Why Churn Is a Supply Problem, Not a Support Problem

I didn't start my career in Customer Success (CS). I started in supply chain — S&OP, demand planning, capacity forecasting and inventory management. Spreadsheets full of variance analysis, not QBRs.

When I moved into CS leadership, I expected the skills to transfer loosely. Instead, they transferred almost exactly.

Most people assume CS is just a relationship function. The best CS orgs I've seen also run it like a forecasting function. I call this the S&OP lens, and it comes down to three parallels I lean on constantly.

Churn is a supply problem

In supply chain, you don't wait for a stockout to explain what happened — you build a forecast that predicts the shortfall before it hits. Churn works the same way. If your CS org is only explaining churn after it happens, you're doing post-mortems instead of planning.

Segmentation is a capacity problem

You can't give every account the same coverage any more than you'd staff every SKU the same way. Some accounts need high-touch management; others need a lighter, more automated model. Segmentation isn't a nice-to-have — it's capacity planning applied to a book of accounts.

Health scores are a forecast, not a report card

A report card tells you what already happened. A forecast tells you what's coming. If your health scores are only used to explain last quarter's churn, you've built a rearview mirror. The best teams use them to predict who's at risk before the renewal conversation ever gets uncomfortable.

I didn't expect my outsider background to become my biggest advantage in this field. It did.

I write about the intersection of operations thinking and Customer Success — if this resonated, I'd love to hear how you've seen (or resisted) more operational rigor in CS in your own org.