One of the first challenges for anyone new to Customer Success is getting to grips with the terminology. Much of it gets distilled into acronyms that teams rely on day to day. Below is a summary of the key acronyms used across Customer Success and related departments.
Health & Retention
- NPS – Net Promoter Score
- CSAT – Customer Satisfaction Score
- CES – Customer Effort Score
- CHI – Customer Health Index
Revenue Metrics
- ARR – Annual Recurring Revenue
- MRR – Monthly Recurring Revenue
- NRR – Net Revenue Retention
- GRR – Gross Revenue Retention
- LTV / CLV – Lifetime Value / Customer Lifetime Value
- ACV – Annual Contract Value
- TCV – Total Contract Value
Churn & Expansion
- NDR – Net Dollar Retention
- GDR – Gross Dollar Retention
- EWS – Early Warning System
Processes & Frameworks
- QBR – Quarterly Business Review
- EBR – Executive Business Review
- VOC – Voice of the Customer
- CSM – Customer Success Manager
- CSS – Customer Success Score (or Customer Support Specialist)
- POC – Point of Contact (or Proof of Concept)
- MBR – Monthly Business Review
- SLA – Service Level Agreement
- ROI – Return on Investment
Onboarding & Adoption
- TTV – Time to Value
- TTR – Time to Resolution
- DAU / MAU – Daily / Monthly Active Users
- PQL – Product Qualified Lead
Sales & CRM
- ICP – Ideal Customer Profile
- CRM – Customer Relationship Management
- CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost
- CSQL – Customer Success Qualified Lead
- SQL – Sales Qualified Lead
- MQL – Marketing Qualified Lead