A customer health score is a single metric that combines customer engagement data with the likelihood of a customer staying or leaving. Think of it as a report card for an account, reflecting how often customers use a product and their overall satisfaction.

These scores are built by analyzing key customer behavior data and turning it into a single, easy-to-understand rating. Many modern platforms update these scores daily, allowing teams to access near real-time insights. Some even use AI to spot engagement trends and potential red flags.

One of the most valuable aspects of health scores is their ability to detect “silent churn.” This happens when a customer’s usage starts to decline subtly - something that might not be obvious until it’s too late. By unifying various metrics into one score, customer success managers (CSMs) can shift from reacting to problems to proactively addressing them.

Now, let’s break down the key metrics that go into creating these scores and how they provide a deeper understanding of customer engagement.

Main Metrics Used in Health Scores

Effective customer health scores are built on a foundation of key metrics. These typically include product adoption, engagement history, and commercial data.

Some of the most crucial metrics are login frequency, session duration, feature adoption, and team-wide engagement. Together, these metrics help identify both highly engaged users and accounts that might be slipping into inactivity. While raw numbers are helpful, it’s the patterns and trends behind them that reveal the real story.

AI-powered health scoring takes this process a step further. These tools allow teams to define what “healthy” or “at-risk” behavior looks like in plain terms. The AI then applies these definitions across all accounts, ensuring the scores remain accurate and up-to-date. Here’s how Userlens does it:

Using Health Scores to Predict Churn

Health scores act as an early warning system for customer churn, giving teams the chance to address issues before they escalate into cancellations. By identifying patterns early, customer success teams can take action to keep customers engaged.

Spotting Churn Warning Signs

A sharp decline - like a 50% drop in feature adoption over six weeks - is a clear indicator of churn risk. These changes often happen gradually, making it easy to miss them without consistent tracking.

Another red flag is reduced activity from key users. These are the individuals who not only use the product most actively but also advocate for it within their organizations. When their engagement drops, it can ripple across the entire account. Other warning signs include declining seat utilization and unresolved support issues that prevent users from fully adopting the product.

Sometimes, usage trends may decrease subtly, without setting off immediate alarms. However, over time, these trends can lead to cancellations. Modern health scoring tools, like Userlens, can automatically detect these patterns, flagging accounts or key users for follow-up.

By catching these signs early, teams can quickly categorize accounts based on their risk levels.

Grouping At-Risk Accounts

Once early warnings are identified, accounts can be grouped into risk categories to focus retention efforts where they’re needed most. Health scoring systems typically sort accounts into three groups: "Healthy", "Concerning," and "At risk."

• Concerning accounts display milder issues, like slight declines in activity or unresolved support tickets. While these accounts may not be in critical danger, they require proactive monitoring and quick problem-solving.

• At-risk accounts often show multiple warning signs, such as reduced feature adoption, lower seat utilization, and disengaged key users. These accounts need immediate and targeted intervention.

Segmenting accounts even further - based on factors like industry, subscription tier, or behavioral trends - helps teams design more precise retention strategies. Additionally, integrating health scores with CRM platforms like HubSpot or Salesforce provides extra context, such as revenue size, renewal dates, and relationship history, making it easier to prioritize efforts effectively.

Finding Upsell Opportunities with Health Scores

Health scores are also a powerful tool for identifying growth opportunities. When accounts show strong engagement and consistent usage patterns, it often signals they're ready for upgrades, additional features, or more seats.

Spotting Upsell Signals

Certain behaviors in customer accounts can indicate they're primed for expansion:

• Increasing feature usage: When customers start using more features, especially across different user groups, it’s a sign they’re finding serious value in your product. This often means they’re ready for advanced functionalities or a higher-tier plan to unlock even more potential.

• High seat utilization: If an account is nearing its limit on licensed seats, it’s a clear signal they may need additional licenses or an upgrade to accommodate their growing team.

• Power user activity: Highly engaged users often act as internal advocates for your product. These champions can drive interest in premium features or expanded modules, making their activity a key indicator of upsell potential.

• New users joining an account: When new team members are added, it’s a sign the organization is growing. This growth often brings a need for more capacity or advanced features to support their expanding operations.

Creating Targeted Upsell Campaigns

Health score data is the foundation of personalized outreach. Instead of sending generic upgrade offers, teams can use insights from usage patterns and engagement levels to craft campaigns that feel relevant and timely.

• Account-level analytics: By analyzing which features customers rely on most, teams can position upgrades as natural extensions of their current workflows. This approach makes the pitch feel less like an upsell and more like a solution to their evolving needs.

• CRM integration and alerts: When health scores are tied to CRM tools, teams can act quickly on upsell opportunities. Automated alerts ensure timely follow-ups, combining product usage data with commercial insights to guide outreach efforts.

• Segmentation for precision: Grouping accounts by industry, subscription tier, or usage trends allows for more targeted messaging. By addressing specific growth scenarios, campaigns resonate more effectively with customers.

Timing is everything. Reaching out when health scores show positive trends opens the door for proactive, consultative conversations about growth.

Putting Health Scores to Work in Customer Success

Health scores are only as effective as their application in your team's daily routines. To get the most out of them, you need systems that flag critical changes and transform static dashboards into actionable insights.

Setting Up Automated Alerts and Workflows

When health scores are integrated into daily workflows, they enable swift action. Manually keeping an eye on these scores is not practical. Instead, automated systems can handle daily score updates and notify teams when something requires attention.

Tools like Userlens make this process seamless by using AI to interpret health criteria defined in plain language and applying these rules across all accounts.

Real-time alerts, delivered through platforms like Slack, ensure that teams are notified the moment an account becomes "at risk" or "concerning." These alerts come with added context, such as a note indicating that "an AI feature issue was reported three days ago and remains unresolved", helping teams prioritize their next steps.

Connecting Health Scores with Other Tools

Once alerts are automated, the next step is to integrate health scores with your existing customer success tools to provide a more complete picture. Health scores become even more powerful when combined with your current systems, offering a unified view that blends product usage data with relationship and commercial insights.

CRM tools like Salesforce or HubSpot are essential for tracking relationships and deal progress, but they often fall short when it comes to visualizing product usage. Health scoring tools fill this gap by layering in real-time engagement and feature adoption data. This means that when an alert is triggered, customer success managers can quickly access everything they need - from contract details and recent communications to the usage patterns that prompted the alert.

Integrating health scores with product analytics platforms further enhances this setup. Many teams already rely on analytics tools to track user behavior and feature adoption. Instead of replacing these tools, integrating them with health scores provides an account-level perspective while preserving data consistency. This approach allows teams to detect trends over time, such as gradual declines in feature usage, which can act as early warning signs of "silent churn."

Finally, linking health scores with communication platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams streamlines team collaboration. When health score changes automatically trigger alerts in these tools, customer success managers can quickly loop in technical support, sales, or product teams to address any issues. This connected ecosystem ensures that insights flow directly into daily workflows, enabling teams to focus on building stronger relationships and solving customer challenges.

Conclusion

Health scores are changing the way B2B SaaS companies manage customer relationships by shifting the focus to proactive engagement. Instead of waiting for issues to arise or customers to cancel, these scores act as early warning systems, helping teams take timely action. This builds on the idea of staying ahead of potential problems while complementing the detailed metrics discussed earlier.

But health scores aren’t just about avoiding churn; they also uncover growth opportunities. By analyzing how customers are engaging with a product, these scores provide valuable insights for upselling. When upsell efforts are based on actual usage patterns, they feel more relevant to customers, making them more effective. 

The real power of health scores lies in treating them as a core part of your overall strategy, not just a standalone tool. When seamlessly integrated into workflows and existing systems, they become the backbone of proactive customer success initiatives.