https://sixteenventures.com Expansion revenue and customer lifetime value by Lincoln Murphy, who named and popularized Customer Success in 2010. Fifteen years on growth and retention. en-us Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/theyre-not-disengaged/ https://sixteenventures.com/theyre-not-disengaged/ A customer who stops engaging usually gets filed as not invested. More often they lost the thread early, and deciding it doesn't matter is the cheapest way out of feeling like they should have understood. Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/retention-number-measuring-your-calendar/ https://sixteenventures.com/retention-number-measuring-your-calendar/ Two people can pull defensible retention numbers from the same data and reach opposite conclusions. Usually it is metrics built for one revenue model applied to a different one, plus cohort windows nobody checked. Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/qualify-against-a-role-that-doesnt-exist/ https://sixteenventures.com/qualify-against-a-role-that-doesnt-exist/ Most companies hiring their first CS person write the scope before they meet anyone, which means there was never a bar to screen against. Willingness becomes the criterion by default. Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/the-confidence-question/ https://sixteenventures.com/the-confidence-question/ A leading indicator of customer success. Churn is a decision about the future, so ask customers what they believe about next quarter. Anything less than 100% confidence is a red flag. Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/a-tool-for-everything-a-system-for-nothing/ https://sixteenventures.com/a-tool-for-everything-a-system-for-nothing/ Building customer-facing tools is close to free now, which is genuinely good. Then three people build the same logic in three places, it drifts, and one day somebody leaves with it. Tue, 04 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/bring-proof-not-feelings/ https://sixteenventures.com/bring-proof-not-feelings/ For the individual contributor who can see a customer getting a bad automated experience and lacks the authority to halt it. Concerns do not travel upward. Proof with a number attached does. Tue, 04 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/fast-garbage-is-still-garbage/ https://sixteenventures.com/fast-garbage-is-still-garbage/ Agentic workflows learn. The problem is what yours is learning from. A closed loop reviews its own prior output while every real signal the customer gave you sits outside the system, and it calls that improvement. Tue, 04 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/looks-like-ai-is-a-context-problem/ https://sixteenventures.com/looks-like-ai-is-a-context-problem/ When a customer says your work reads like AI, they are almost never pointing at formatting. They are pointing at generic, and generic is what thin input produces. The AI did not fail you. Tue, 04 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/slow-down-to-speed-up/ https://sixteenventures.com/slow-down-to-speed-up/ AI can deliver the appropriate experience at a scale we never had before. It delivers the wrong one just as fast. Three traps from real engagements, and the rule underneath all of them. Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/you-didnt-run-a-test/ https://sixteenventures.com/you-didnt-run-a-test/ A test requires a decision that changes based on the outcome. Without that you have the costume of rigor and none of the function, and at low volume the readout would have been noise anyway. Worse, the format destroys the only kind of signal small samples can actually produce. Fri, 31 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/overwhelm-looks-like-resistance/ https://sixteenventures.com/overwhelm-looks-like-resistance/ Customer onboarding fails the way a bad explanation fails. The content is right and the pacing is wrong. Then the person stops moving and we explain it with their character instead of our delivery, and that misdiagnosis is the expensive part. Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/customers-who-left-are-not-customers-who-stayed/ https://sixteenventures.com/customers-who-left-are-not-customers-who-stayed/ Churn data describes churners. After a bad wave, executives read the exit reasons and quietly apply them to everyone still paying. Those are two different populations, and the thing that made the second group stay is the same thing that makes them worth asking. Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/the-ceiling-was-never-real/ https://sixteenventures.com/the-ceiling-was-never-real/ Customers who outgrow you usually hit a ceiling that does not exist. Nothing stopped them. Somebody else told them what was possible, and you did not. Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:30:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/statistical-significance-is-a-stalling-technique/ https://sixteenventures.com/statistical-significance-is-a-stalling-technique/ You cannot act until you have a hundred customers. It is always more customers than you currently have, which is the tell. Convergence validates, not volume, and the evidence bar should scale with reversibility rather than sample size. Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/the-win-back-trap/ https://sixteenventures.com/the-win-back-trap/ Where the focus goes, the energy flows. Fill the calendar with save calls and win-back campaigns and your team becomes expert in goodbye, while the upstream failures that manufacture the crises keep running untouched. Sat, 25 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/churned-customers-are-not-money-in-the-bank/ https://sixteenventures.com/churned-customers-are-not-money-in-the-bank/ The churned-customer pile is a debt ledger, not an asset. Solvable and recoverable are different properties: solvable for everyone still here, recoverable for no one already gone. The decision is the event horizon. Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/good-work-doesnt-renew-itself/ https://sixteenventures.com/good-work-doesnt-renew-itself/ Delivery is necessary, not sufficient. A renewal is an orchestrated moment, not an invoice event, and even genuine results churn ugly when the moment goes unmanaged. Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/the-top-performer-exemption/ https://sixteenventures.com/the-top-performer-exemption/ When data contradicts your top performer, what happens next is the best predictor of whether any revenue discipline survives your org. Leaderboard status buys immunity from instrumentation, and every downstream system inherits the exception. Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/why-your-csm-cant-fix-expansion/ https://sixteenventures.com/why-your-csm-cant-fix-expansion/ Expansion initiatives fail when they start below the altitude where ownership and comp get decided. No training fixes an org-design problem. A piece written to be forwarded upward. Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/what-customers-fear-is-certainty/ https://sixteenventures.com/what-customers-fear-is-certainty/ Customers hate surprises, unknowns and repeating themselves. What they fear is certainty about themselves. Updated with the part that was missing: a certainty is already in place before the answer arrives, and there is no branch where it gets worse. Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000