Customer operations glossary
Definitions of every essential customer success, customer support, and customer operations term — from NRR and churn to QBR, customer health, success plan, and more.
Churn
Churn is the rate at which customers stop subscribing or paying. It's the inverse of retention and the single biggest threat to SaaS growth.
Customer Advocacy
Customer advocacy is the stage where customers actively promote your product — referrals, case studies, reviews, speaking opportunities.
Customer Cohort
A customer cohort is a group of customers who share a starting characteristic — usually the month they signed up — and whose behavior is tracked over time.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
CES measures how much effort a customer had to expend to get a task done — usually on a 1–7 scale where lower is better.
Customer Health Score
A composite measure of how likely a customer is to renew, expand, or churn based on usage, engagement, sentiment, and outcome signals.
Customer Journey
The customer journey is the end-to-end sequence of stages and touchpoints a customer goes through — from awareness to advocacy.
Customer Kickoff
A customer kickoff is the formal first meeting between the customer and the implementation/CS team, setting goals, owners, and timeline.
Customer Lifecycle
The customer lifecycle is the model that tracks where a customer is in their journey — typically: onboarding, adoption, growth, renewal, advocacy.
Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM)
Customer Lifecycle Management is the strategy and tooling that manages every stage of a customer's relationship — from acquisition through advocacy.
Customer Onboarding
Customer onboarding is the structured process of guiding a new customer from signup to first measurable value with your product.
Customer Portal
A customer portal is a self-service web destination where customers log in to see their account, submit tickets, upload documents, and track project status.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
CSAT measures customer satisfaction with a specific interaction or experience, usually on a 1–5 scale, immediately after the event.
Customer Segment
A customer segment is a grouping of customers who share key characteristics — typically size, industry, plan tier, or use case — so you can apply differentiated motions.
Customer Success
Customer success is the discipline of ensuring customers achieve their desired outcomes with your product — driving retention, expansion, and advocacy.
Customer Support
Customer support is the function that responds to customer questions, issues, and requests — typically reactively, through tickets, chat, email, or phone.
Escalations
An escalation is the process of moving a customer issue from the front-line owner to a more senior or specialized resource when it can't be resolved at the current tier.
Executive Business Review (EBR)
An EBR is an annual or semi-annual strategic review between executive sponsors on both sides — the customer's exec and the vendor's account exec.
Expansion Revenue
Expansion revenue is additional recurring revenue from existing customers — upsells, cross-sells, seat additions, and tier upgrades.
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)
Gross Revenue Retention measures the percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers, excluding any expansion.
Implementation
Implementation is the technical phase of customer onboarding — data migration, integrations, configuration, and user provisioning.
Knowledge Base
A knowledge base is a structured collection of articles, FAQs, and how-to guides that customers (and agents) consult to find answers without contacting support.
Milestone
A milestone is a defined checkpoint in a customer's journey — typically tied to a specific outcome — that marks meaningful progress.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
NPS measures customer loyalty on a 0–10 scale by asking 'how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?'
Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
Net Revenue Retention measures the percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a period, including expansions, contractions, and churn.
Quarterly Business Review (QBR)
A QBR is a recurring meeting between a CSM and a customer to review progress, value delivered, and roadmap — usually once per quarter.
Renewal
Renewal is the moment a customer's contract term ends and they choose to extend it (or not). The renewal process starts months before the end date.
Self-Service
Self-service is the model where customers solve their own problems via documentation, knowledge bases, in-product guides, and customer portals — without contacting a human.
Service Level Agreement (SLA)
An SLA is a documented commitment to specific levels of service — typically first-response time, resolution time, and uptime — backed by penalties if missed.
Success Plan
A success plan is a written document outlining a customer's goals, the metrics that define success, and the joint workplan to achieve them.
Tickets
A ticket is the unit of work in a help desk or support system — a recorded customer issue, question, or request that an agent works through to resolution.
Time to Value (TTV)
Time to value is the time between a customer signing up and realizing their first measurable outcome from your product.
Voice of Customer (VoC)
Voice of Customer is the systematic process of capturing customer feedback, sentiment, and ideas — and routing them to product, marketing, and CS teams to act on.