ups to stay relevant. 

  • Once you’ve launched your health score model, don’t just sit back and relax. Track how well the score predicts customer behavior and refine it based on the results. Are customers with a 70% score still churning? Maybe the weights need adjusting.
  • Your business will evolve, and so will your customers. As new product features or services are introduced, incorporate those into your health scoring model. You might discover new indicators that provide a more accurate picture of your customer relationships.

However, with a tool like Statisfy, this process becomes effortless. Statisfy automatically updates your health model as it gathers more data, using signals like churn, upsell, and downsell to refine and improve the accuracy of the scores over time. This ensures your health score stays relevant and aligned with real-time customer behavior.

  • You should always listen to your customers directly and through feedback channels. If customers mention new pain points or shifting priorities, Statisfy will integrate these insights seamlessly, keeping your health score ahead of the curve.

Like any tool, continuous refinement is the key to long-term success. With Statisfy, this refinement happens automatically, ensuring your health score evolves with changing customer expectations and remains sharp and relevant.

Conclusion

Customer health scores aren’t just a tool; they’re your superpower for predicting the future of your customer relationships. By understanding which metrics to track, how to assign weights, and how to segment your customer base, you can create a powerful, dynamic score that gives you a clear view of your customers' health.

Continuous improvement ensures that your health score remains relevant, helping you retain customers and improve their experience with your product. Book a demo today to understand how to take your health scores to the next level by integrating AI-driven insights to predict churn and optimize engagement strategies. 

With the right health score in place, you’re well on improving retention, reducing churn, and increasing customer satisfaction. What are you waiting for? Let those health scores work their magic!

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