Customer Engine

Customer Success for B2B that keeps what Sales wins.

Q: What is a healthy NRR for B2B?

Above 110 per cent is healthy, above 120 per cent is excellent, below 100 per cent you are bleeding out. NRR (net revenue retention) is what remains of your existing customer base after expansion, price increases and churn. Below 100 per cent means new business must first plug holes before it contributes to growth. An expensive way to stand still.

Q: How do you measure churn if you are not a SaaS business?

Not via cancel rate, but via revenue retention. For service contracts you look at wallet share per client: are we getting more or less work this year than last year? For product companies you look at repeat purchase window: how much time sits between orders? The calculation differs, the discipline is the same: measure whether your customer portfolio is growing or quietly draining away.

Q: What does a service engagement cost?

Bespoke per situation. Scope depends on how many customer tiers you have, whether a health score is already running, and whether the QBR cadence is included from the start. Many clients land this in a RevOps-as-a-Service retainer where strategy and execution come together. Book a call and we will put together a proposal for your situation.

Q: What is the difference between Customer Success and Account Management?

Customer Success is proactive and data-driven: health score, adoption milestones, onboarding discipline. Account Management is reactive and commercial: renewals, pricing conversations, expansion. Both are needed, but they are different competencies. Do not put them in the same person, the commercial side will always win and adoption will stall.

Q: From what client count does a CS system make sense?

Practically from around 30 active B2B clients with an ARR above 10k. Below that number you can still work high-touch without structure. Above it you need a system, otherwise you lose oversight and the first clients quietly leave without anyone noticing.

Q: Do you only work in HubSpot Service Hub?

No. HubSpot is our preference. We are a Platinum Partner and the connection with Sales Hub and Marketing Hub is mature. But we also work in Zendesk, Intercom or native CRM ticketing when that is the existing stack. On process, we are vendor-agnostic. What matters: service data comes back into the same report as sales data, otherwise service stays a silo.

Q: What are early warning signals for churn?

Login frequency dropping, ticket tone revealing frustration, emails going unanswered, NPS score shifting from 8 to 6, executive contact disappearing. Customers rarely leave without signals, you just have to measure them and consolidate them into a health score per account. Only then do you see it in time to act.

Customer Success, retention and service process for B2B organisations that want to halve their churn and push their NRR above 110 per cent. Service is not a cost centre for us, it is the second pipeline. Upsell, cross-sell and referrals from a customer base you genuinely know.

Book a service call Take the Maturity Scan first

What we deliver

01
Service architecture Tickets, SLAs, knowledge base and self-service in HubSpot Service Hub
02
NPS, CSAT & feedback loop Measurement cadence that shows exactly what customers earn you
03
Customer Agent live First-line deflection via chat and email, aligned with your knowledge base

Service work delivered for

The observation

Churn figures sit in the leadership deck, the save rate appears nowhere.

The B2B benchmark for churn sits around 15 to 25 per cent per year. The average save rate is below 10 per cent. That gap does not mean customers leave because of the product, it means nobody sees in time that they are planning to leave. Health scores are not running or are on the default template, NPS scores are sent out but not followed up, and the QBR is an hour of looking back rather than a conversation about the next quarter.

We do it differently. Customer Success for us is a system with measurement moments, ownership and a fixed cadence. Save flows do not start at the cancellation email, they start at the first red signal in the health score. And service data comes back into the same report as sales data, so retention and expansion are managed from the same dashboard.

15-25%

Average B2B churn per year

Average B2B churn per year, save rate below 10 per cent. Customers leave before anyone talks about expansion.

90 days

First 90 days determine retention

The first 90 days determine the bulk of retention. Onboarding discipline is not a luxury, it is the foundation of NRR.

Health scores actively configured

Health scores actively configured in most accounts. The data is there, the signal is not.

<100%

NRR below 100% means new business plugs holes

NRR below 100 per cent means new business must first plug holes before it contributes to growth. An expensive way to stand still.

Service does not stand apart from Sales and Marketing. The won handover is a real process, not a Slack message. What becomes visible in service about a customer goes back to Sales for expansion conversations and to Marketing for case material and referrals. A good service loop is your cheapest pipeline. If you want to pick up those signals early without your CS team going through every account daily, we put the Customer Agent on top of your health score model for proactive follow-up.

On tooling, we work primarily in HubSpot Service Hub. We are a Platinum Partner and the connection with Sales Hub and Marketing Hub is mature. On strategy, we are vendor-agnostic. Whether you are in Zendesk, Intercom or native CRM ticketing, the service process comes first, the tooling follows. For the implementation itself, see our HubSpot Service Hub implementation under the CRM pillar.

What you get in a service engagement

Service process documentation per customer tier
Health score model per account
Customer Success playbook with QBR format
NPS and CSAT measurement cadence with follow-up
Churn save flows in HubSpot
Feedback loop from service to Sales and Marketing

Our disciplines

Where we deliver service work

Five disciplines, each a standalone service or together forming an ongoing service retainer. Click a discipline to learn more.

Process

Service Process Design

The service process mapped out before it lands in a tool. Won handover from Sales, onboarding per customer tier, ticket types with SLAs, escalation paths and the cadence of QBR and business review. Not 12 stages nobody sticks to, but a workable flow with clear ownership.

We design on one page and only then translate to HubSpot Service Hub, Zendesk or Intercom. The process comes first, the tooling follows. Service data comes back into the same report as sales data, otherwise service remains a silo.

More about Service Process Design

Retention

Customer Success and Onboarding

NRR, retention and the first 90 days steered together via a health score and playbooks. Onboarding discipline, QBR cadence, the measurement rhythm of adoption milestones, all in a running programme rather than isolated incidents.

Health score per account based on usage, sentiment, support history and commercial signals, with automatic alerting on a colour change. Green accounts get expansion playbooks, red accounts go through save flow first. Customer Success as a system, not as an incident.

More about Customer Success

Save

Churn Prevention and Retention

Early warning set on login frequency, sentiment, payment discipline and executive contact. Save flows per risk level, rather than panic when the cancellation email arrives. Plus the discipline to debrief every lost account, so the signal is picked up earlier next time.

We build the signals in HubSpot, connect them to the health score from the CS programme, and make sure the right person intervenes at the right moment. Customers rarely leave without signals, you just have to measure them.

More about Churn Prevention

Self-service

Customer Portal and Self-service

A knowledge base that actually gets used, not an article graveyard. Deflection of simple tickets to self-service, so the service team has time for the conversations that matter. Plus a customer portal where contracts, invoices and service status sit in one place.

For larger user bases we build community approaches: a place where users help each other, with moderation and clear escalation paths. Cheaper than scaling support, and it builds loyalty that no marketing campaign can match.

More about Customer Portal

Measure

Feedback Loops (NPS, CSAT, CES)

NPS, CSAT and CES surveys sent at the right touchpoints, and then actually followed up. Detractors get a follow-up, promoters are activated for advocacy, and the signals feed into the health score per account.

We build the survey architecture in HubSpot or Delighted, connect the scores to deal and ticket data, and make sure the CS team knows who to call on Monday morning. Measurement discipline without follow-up discipline is just noise.

More about Feedback Loops

Case, Thanqs · Thanqs

Van losse tools naar een pipeline die de directie vertrouwt

Personal gifts that automatically reach the right customer.

The client wanted to take relationship management to the next level with thoughtful gifts at moments that matter, without the team spending hours on it each week. The ambition was there, the system was not. Gifts went out manually, or not at all.

We connected HubSpot to Thanqs, which sends personalised gifts at contact level. The integration triggers on lifecycle events: a deal marked as won, an approaching contract anniversary, a year-end moment for top accounts. Per segment, the gift, the message and the timing are set in advance. Execution runs without anyone pressing a button.

Result: customers who feel seen at the right moment, a high response rate on structured touchpoints, and a team that no longer has to remember who deserves a gift and when.

Read the full story

B2B, Customer Engagement · Client contact

0 min

manual work per gift

3 triggers

automatically activated

100%

personalisation at contact level

The service team

Who delivers service work at Addmark

For service and retention engagements you work with Carsten and Kim. Kim designs the segmentation, health score and playbooks with your team. Carsten builds the workflows, health score reporting and QBR templates in HubSpot.

Carsten Huiskamp

Consultant & online marketer

Builds the health score, churn save flows and QBR reporting in HubSpot Service Hub. Translates the playbook into workflows the service team actually uses. Also trains CS and support teams on the new setup.
Kim Loonen

Consultant & online marketer

Runs the customer segmentation, designs the CS playbook and QBR cadence together with your team. Returns for the quarterly review to sharpen things up. Works with both B2B SaaS clients and professional services firms.

Frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions about Service

Questions we often get, with answers you can use to get your leadership team on board.

What is a healthy NRR for B2B?

Above 110 per cent is healthy, above 120 per cent is excellent, below 100 per cent you are bleeding out. NRR (net revenue retention) is what remains of your existing customer base after expansion, price increases and churn. Below 100 per cent means new business must first plug holes before it contributes to growth. An expensive way to stand still.

How do you measure churn if you are not a SaaS business?

Not via cancel rate, but via revenue retention. For service contracts you look at wallet share per client: are we getting more or less work this year than last year? For product companies you look at repeat purchase window: how much time sits between orders? The calculation differs, the discipline is the same: measure whether your customer portfolio is growing or quietly draining away.

What does a service engagement cost?

Bespoke per situation. Scope depends on how many customer tiers you have, whether a health score is already running, and whether the QBR cadence is included from the start. Many clients land this in a RevOps-as-a-Service retainer where strategy and execution come together. Book a call and we will put together a proposal for your situation.

What is the difference between Customer Success and Account Management?

Customer Success is proactive and data-driven: health score, adoption milestones, onboarding discipline. Account Management is reactive and commercial: renewals, pricing conversations, expansion. Both are needed, but they are different competencies. Do not put them in the same person, the commercial side will always win and adoption will stall.

From what client count does a CS system make sense?

Practically from around 30 active B2B clients with an ARR above 10k. Below that number you can still work high-touch without structure. Above it you need a system, otherwise you lose oversight and the first clients quietly leave without anyone noticing.

Do you only work in HubSpot Service Hub?

No. HubSpot is our preference. We are a Platinum Partner and the connection with Sales Hub and Marketing Hub is mature. But we also work in Zendesk, Intercom or native CRM ticketing when that is the existing stack. On process, we are vendor-agnostic. What matters: service data comes back into the same report as sales data, otherwise service stays a silo.

What are early warning signals for churn?