https://sixteenventures.com Articles on Customer Success, SaaS growth, retention, and maximizing lifetime value by Lincoln Murphy. en-us Fri, 10 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/retention-expansion-advocacy-are-not-behaviors/ https://sixteenventures.com/retention-expansion-advocacy-are-not-behaviors/ What behavior, specifically, drives your retention rate? Not engagement. Not health score. A specific, observable action that a customer either took or didn't take. If you can't name it, you can't engineer it. Fri, 10 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/health-scores-are-destroying-your-signal/ https://sixteenventures.com/health-scores-are-destroying-your-signal/ The aggregate health score might be the thing most quietly destroying your ability to actually understand your customers. It averages out the signal — and creates a false sense of coverage. Thu, 09 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/the-tools-have-boxed-us-in/ https://sixteenventures.com/the-tools-have-boxed-us-in/ We built a profession on a broken premise, staffed it with exceptional people doing the wrong work, and handed them a tech stack that locked them into doing both those things the way the software wanted them done. Wed, 08 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/the-best-people-are-doing-the-wrong-work/ https://sixteenventures.com/the-best-people-are-doing-the-wrong-work/ The most relationship-driven, strategically capable people in your company are spending a significant portion of their day on work that has nothing to do with relationships, empathy, or strategy. Tue, 07 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/the-broken-premise/ https://sixteenventures.com/the-broken-premise/ Customer Success was built on one core activity: getting customers to do things they don't want to do, can't do, and won't do well enough to get the outcome they came for. That's not a people problem. It's a design failure. Mon, 06 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/the-three-structural-failures-of-customer-success/ https://sixteenventures.com/the-three-structural-failures-of-customer-success/ Customer Success is harder than it needs to be. Not because of bad people or bad intentions. Because the profession was built on three structural failures that nobody talks about — and they've been compounding against every CS team since the beginning. Wed, 25 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/best-practices-isnt-a-standard/ https://sixteenventures.com/best-practices-isnt-a-standard/ Every CS tool will tell you they want to help you implement best practices. Here's the thing that should make every CS leader pause: every CS platform has its own set of best practices. And they're all different. Tue, 24 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/the-handoff-is-where-cs-goes-to-die/ https://sixteenventures.com/the-handoff-is-where-cs-goes-to-die/ I've done root cause analysis on churn at hundreds of companies. One thing comes up more consistently than almost anything else: the relationship was damaged before Customer Success ever touched it. Mon, 23 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/agentic-cs-is-customer-success/ https://sixteenventures.com/agentic-cs-is-customer-success/ Some people want me to just focus on CS. Cool. Let's talk about CS. Because what I'm describing with agentic workflows isn't a departure from Customer Success. It's the infrastructure CS always deserved. Sun, 22 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/orchestrated-expansion/ https://sixteenventures.com/orchestrated-expansion/ Most CS teams approach expansion reactively — and find out the customer was ready three months ago when the customer brings it up themselves. Orchestrated expansion changes that. Sat, 21 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/customer-success-built-on-broken-assumption/ https://sixteenventures.com/customer-success-built-on-broken-assumption/ We built entire CS organizations around getting customers to do things they didn't want to do, couldn't do, or were structurally never going to do. AI didn't create this problem. It just made it impossible to ignore. Fri, 20 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/the-customer-was-never-the-problem/ https://sixteenventures.com/the-customer-was-never-the-problem/ The customer was not the problem. The customer was the bottleneck. Those are not the same thing. And when you understand the difference, 15 years of Customer Success history looks completely different. Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/your-cs-tools-were-built-for-someone-elses-company/ https://sixteenventures.com/your-cs-tools-were-built-for-someone-elses-company/ Every tool you bought made the same silent demand: adapt to us. Your operating model bent to fit the product. The product never bent to fit you. Agentic workflows are the first real alternative. Wed, 18 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/you-cant-vibe-code-the-judgment/ https://sixteenventures.com/you-cant-vibe-code-the-judgment/ Everyone is rushing to build agentic CS workflows right now. Most of them are going to build something useless faster than they've ever built anything before. The technology executes your understanding. It doesn't replace it. Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/your-humanity-is-the-moat/ https://sixteenventures.com/your-humanity-is-the-moat/ The mistake companies are already making with agentic AI: treating it as a replacement strategy. Your humanity is your moat. Not your platform. Not your playbooks. Agentic workflows don't replace the human moment. They clear the runway so it can actually land. Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/the-question-customer-success-never-asked/ https://sixteenventures.com/the-question-customer-success-never-asked/ For 15 years, Customer Success was organized around one question: how do we get customers to do what they need to do? That question is gone. And the new one changes everything. Sun, 15 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/yes-i-talk-about-ai-heres-why/ https://sixteenventures.com/yes-i-talk-about-ai-heres-why/ Is AI the only thing going on in Customer Success right now? No. And also yes. But not for the reason you think. Sat, 14 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/cant-ask-for-active-listening-and-bury-csms-in-busywork/ https://sixteenventures.com/cant-ask-for-active-listening-and-bury-csms-in-busywork/ Active listening is the most important skill a CSM can have. But most CS operating models destroy the conditions that make it possible. Agentic workflows fix the conditions. Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/agentic-workflows-arent-tech-touch/ https://sixteenventures.com/agentic-workflows-arent-tech-touch/ Every time I talk about agentic workflows in Customer Success, someone asks: isn't this just tech touch with a better interface? It isn't. And confusing the two is going to cost CS leaders who make that mistake. Thu, 12 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000 https://sixteenventures.com/your-people-are-your-moat/ https://sixteenventures.com/your-people-are-your-moat/ As AI makes technology easier to build and replicate, the technology itself becomes less differentiated. The human elements of the customer relationship become more valuable, not less. Here's the commercial argument. Wed, 11 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000