Global – October 12, 2026 -- Customers who log in daily, attend every training session and open every email can still be unhealthy accounts, according to Marley Wagner, head of customer success programs and strategy at EverHealth. She argues that health scores should measure whether customers achieve what they bought the product to do, not how active they are.
Wagner replaces single-category scoring with five dimensions
The framework combines product adoption, business outcomes, relationships, customer sentiment, and support and operational health. The right mix varies by industry, company size, maturity and customer tenure. A score does not need to include every criterion.
Adoption is judged against each customer's own goals, not feature popularity
The adoption lens asks whether customers use the features and workflows tied to business value as they define it, and how quickly they reached that value. That pace may differ from the company's internal time-to-value measure. Use of the standard, newest or most popular features matters less, because that functionality may not apply to the customer's goals.
Onboarding milestones and measurable ROI anchor the outcomes lens
Customer success managers (CSMs) should check whether accounts have reached the milestones set during onboarding, show measurable return on investment and are progressing toward their stated objectives. Deviations from the standard process should trigger outreach. A different route does not automatically put a customer at risk.
Relationships beyond a single champion carry more weight than QBR attendance
Wagner points to three checks: whether key stakeholders, including the executive sponsor, join strategic conversations; whether the vendor has relationships beyond one champion; and whether key contacts have recently changed or left. A quarterly business review reveals little on its own, because stakeholders must engage, not just attend.
CSAT and NPS arrive too late to carry sentiment alone
CSAT captures a single moment, and a bad NPS score often comes too late to act on. Wagner instead points to what the CSM hears in conversations, how executives view the partnership, and whether renewal talks are becoming more positive or more cautious.
Ticket resolution quality outweighs ticket volume in support health
Comparing ticket volume between churned and renewed accounts can sometimes reveal meaningful patterns, but the number matters less than how the tickets were resolved. The support lens also tracks whether onboarding is progressing as mutually agreed and whether recurring problems prevent customers from realizing value.