CLIENT RESULTS · LEADERSHIP TEAM EXECUTION CASE STUDY
Global fintech software · 1,200 FTE · ~$90M annual revenue · enterprise B2B SaaS
Seven leaders. Seven definitions of a healthy customer. One scoreboard.
Ten weeks later: five lead metrics, five named owners, and an operating rhythm the team put into use.
7
Leadership interviews
76
Survey responses reviewed
12
Leaders
4
Countries
The ambition
A newly installed Chief Customer Officer inherited a distributed customer organization spanning multiple functions and regions.
She wanted the leadership team to become more metrics- and action-oriented: clearer priorities, consistent measures, stronger ownership, and a repeatable way to execute.
She already understood the direction.
What she needed was evidence of where the system was breaking down, and a mechanism the team could actually run.
"There's no real cascading of KPIs or common ways that we measure and talk about things or common dashboards."
Chief Customer Officer · Global fintech software company
The diagnostic made the gap measurable
0/7
leaders interviewed could describe a shared, formal picture of customer health.
Based on seven leadership interviews, 76 existing anonymous survey responses, and review of the organization's strategy materials.
From diagnosis to operating system
Diagnose
Seven leadership interviews plus existing organizational data.
Pre-build
Draft KPI, decision-rights, and governance structures before the working session.
Decide
Senior leaders pressure-tested the operating system together.
Name ownership
A lead measure and accountable owner were established for each stage.
Recalibrate
Follow-up sessions tested whether the system survived real operating conditions.
One customer journey. One visible scoreboard.
5 stages.
5 lead metrics.
5 named owners.
Customer journey stage
Lead measure
Solution Alignment
Win rate
Implementation
CSAT
Hypercare
Extension rate
Adoption
Health score
Optimization
Health score
What changed
Measurement
Before
No shared definition of customer health.
After
Five lead metrics mapped to the customer journey.
Ownership
Before
Escalations depended heavily on the Chief Customer Officer.
After
Named owners and a standing forum for at-risk accounts.
Operating rhythm
Before
Fragmented initiative tracking.
After
KPIs live in Microsoft Planner with an explicit weekly, monthly, and strategic cadence.
The team moved the KPIs into Planner and began running the new operating rhythm.
We also identified what this engagement wasn’t going to fix
Some operating friction sat outside the team’s authority, including engineering workflow and executive-level incentive structures.
Close Cohen separated those issues from the work the leadership team could actually change.
Measure the work you can influence. Name the constraints you can’t.
What does your leadership team measure, and who owns it?
If the answer changes depending on which leader you ask, that is useful information.
We’ll start with what the team is trying to accomplish, what currently gets measured, and where execution becomes difficult to see.
Reviewed by Laura Close, Founder — Close Cohen Career Consulting.
Last updated: