Noticing before they decide.

Use states, not scores

A health score of 64 produces a shrug. "At risk: an unresolved complaint, negative feedback, and a renewal in 28 days" produces a phone call. If somebody cannot read the reason in ten seconds and know what to do, the model has failed regardless of how sophisticated it is.

Weight your own failures highest

A broken promise and a missed response target should count for more than the customer's contact volume, because those are the things you control and the things customers actually remember. A customer contacting you often may simply be engaged.

Behaviour beats sentiment

Resist scoring the tone of messages. Writing style varies enormously by person, culture and language, and a politely worded cancellation is still a cancellation. Contacting you three times about the same thing is a fact; sounding annoyed is an interpretation.

• Repeat contact about the same issue
• Unresolved complaints, and how long they have been open
• Promises made and missed
• Response targets missed
• Negative feedback, especially after a resolution
• Proximity to a renewal or contract decision

The ninety days before a renewal decide it

Service history across the whole year is interesting; service history in the renewal window is predictive. Measure that window specifically, and flag it with enough notice that somebody can still fix something.

Needs attention is where the value is

At risk is often too late — the customer has already formed a view. The state worth building a process around is the one before it, where something has started going wrong and a conversation still changes the outcome.

Alert on the transition, not the volume

An account changing state is worth telling somebody about. Another ordinary case from an ordinary account is not. Teams that get alerted on everything learn to ignore alerts within about three weeks.

Look at segments, not just accounts

When health is poor across a group — one plan, one acquisition channel, one cohort — the cause is a product or process problem rather than a relationship one, and fixing it helps every customer in that group rather than one.

Describe the account, never the person

Health describes how a relationship is going. It must not become a characterisation of a customer as difficult or demanding — that is unfair, it is usually wrong, and it changes how your team treats somebody before they have said a word.