Customer Success Leadership Advisory
The Customer Success Leadership and Performance Diagnostic
The Customer Success Leadership and Performance Diagnostic is an independent assessment of a B2B Customer Success organization, led by Beverly Hathorn. In two weeks, it identifies the leadership, execution, and operating gaps that may be putting retention, renewals, and growth at risk. You walk away knowing the greatest risks, what to prioritize first, and what to do differently over the next 90 days.
What is a Customer Success diagnostic?
A Customer Success diagnostic is a structured review of how a Customer Success organization operates: how it is led, how risk gets spotted, how work moves between people, and how consistently the team executes. Its purpose is to separate symptoms from root causes, so leaders know which problem to solve first.
Who is the Diagnostic for?
The Diagnostic is designed for VPs and Heads of Customer Success in B2B organizations, including SaaS, telecom, and financial services, who are seeing signs such as:
- Customer risk is identified too late
- Unclear ownership across adoption and renewal
- Renewals are inconsistent or hard to predict
- Too much time spent reacting, not leading
- CSM execution varies across teams or managers
- Adoption and value milestones are missed
As Customer Success organizations grow, performance problems do not always show up first in the metrics. They often appear in patterns like these.
What does the Diagnostic examine?
The Diagnostic looks at five areas that shape Customer Success performance.
Leadership and Manager Effectiveness
How effectively CS managers coach performance, drive accountability, and lead teams toward customer outcomes.
Customer Confidence, Risk and Retention
How effectively CS distinguishes customer activity from genuine customer confidence, identifies emerging risk, and acts before renewal outcomes are affected.
CSM Execution and Accountability
How consistently CSMs execute on adoption, value realization, customer health, and renewal readiness.
Customer Journey and Ownership
Where unclear ownership or handoffs across the customer lifecycle may create gaps or put outcomes at risk.
Operating Practices and Capacity
Whether current processes, segmentation, operating rhythms, and team capacity support proactive Customer Success.
How does the Diagnostic work?
The Diagnostic takes two weeks and follows five steps.
- Executive intakeA conversation with the CS leader about goals, concerns, and context.
- Stakeholder interviewsConfidential conversations with the people closest to the work.
- Review of performance dataA look at the numbers behind customer outcomes.
- Independent analysisPatterns across the five areas, separated into symptoms and root causes.
- Findings and recommendationsDelivered as your Executive Roadmap.
What do you walk away with?
An Executive Roadmap with four parts.
Three to five priority risks
The leadership, execution, and operating gaps creating the greatest risk to customer outcomes.
Prioritized recommendations
Clear, personalized guidance on what needs attention first, and why.
A 90-day action plan
Practical next steps your CS leadership team can begin implementing immediately.
An Executive Strategy Session
A 60-minute debrief on findings, priorities, and next steps.
Who leads the Diagnostic?
Beverly Hathorn, PHR, PMP, founder of Beverly Hathorn Consulting, leads every Diagnostic. She led a 40-person Customer Success organization supporting more than $20M in revenue. In that role, she worked directly with managers to improve coaching consistency, helped teams catch customer risk earlier, and shortened the time it took new CSMs to become fully productive. Those same practices are the foundation of the Diagnostic. Beverly holds the Professional in Human Resources (PHR) and Project Management Professional (PMP) credentials and is an Everything DiSC Authorized Partner.
Frequently asked questions
How long does the Customer Success Diagnostic take?
Two weeks, from executive intake to findings and recommendations.
What do you need from my team?
Time for an executive intake conversation, access to stakeholders for interviews, and the performance data you already track. The analysis itself is done independently.
Is our information kept confidential?
Yes. Every Diagnostic is conducted under mutual confidentiality. Stakeholder interviews are held in confidence, and any customer, performance, or operational information you share is used solely to inform your findings and recommendations. A confidentiality agreement is available and encouraged before any information is shared.
Is the Diagnostic a full consulting engagement?
No. The Diagnostic is the starting point. It ends with a 90-day action plan your CS leadership team can begin implementing immediately.
How much does the Diagnostic cost?
The Diagnostic is currently offered at pilot pricing. Details are shared in a first conversation.
What if we are not ready for the full Diagnostic?
Start with the free Customer Retention and Renewal Risk Checklist. It covers the same five areas in fifteen checkpoints and takes five to ten minutes.
Start with what you are seeing
If retention, risk, accountability, or execution is harder to predict than it should be, a conversation is the simplest way to find out whether the Diagnostic fits.