/cs:cco-review — CCO Forcing Questions

/cs:cco-review — CCO Forcing Questions

Command: /cs:cco-review <plan>

The retention-obsessed CCO pressure-tests any plan that touches customer experience. Six questions before any retention claim, segmentation change, CS team expansion, or major CS hire.

When to Run

• Before any board narrative that includes a retention number
• Before approving a CS team headcount expansion
• Before re-segmenting the customer base or changing tier definitions
• Before launching a customer marketing or advocacy program
• Before a major CS hire (CSM, AM, Implementation, Customer Marketing)
• When NRR is "great" but churn complaints from CSMs are increasing
• Before deciding whether to add an AM role separate from CSM

The Six CCO Questions

1. What's the GROSS retention rate?

Not NRR. Gross. NRR can hide a leaky bucket behind expansion.

• GRR healthy ≥ 90% at growth stage, ≥ 95% at scale
• If GRR < 85% but NRR > 100%, the product is failing for 15%+ of customers; expansion is masking the failure
• Run retention_decomposition_analyzer.py

2. What's the #1 reason customers leave?

If you can't name it, you don't understand churn.

• 7-category taxonomy: product_fit / competitor_loss / no_value_realized / pricing / champion_left / company_event / tactical_failure
• Preventable churn = product_fit + no_value_realized + tactical_failure
• If preventable > 50%, CS has clear leverage; if < 30%, churn is structural (ICP, market, competition)

3. What's the median time-to-value (TTV) by segment?

Long TTV signals different problems by segment.

• Long TTV in low tier = ICP misfit; downgrade or kill
• Long TTV in high tier = onboarding broken; fix the Implementation Manager handoff
• TTV is a leading indicator of GRR

4. Which customer would you fire today?

If "none" — your segmentation is broken.

• Some accounts cost more than they earn (support cost > 50% of ARR + low ICP fit)
• Run customer_segmentation_designer.py to surface kill list
• The 3 paths for kill candidates: non-renewal / downgrade-to-tech-touch / raise-price-to-cost-recover

5. What's the ARR-per-CSM ratio, and is the model pooled or named?

Wrong model wastes capacity.

• Strategic: named + exec sponsor, $300K-$1M ARR/CSM
• Enterprise: named, $500K-$2M
• Mid-market: pooled, $2M-$5M
• SMB: tech-touch, $5M+
• Run cs_coverage_calculator.py to size the team

6. Is CS in your comp plan, and how is it different from Sales comp?

Misalignment is the leading indicator of CS failure.

• CS comp: 70/30 base/variable typical
• Variable: 50% gross retention + 30% net retention + 20% activity
• Anti-pattern: comp CSMs on NPS — they game it
• Anti-pattern: comp CSMs same as Sales — they sell instead of serve

Workflow

# 1. Retention decomposition (always start here)
python ../../../c-level-advisor/skills/chief-customer-officer-advisor/scripts/retention_decomposition_analyzer.py cohorts.json

# 2. Segmentation audit
python ../../../c-level-advisor/skills/chief-customer-officer-advisor/scripts/customer_segmentation_designer.py customers.json

# 3. Coverage sizing (if making CS team changes)
python ../../../c-level-advisor/skills/chief-customer-officer-advisor/scripts/cs_coverage_calculator.py book.json

Output Format

# CCO Review: <plan>
**Date:** YYYY-MM-DD

## The Decision Being Made
[one sentence — retention | segmentation | coverage | next hire]

## Retention (if applicable)
- GRR: X% (vs vanity NRR of Y%)
- Top churn driver: <category> at X% of churn
- Preventable churn: X% (CS-controllable)
- Leaky-bucket pattern? yes/no

## Segmentation (if applicable)
- Tier distribution: Strategic X / Enterprise X / Mid-market X / SMB X
- Kill list size: N customers (X% of customers, Y% of ARR)
- Upgrade candidates: N

## Coverage (if applicable)
- Current CSMs: N | Required now: M | Required 12mo: P
- Annual cost (12mo): $X
- Manager trigger fired: yes/no

## Org (if applicable)
- Next hire: <CSM | Support | AM | IM | CS Ops | Customer Marketing>
- Why this, not the alternative: <one line>
- Customer outcome unblocked: <specific>

## Verdict
🟢 SHIP | 🟡 SHARPEN | 🔴 BLOCK

## Next Steps
[3 concrete actions]

Routing

• /cs:cpo-review — if churn root cause is product_fit or no_value_realized
• /cs:cro-review — if expansion math or comp alignment is in question
• /cs:cfo-review — for CS cost commitments and retention-impact-on-revenue
• cs-chro-advisor agent — for CS hires, comp, ladder
• /cs:decide — log the verdict
• /cs:freeze 30 — on multi-year CS comp plan changes

Related

• Agent: cs-cco-advisor
• Skill: chief-customer-officer-advisor
• Adjacent: ../../../business-growth/ (tactical CS execution)

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Version: 1.0.0