How does CS Ops operationalize risk?

CS Ops fees like it’s having a moment. Which is great.?

And while there are many great resources out there (just a few below), they tend to be aimed at justifying budget allocation or hiring for success operations. While important, they often leave out the practical “how to” parts that build knowledge, buy-in, community etc.?

?BTW my personal fav definition: “CS Ops is the team that provides standardization, intelligence, planning, and ultimately strategy for Customer Success”

I’d love to add to this discussion by focusing on a single project that will illustrate a few possibilities of the role from an in-the-trenches perspective.?

That… and to (very) overtly solicit talented folks to apply for a role opening up on my team: Customer Success Operations Specialist (position has closed!)

Here’s the scenario: Your CRO asks you for the following:

Tell me which customers are at-risk of non-renewal - 2 quarters out. What type of risk is associated with each??

Tell me how much revenue is associated with customer risk by type and what trends you see.

Show me what your CSMs are doing about this risk (and with whom).?

From my perspective, these requests are squarely in the CS Ops wheelhouse. To answer them, we’ve developed a very Red Canary way of Operationalizing Risk.

How does a CS Ops shop operationalize risk? …. At a cybersecurity company

Detection and response is our bread and butter. It makes sense to use that philosophy to hunt for customer risk in a sea of customer telemetry. So, here’s what Red Canary's process for detecting and responding to cyber security threats looks like:

And here's how it applies to detecting and responding to customer risk:

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Record: CS Tool Stack

• What customer telemetry is useful for predicting customer churn?
• How do you collect that telemetry and make sense of it?
• How does the stack work together to produce something useful?

Detect: Threat Landscape + Build Detection + Maintain Detection

• What kinds of risks are most common?
• How do you DETECT customer risk??
• How do you maintain your Detectors over time (this S*it is getting hard)?

Investigate: Risk Mitigation Plans

• What is an RMP??
• How do I build one? Why is this a lot of work? Can I automate this?

Respond: Forecasting Risk (the gold)

• How do I represent customer risk for leaders?
• How do I show them what we’re doing about that risk?
• How do I use this capability to forecast revenue impact?

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Over the next few weeks I hope to continue to post in this vein and to elaborate on the operational how-to(s) for Recording, Detecting, Investigating and Responding to Customer Risk.?

I realize that this is just one of an infinite number of approaches to operationalizing risk - and that no one team has it figured out quite yet. I’d love to hear your thoughts.?

How do you operationalize risk at your organization?