If you work in customer success, you already know there’s more to “success” than just a happy customer call. Metrics matter—but most teams either drown in dashboards or ignore the numbers entirely. This guide is for folks who want to use Custify reports to track real KPIs, spot issues before they turn into churn, and stop guessing what’s actually moving the needle.
Let’s cut through the fluff and get practical.
Step 1: Know Which Customer Success KPIs Actually Matter
First things first: there are a million metrics you could track. Most aren’t worth your time. Here’s what actually matters in customer success:
- Churn rate: How many customers are leaving over a given period?
- Net revenue retention (NRR): Are your existing customers spending more or less with you?
- Health score: A composite metric based on product usage, engagement, and support tickets.
- Onboarding completion: Are new users actually getting to their first “aha” moment?
- Expansion revenue: Are customers upgrading, buying add-ons, or otherwise increasing their spend?
- Support ticket trends: Are tickets rising, falling, or just plain ignored?
You don’t need to track all of these at once. Start with two or three. If you track everything, you end up acting on nothing.
Pro tip: Decide what “good” looks like before you start running reports. If you don’t know what success means for your team, no tool will magically define it for you.
Step 2: Set Up Your Data Sources in Custify
If you haven’t already done this, stop here. Custify is only as good as the data you give it. Garbage in, garbage out.
Connect Your Tools
- CRM: Pipe in your customer data (Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.).
- Product analytics: Send product usage data (Segment, Mixpanel, Amplitude, or straight from your app).
- Support system: Pull in support tickets (Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk).
- Billing platform: Get subscription and payment details (Stripe, Chargebee, etc.).
Clean Your Data
Don’t trust that all your systems use the same customer IDs or email formats. Double-check mappings—nothing’s worse than running a “churn” report that’s missing half your customers because of a mismatch.
What to ignore: Fancy integrations you don’t use. If your team never looks at chat logs, don’t bother setting them up.
Step 3: Build the Right Reports (Without Drowning in Options)
Custify gives you a lot of reporting flexibility. That’s a blessing and a curse. Here’s how to avoid analysis paralysis.
Start with Templates
Custify offers built-in templates for common reports: churn rates, health scores, onboarding progress, and more. Use these as a starting point. Don’t reinvent the wheel—at least not until you know what you’re missing.
Customize the Key Reports
You’ll probably want to tweak things. Here’s how to focus your efforts:
- Churn & retention: Filter by segment (SMB vs. enterprise, region, etc.) to spot patterns.
- Health scores: Tweak the weight of each factor. If your product is all about usage, make sure usage counts for more than “number of logins.”
- Onboarding: Track completion rates and time-to-first-value. If customers get stuck, dig into why.
- Expansion: Set up alerts for upsells and cross-sells, not just downgrades.
What works: Automated alerts when KPIs go off-track. You’ll catch problems before they snowball.
What doesn’t: Spending hours customizing every field. Get something usable, then move on.
Step 4: Make Your KPIs Visible (and Actually Look at Them)
A report no one sees is just a waste of disk space.
- Dashboards: Set up a team dashboard with your top KPIs. Keep it simple—nobody wants to scroll through 15 widgets.
- Scheduled reports: Automate weekly or monthly emails to yourself and the team. If it’s not in your inbox, you’ll forget to check.
- Alerts: Use Custify’s notifications to flag sudden drops in health score, spikes in support tickets, or at-risk accounts.
Pro tip: Don’t just share numbers. Add one sentence of context: “Churn jumped 2% this month—mostly SMBs who never finished onboarding.”
Step 5: Dig Deeper When Something Changes
Reports are only the start. When a KPI moves, you need to find out why.
Drill Down
- Segment your data: Look for patterns by customer type, industry, or usage.
- Timeline views: Did something change after a new feature rollout or a pricing tweak?
- Customer-level reports: Spot the specific accounts driving the numbers up or down.
Ask “So What?”
Don’t just accept the surface explanation. Is churn up because of product bugs, poor onboarding, or something else? Data’s helpful, but it won’t do the thinking for you.
What to ignore: Vanity metrics that move but don’t matter. “Number of logins” is useless if users aren’t actually succeeding.
Step 6: Act on What You Learn (Not Just Admire the Charts)
This is where most teams stop short. Reports are only useful if they drive action.
- Flag at-risk customers: Use health scores and churn predictors to trigger outreach.
- Change onboarding flows: If new users aren’t activating, fix the process—not just the metric.
- Share wins and losses: If a new playbook drops churn, tell the team. If it flops, share that too.
Pro tip: Build a simple feedback loop. Every month, review what you learned from the reports and what you actually did about it.
What Works, What Doesn’t, and What to Ignore
What works:
- Tracking a handful of meaningful KPIs, not everything under the sun.
- Automating reports and alerts so you don’t have to remember to check.
- Making dashboards visible and discussing results in regular team meetings.
What doesn’t:
- Overcomplicating your setup with every possible integration or custom metric.
- Ignoring the “why” behind the numbers.
- Treating reporting as a one-time project instead of an ongoing habit.
What to ignore:
- Any metric you wouldn’t take action on.
- Reports that look pretty but don’t drive decisions.
- Features you don’t need (“AI-driven insights” are often just guesswork in a fancy wrapper).
Keep It Simple. Iterate as You Learn.
Measuring customer success with Custify isn’t about having the fanciest dashboard or the most granular data. It’s about picking the right numbers, checking them regularly, and actually doing something when they change. Start small, make adjustments as you go, and don’t get distracted by what you could measure. Stick to what actually helps your customers—and your team—succeed.