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Onboarding

Part of Customer success programme improvement

Deciding which customer success activity should stop

Assess a recurring customer success activity against the decision it serves, then simplify or stop it while protecting customer help.

Desk Onboarding · · 2 min read

Consider stopping a recurring customer success activity if its original customer need or decision has disappeared, it repeatedly fails to help that decision, or a simpler route can preserve its useful function. Check what the activity protects before removing it. Low attendance or a busy team alone does not establish its value.

Name the job the activity was meant to do

Choose one recurring activity: a standing call, manual health update, duplicated account report or routine check-in. Write down who receives it, what question it should answer and what action follows. Ask a recent recipient for a decision it helped them make. If nobody can name one, investigate its purpose.

Look for a useful function that may be easy to miss. A report few people read might still alert someone to blocked customer work. A meeting with few decisions might be the customer's only agreed route to raise a problem. Preserve that function while considering whether the current format is necessary.

Compare value with the full effort

Include preparation, delivery, follow-up, data repair and interruptions. Compare that work with the decisions enabled and any customer benefit the team can verify. Calendar time is only part of the effort.

Ask:

  • Did the activity reveal a material obstacle early enough to act?
  • Did the customer or team make a decision that would otherwise have waited?
  • Is the information already available in a trusted place?
  • Could an exception trigger or shorter record serve the same need?
  • What risk would removal create, and who would notice it?

These are decision prompts, not a numerical score. An infrequent activity may still support a consequential decision.

Key metrics to evaluate customer success activities

Time spent per activity
6 hours/week
Alternatives available
Yes – via ticket system and dashboards

Try a controlled removal or replacement

For a suitable activity, define a limited period and the accounts affected. Tell owners what will stop, where necessary information will appear and how customers can obtain help. Keep open promises, agreed service commitments and escalation routes assigned. If the activity is the only way a customer receives a needed update, replace that function before ending the routine.

For example, a hypothetical team might prepare a weekly account deck that repeats a current case record. It could trial a short exception summary covering unresolved customer decisions and owners. The question is whether blocked work is still noticed and customers receive their next update, not whether fewer slides are produced.

Watch for missed decisions, delayed responses, duplicate work resurfacing elsewhere and customer confusion. Record when the change began and what else changed during the trial.

Decide and document the new default

Retire the activity if its useful function is covered and no material gap remains. Simplify it if one part still helps. Restore a workable route if stopping it loses a necessary decision or customer contact, then redesign with that failure in view.

Record the reason, affected accounts, remaining owner and review point. The decision concerns this recurring activity; any wider programme priority or customer plan should be updated through its own owner.

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