The Death of Reactive CS: How to Build a Revenue-Driving CS Motion for 2026

You wouldn’t propose on the second date. (Unless you’re on a Netflix reality show – in which case, congrats, and I’m watching.)

So why are we still treating Customer Success like a string of random check-ins, awkward upgrade pitches, and last-minute “please don’t churn” Hail Marys?

Let’s call it:

Most CS motions in 2025 are still running on hope, habit, and a handful of vanity metrics.

• We ghost customers for 11 months and pray they renew.
• We drag out dusty QBR decks that no one remembers the next day.
• We trust traffic-light health scores like they’re gospel… even when green accounts churn.

This isn’t scale. It isn’t strategy. It’s survival mode with a fresh coat of branding.

The fix? A motion that’s always-on, outcome-first, and impossible to ignore – where expansion is planned, renewals are earned, and every touchpoint moves the customer toward their goals.

Here’s the playbook.

1. Stop the Hail Mary expansion plays

Too many Customer Success teams treat expansion as a one-off event, something you “bring up” at the end of a Quarterly Business Review or, worse, as a last-minute upsell during renewal negotiations. This approach almost always feels awkward to the customer and puts you in a defensive position.

Expansion isn’t a pleasant surprise you spring on a customer. It’s not a quick add-on to close out the quarter. It’s a strategic step in a long-term relationship, more like a marriage than a casual date. For an expansion to feel natural, it must be the culmination of trust, value, and shared goals established over time.

That means changing the approach from opportunistic to embedded.

Here’s how to make expansion an organic part of the customer journey:

• Build trust early: Use onboarding as an opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to the customer’s outcomes, not just the adoption of your product. This is your “meeting the in-laws” moment, the foundation for everything that follows.
• Deliver wins consistently: Don’t save your success stories for quarterly check-ins. Find ways to deliver and highlight value regularly so the customer sees tangible progress throughout the year.
• Align on long-term goals from the start: Expansion becomes a natural progression when both sides are working toward the same future state. Discuss these goals early so any future ask is positioned as a logical next step.
• Normalize growth conversations: Talking about scaling or adding capabilities shouldn’t feel like a sales pitch. If you frame it as part of the ongoing partnership, customers will expect and welcome the discussion.

When expansion is treated as a continuous thread – woven into every interaction and milestone – it stops feeling like a “big ask” and instead becomes the obvious next step in a successful relationship.

2. Kill the “ghost until renewal” habit

In many Customer Success teams, “low touch” has become a polite way of saying, we disappear for most of the year and hope the customer renews.

It’s an easy trap to fall into, especially when teams are under pressure to cover large account volumes or operate “efficiently.” But the reality is that this approach isn’t efficient at all. It’s reactive account management disguised as scale.

When you only show up as the renewal date approaches, you’ve already missed most of your opportunities to reinforce value, deepen relationships, and influence the outcome. At that point, your renewal conversations become high-stakes negotiations rather than low-stress affirmations of a healthy partnership.

The best-performing CS teams take a completely different approach: they build a steady, proactive presence into the customer experience. That doesn’t mean overwhelming the customer with unnecessary meetings or flooding their inbox. It means showing up at the right moments, with the right insights, to drive progress toward their goals.

Practical ways to replace ghosting with meaningful engagement:

• Use triggered insights: Monitor usage data, support tickets, and sentiment signals to identify moments when a customer is most in need of attention — or most ready for a new idea.
• Personalize your outreach: Every interaction should be tied to the customer’s specific goals or context. Generic “check-ins” rarely add value.
• Run pre-renewal plays early: Months before renewal, look for ways to remove risk, strengthen adoption, and introduce expansion opportunities. By the time renewal discussions begin, the decision should feel easy.

Staying visible and valuable throughout the lifecycle doesn’t just protect renewals — it creates the conditions for consistent expansion. Customers who feel seen and supported are far more likely to grow with you, rather than shop for alternatives.

3. Burn the traffic light health score

For years, Customer Success teams have relied on red–yellow–green health scores to gauge account risk. On the surface, it feels logical: Green means all is well, yellow means caution, and red means trouble. The problem? Reality rarely matches the colors.

You’ve probably seen it yourself:

• Green accounts that suddenly churn without warning.
• Red accounts that renew, sometimes even expand.
• CSMs who openly question the accuracy of the dashboard.

That’s because most traditional health scores are decorative, not predictive. They’re often based on superficial activity metrics – like logins, email opens, or NPS scores – rather than a true measure of whether the customer is achieving meaningful outcomes.

If you want a health score that actually helps you retain and grow customers, it needs to be tied to the things that truly signal long-term success.

What to focus on instead:

• Behavior-based scoring linked to outcomes: Track the use of features or workflows that directly contribute to the customer’s business goals, not just any activity.
• Stage-specific metrics: Onboarding success doesn’t look the same as adoption success, and neither predicts renewal in the same way. Tailor your scoring model to the customer’s current stage in the journey.
• Real-time triggers: Waiting for a quarterly score update is too late. Monitor for changes continuously so you can act on early warning signs.

When your health score is tied to impact rather than activity, you stop guessing at which customers are truly at risk, and you give your team a reliable tool to prioritize their time where it will make the biggest difference.

4. Make QBRs worth the invite (or cancel them)

The Quarterly Business Review is a staple in most Customer Success playbooks, but in many cases, it’s a ritual that delivers more fatigue than value. Too often, QBRs become a glorified product update: a slide deck of usage graphs, feature release notes, and recaps of things the customer already knows.

When that happens, you’re asking senior stakeholders to give you an hour of their time without giving them anything meaningful in return. That’s not just a wasted opportunity — it’s a slow erosion of your credibility.

A QBR should be one of the most strategic touchpoints in your relationship. It’s your chance to:

• Show the progress made toward agreed goals.
• Identify and address adoption gaps before they become problems.
• Set a clear vision for where the partnership is headed next.

If your QBR isn’t doing that, you’re better off replacing it with a short, targeted update that frees up the customer’s calendar.

How to turn QBRs into high-value conversations:

• Lead with strategic insight: Bring benchmarking data, competitive comparisons, or industry trends that help the customer see where they stand — and where they can improve.
• Prove ROI in hard numbers: Connect your product’s impact directly to time saved, revenue generated, or costs reduced since the last review.
• Address tough truths early: If certain teams or regions aren’t using the product effectively, highlight it and provide a clear plan to fix it.

When your QBR delivers actionable insight, proves value, and moves the customer closer to their goals, it becomes a growth engine rather than a calendar obligation. And if it doesn’t? Cancel it — and spend that time delivering results they’ll notice without a meeting invite.

5. Retire your fantasy journey map

Most customer journey maps look impressive in a slide deck – neat rows of touchpoints, stage names, and colorful arrows pointing from “Onboarding” to “Adoption” to “Renewal.”

The problem? These diagrams often reflect how your company wishes the relationship would unfold, not the reality your customers actually experience.

In practice, customer journeys are rarely linear. They’re full of detours, slowdowns, skipped steps, and moments where value is either accelerated or lost altogether. When your strategy is based on the idealized version rather than the lived experience, you risk missing the real opportunities and threats that shape retention and expansion.

A better approach: Create a reality map,  one that reflects what customers are actually doing, feeling, and trying to accomplish at each stage, even if it doesn’t match your neat process flow.

How to shift from fantasy to reality:

• Map from the customer’s point of view: Focus on the jobs they’re trying to get done and the friction points they encounter along the way, rather than your internal milestones.
• Trigger workflows based on behavior, not timelines: If a usage gap appears two months in, don’t wait until the “adoption” stage to address it.
• Align across teams around value moments: Sales, CS, and Product should work from the same set of customer-defined success milestones, not just departmental KPIs.

When you manage the reality instead of the ideal, you gain a far more accurate view of risk, a better sense of where to focus your resources, and more opportunities to deliver unexpected wins, the kind that build loyalty and open doors to growth.

6. From check-ins to checkpoints

One of the least effective habits in Customer Success is the “just checking in” email. It’s vague, low-value, and puts the burden on the customer to decide whether there’s anything worth discussing. Over time, it also conditions them to see your outreach as optional, or worse, interruptive.

Your role as a CS professional isn’t to be a friendly presence in their inbox. It’s to be a strategic partner who consistently moves them closer to their goals. Every interaction you initiate should have a clear purpose, tied to a meaningful customer outcome.

The mindset shift is simple: stop thinking in terms of check-ins and start creating checkpoints – intentional moments where you review progress, resolve friction, and introduce the next step forward.

How to make the switch:

• Lead with an insight: Use data or observation to highlight something worth acting on, such as underuse of a high-value feature or a sudden drop in engagement.
• Offer a quick win: Show them a small, achievable improvement they can make right now to get better results.
• Tie it to their larger goals: Connect every suggestion back to the outcomes they care about most.

When you frame outreach as a value delivery moment rather than a courtesy call, customers see you as indispensable, not just during onboarding or renewal season, but throughout the entire relationship.

Final word: The new CS motion

The era of reactive, ritual-driven Customer Success is over. Customers don’t renew or expand because you showed up at the right calendar interval. They do it because you’ve consistently proven that your product – and your partnership – drives their success.

In 2025, that means:

• Expansion is planned from the start, not pitched in desperation.
• Engagement is proactive and purposeful, not sporadic and superficial.
• Metrics are predictive and outcome-focused, not decorative traffic lights.
• QBRs are strategic growth engines, not usage recaps.
• Journey maps reflect reality, not wishful process flows.
• Every interaction moves the customer forward, not just fills the relationship log.

This isn’t about adding more meetings, more reports, or more noise. It’s about building a motion that is always on, always valuable, and always aligned to what the customer is trying to achieve.

When you operate this way, renewal stops being a cliff-edge moment. Expansion becomes a natural next step. And your CS team shifts from being a cost center to a revenue driver, without the Hail Marys, the guesswork, or the ghosting.

Stop hoping customers will stay. Build the motion that makes staying – and growing – the obvious choice.

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About the author:

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Stijn Smet is the Head of Customer Success at Whale and one of the industry’s most recognized CS voices. As the host of the Customer Success Hotline and We Fucked Up So You Don’t Have To podcasts, he’s known for his bold, practical take on onboarding, retention, and revenue growth. With years of hands-on experience across global CS roles, Stijn is passionate about elevating the profession and helping teams deliver real, measurable customer impact.