CHURN IS DEAD
Why I Stopped Looking at Health Scores and Started Watching Movement
4 minutes · Trust
Archive note: This issue predates the evidence ledger introduced in August 2026. Treat uncited benchmarks and examples as editorial analysis, not independently verified findings.
A few years ago, I would’ve told you a green health score was the holy grail.
A clean dashboard, solid usage, and no red flags? Must be good, right?
Wrong.
One of the smartest lessons I’ve learned in Customer Success is this:
Churn isn’t always loud. Sometimes it leaves quietly, while the score still says “healthy.”
And growth?
It usually starts with a whisper, a behavior shift, a new stakeholder, a sudden interest in that one unused feature.
Health scores measure status.
But momentum tells you direction.
The Problem with Static Health
Most traditional health scores are backward-looking. They weight things like:
- NPS
- Logins
- Support tickets
- Feature adoption
Useful, yes, but they’re a snapshot.
They tell you how things *were*, not where they’re *headed*.
I once managed an enterprise account with perfect health metrics.
The CISO called us “strategic.”
Then they churned.
Why?
Because nothing was moving.
No new value. No new problems solved. Just steady-state.
And eventually, irrelevance.
Enter: The Customer Momentum Framework (CMF)
CMF isn’t a replacement for health scores.
It’s the directional overlay. The movement layer.
It asks:
- Are they adopting more, or less?
- Is perceived value growing or stalling?
- Are relationships deepening or disappearing?
It’s scored intuitively:
`-2` (slipping), `-1` (declining), `0` (flat), `+1` (improving), `+2` (accelerating)
Across three axes: Adoption, Value, and Relationship.
You don’t need a tool.
You need eyes and instincts.
Why It Works
CMF shines a light on what’s changing not just what *is*.
I’ve used it to catch risk 3 months before a renewal conversation.
I’ve used it to trigger expansion conversations that actually landed
because I caught a `+2` Value signal *before* they even asked for a proposal.
And I’ve used it with Sales and Product to align on:
“This customer isn’t ‘healthy’ they’re moving.”
Let’s catch the momentum before it fades.
Next Tuesday:
How to spot false positives in customer relationships
(Yes, they smile before they churn.)
*Churn is Dead.*
*Predictability is the future.*
By Kuber Sethi · All issues · Subscribe