Customers
Three customer success teams, three numbers.
More than 300 customer success teams at B2B SaaS companies run on Harbor Desk. Here are three of them: what was going wrong, what they changed, and what happened. The numbers are theirs, and they agreed to publish them.
Case study · Tidewater Freight
Tidewater Freight cut gross churn 18% in 12 months.
The company. Tidewater Freight makes shipment visibility software for mid-size logistics companies. 600 employees, 1,400 customer accounts, a customer success team of 22 CSMs.
The problem. Churn arrived as a surprise. The team's health score was a CRM formula nobody trusted, so CSMs ignored it and worked from memory. Most at-risk accounts were spotted less than 30 days before renewal, which is too late to change anything.
What they did. Tidewater's CS Operations lead rebuilt the score in Harbor Desk Health Scores around four signals that their own renewal history showed mattered: weekly active users against seats, tracking-API errors, escalated tickets and executive sponsor changes. They back-tested it against eight quarters of renewals before turning it on, then launched three Playbooks: sponsor change, usage drop and pre-renewal review at 120 days.
The result. Gross churn fell 18% in the first 12 months. At-risk accounts now turn amber about 70 days earlier than before, and the sponsor change Playbook alone saved 31 accounts in its first year.
"We used to find out an account was at risk when the cancellation email arrived. Now the health score turns amber about 70 days earlier, and the playbook has already put it on my team's list."
Case study · Northwind Analytics
Northwind Analytics raised net revenue retention from 104% to 113%.
The company. Northwind Analytics sells a business intelligence platform to finance and operations teams. 1,100 employees, 2,100 accounts across SMB and enterprise segments, 40 CSMs and a four-person CS Operations team.
The problem. Retention was fine. Expansion was not. CSMs spent their time defending renewals and had no consistent way to spot accounts ready to buy more, so expansion depended on which CSM you happened to have.
What they did. Northwind built two Harbor Desk scoring models, one per segment, and added an expansion signal: teams inside an account using the product without their own licenses. A Growth Playbook now opens an expansion task and drafts a note for the account executive whenever that signal fires on a healthy account. EBR decks include a recommended next step, which is often the expansion.
The result. Net revenue retention rose 9 points, from 104% to 113%, over four quarters. CSM-sourced expansion pipeline doubled.
"Our CSMs stopped arguing with the score in the second week. It shows its working, so the conversation moved from 'is this right' to 'what do we do about it'."
Case study · Lighthouse Payroll
Lighthouse Payroll cut EBR prep from 6 hours to 40 minutes.
The company. Lighthouse Payroll provides payroll and benefits software to companies with 50 to 500 employees. 300 employees, 650 accounts, 12 CSMs.
The problem. Every quarterly business review took a CSM most of a day: exporting usage, building charts, copying support numbers and writing a story around them. Twelve CSMs, 650 accounts and quarterly reviews for the top 200 meant the team spent around 1,200 hours a quarter on slides.
What they did. Lighthouse moved its EBRs into the Harbor Desk EBR Builder with their own brand template. Goals are now captured at kickoff and tracked automatically, so the deck shows progress without anyone digging for it.
The result. EBR prep fell from about 6 hours to 40 minutes per deck. The team now runs reviews for its top 350 accounts instead of 200, with the same headcount.
"I got roughly a thousand hours a quarter back for my team. They spend it talking to customers, which was the point of having a customer success team in the first place."
See churn coming. Act before renewal.
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