Case Study: The Champion Dependency Score

Our company had a long and successful relationship with a champion at a customer account. Jessica knew our platform inside out, had trained her team, and every conversation went through her. She fixed every problem, handled every renewal question, and fought for us at every point. But then her company also recognized her value, and promoted her. Good news for Jessica, bad news for us. Her replacement had never heard of us. We lost a $120K income stream because of that promotion, and learned to monitor a key metric across our entire customers base. I call it the Champion Dependency Score.

Realization: An At-Risk Customer

Reality set in with the arrival of an email from our customer. “Hi Kelly, I’m taking over for Jessica. Can you send me some information about what you do for us? Also, we’re reviewing all our software spend this quarter.” It hit me: we didn’t have a customer relationship. We had a Jessica relationship.

I did a panic audit that night, a Single Point of Failure Analysis for that Jessica account:

Who introduced us to the company? (Jessica)
Who runs internal training? (Jessica)
Who handles our invoices/renewals? (Jessica)
Who do we text when there’s an issue? (Jessica)
Who attends our quarterly business reviews? (Jessica)

Score: 5/5 = 100% dependency on the Jessica relationship. We were clearly at-risk with that customer.

Three months later, Jessica’s replacement churned us. Despite our best efforts, they went with a “simpler” solution. Why? There was no one inside that company who could explain why we mattered. Looking further: where else might we be at risk?

The Champion Dependency Score

I applied the same Single Point of Failure analysis questions across our entire customer base, and blanched at the result. Out of our top 20 accounts, 14 had scores over 70%. There was $1.8M ARR dependent upon a single person in each account.

The Jessica loss forced us to create the Champion Dependency Score, We determined that if a customer account score was:

0–20% = We could probably survive a champion’s departure
21–50% = Some risk, possibly manageable
51–80% = High risk — widen relationships now
81–100% = Crisis mode — one change away from churn

Our CDS scores changed how we manage those vital relationships with the customers. Now:

For every meeting, we work to get 2+ customer attendees
We create maps for contacts in IT, Finance, End Users, and Leadership
Our QBRs include the champion’s boss
We track “relationship breadth” as part of our health score

Lessons Learned

The hardest lesson was the realization that the stronger your champion feels, the more dangerous it is. Jessica loved us so much she kept it all on her plate. When she left that role, so did our value. Now I ask my CSMs: If your main contact vanished tomorrow, who else would fight to keep us?

If the answer is “no one,” you’re not managing a customer. You’re managing a single point of failure.

Kelly McGuire

Kelly McGuire is a passionate CX leader with demonstrated success in building and scaling high-performance go-to-market teams as well as navigating enterprise-level customer relationships. Over the last 15+ years, Kelly has led global Customer teams at fast-growing SaaS organizations, driving top line revenue impact, operational efficiency and organizational excellence. She is driven by coaching & guiding teams, helping businesses solve challenges, align objectives to company goals and obtain measurable results. In her spare time, she’s an avid traveler and music lover.