From Here to There – Why Great CS Starts With the Right Map, Not Just Movement (part 1)

Before you talk inputs, motion, or orchestration, you need a map. Not a static diagram or a templated journey, but a living understanding of where the customer is now, where they could go, and what stands in the way. In Customer Success, it’s easy to confuse activity with progress. Dashboards show green lights, usage ticks upward, and AI summaries promise insight, but none of that matters if those signals don’t reflect what the customer truly needs. This article lays the groundwork for everything that follows by focusing on how we define and diagnose the customer “state.”

Author’s Note: This is Part 1 of the third installment in our series on structuring, sequencing, and eventually orchestrating Customer Success work with AI. We’ve already challenged the notion of linear CS journeys (Article 1) and introduced the Input Model, a tag-driven system for defining and deploying CS actions (Article 2). Now, before we can decide what to do (inputs and motion), we have to understand where our customers actually stand and where they could realistically go. If we can’t see that, no amount of action will produce meaningful results.

When Metrics Say One Thing, and the Customer Means Another

It’s a common trap: the dashboard looks good, usage is up, sentiment signals are green. But something isn’t landing. The customer isn’t progressing the way they should. They’re no longer escalating, but they’re also no longer expanding. There’s no urgency, just quiet drift.

This is the kind of situation where traditional health models, and even AI-powered summaries, can lead you astray. The signals you're reading aren't wrong, they're just incomplete. The customer’s goals might have evolved. Their internal team may have lost their original champion. Or perhaps they’ve hit a wall: not because of your product, but because their organization lacks the capability to realize the value that was promised.

We can’t fix this kind of gap by sending another feature tip or surfacing another dashboard. We need a better understanding of what the customer is trying to do now, what’s truly blocking them, and whether the original destination is still the right one. In other words, we need a map.

The False Confidence Problem

This is the danger of success proxies. They’re efficient, especially for AI. It’s much easier to track logins, sentiment signals, or activity scores than to map a customer’s actual strategic posture. And AI will lean into that efficiency. If a model is trained on correlation patterns between usage and renewal, it will predict success when those patterns are present, even if the underlying intent is gone.

That’s where we see teams feeling surprised by a churn that “came out of nowhere.” It didn’t. It came from overconfidence in the surface signals, and underinvestment in understanding the customer’s real position and potential.

From Reality to Results: Through the Lens of Potential

Helping a customer succeed means knowing three things:

• Where they are now

• Where they could go

• And how they might get there

Let’s call those points A, B, and the Path.

A is the customer’s current state, but not just in terms of data. It’s their goals, capabilities, internal blockers, stakeholder landscape, and recent decisions.

B is the future state the customer needs to reach, outcome achieved, value realized, within the boundaries of their ambition and constraints.

And the path? That’s motion. That’s Article 2 territory.

The danger is jumping straight to motion without defining A and B first. That’s why orientation isn’t a preamble, it’s the foundation.

The Enhance × Increase Matrix

At the core of the Input Model sits a simple but powerful 2×2 matrix:

Enhance: Is value being realized? Are we improving something that matters to the customer (e.g., efficiency, experience, time-to-market)?

Increase: Is there appetite and readiness to grow? Could this customer expand usage, deepen integration, or explore new areas?

Plotted on a grid, these two dimensions give us four distinct customer states:

• No Enhance, No Increase – At risk. No visible value, no clear upside.

• Enhance Only – Value exists, but it’s isolated. Risk of plateau or churn.

• Increase Only – Ambition exists, but results haven't landed. Risk of disillusionment.

• Enhance + Increase – The sweet spot. Proof and potential.

  
  

This matrix doesn’t just describe a state, it points to motion. Each quadrant implies a different priority: Educate, stabilize, showcase, or scale. It also serves as the foundation for reasoning: once we understand state, we can design inputs that move the customer from one quadrant to another.

But movement across the matrix isn’t automatic. Customers don’t shift from one state to another just because CS decides it’s time. There are hidden forces that either enable or block motion, what we’ll refer to as Motion Modifiers.

These modifiers don’t define where the customer is today, but they heavily influence how and whether they can progress. They include:

• Internal Limitations: budget constraints, outdated infrastructure, change fatigue, lack of executive buy-in, unclear internal ownership, siloed departments, regulatory burdens, insufficient staffing, skills gaps, competing internal priorities, internal resistance to change, IT backlog

• Internal Enablers: clear executive sponsorship, well-defined KPIs tied to product impact, cross-functional collaboration, champions in key departments, strong onboarding culture, agile internal processes, a learning-oriented culture, early wins celebrated and shared, performance management frameworks that reward adoption

• External Timing Factors: fiscal calendar constraints, procurement windows, upcoming re-orgs or leadership changes, strategic pivots or M&A activity, economic downturns, seasonal priorities, external compliance deadlines, market disruptions, new regulation or legislation, upcoming budget renewals

• Vendor-side Frictions: missing core features or integrations, slow onboarding or implementation delays, lack of localized support, inconsistent delivery quality, resource limitations on the CS/vendor side, misalignment between sales promises and product reality, reactive rather than proactive support, lack of partner collaboration or co-delivery

• Signal Integrity: delayed or inaccurate data, inconsistent tagging across systems, missing telemetry, low engagement signal resolution, fragmented tooling, out-of-sync data pipelines, qualitative insights not captured, contradictory signals between product usage and customer sentiment, context lost in handovers

• Performance Validation: presence of measurable impact tied to customer goals, clarity of metrics that matter to the customer, ROI visibility, business case alignment, internal recognition of product value, results reproducible beyond pilot phase, clear storytelling from data, cross-functional awareness of results

Performance Validation deserves special attention. A customer may report satisfaction or aspiration to grow, but if the results of their current deployment are weak, ambiguous, or unproven, motion becomes fragile. Without credible proof of value, not just activity, but outcome, even the best-laid motion plan can stall. On the other hand, when real results are visible and recognized internally, they can unlock new momentum. A strong proof point can help overcome friction elsewhere. It becomes the lever for scale.

So while the Enhance × Increase matrix helps us identify what type of motion is needed, Motion Modifiers help us assess how feasible or risky that motion might be, and how we should adapt sequencing, support, or even expectations in response. In fact, the customer’s position on the matrix can be interpreted as a reflection of their modifier profile:

• A customer with strong Performance Validation and minimal Vendor-side Friction tends to rank high on Enhance.

• A customer with aligned Internal Enablers and minimal Internal Limitations or adverse Timing Factors tends to rank high on Increase.

• Signal Integrity affects both: if the signals are weak, you might underestimate Enhance or overestimate Increase.

To help communicate how modifiers collectively influence customer state, we’ll use the term “Enhance score” and “Increase score” as conceptual shorthand. These aren’t literal metrics tracked in a dashboard but rather a qualitative measure of the degree to which value is realized (Enhance) and appetite exists (Increase).

In simple terms:

Here’s how to read those proportional expressions, step by step:

Enhance Score ∝ Performance Validation – Vendor Friction + Signal Clarity

• Performance Validation refers to evidence that the customer’s deployment is delivering measurable outcomes, efficiency gains, cost savings, or revenue lift. Strong proof of value drives the Enhance score higher.

• Vendor Friction includes any obstacles the customer faces due to your side, such as missing features, slow implementation, or unmet promises. Friction erodes perceived or actual value, which lowers the Enhance score.

• Signal Clarity describes how clean and context-rich the data or insights are. Clear metrics and consistent reporting uncover otherwise hidden value, boosting the Enhance score. Conversely, poor signals make it difficult to see what’s working and reduce Enhance.

In plain English: Enhance ≈ (How much proof of real results they have) – (How much we’ve introduced friction) + (How clearly we see and interpret their usage)

Increase Score ∝ Internal Enablers – Internal Limitations ± External Timing

• Internal Enablers are positive forces within the customer’s organization, such as executive sponsorship, clear KPIs tied to your product, cross-team collaboration, and a culture that celebrates wins. These factors push the Increase score higher.

• Internal Limitations include constraints like budget caps, skill gaps, competing priorities, or organizational silos. These factors hold back growth appetite and pull the Increase score lower.

• External Timing Factors are outside influences, budget windows, leadership changes, mergers, economic shifts, or regulatory deadlines. Favorable timing boosts Increase, while unfavorable timing pulls it down.

In plain English: Increase ≈ (Internal champions and resources) – (Internal roadblocks) ± (Whether external timing is on their side)

Laying the Foundation for Motion

You don’t need exact numbers to know where a customer stands, this is qualitative logic. A customer with strong performance data and minimal friction will rank high on the Enhance axis, while one with enthusiastic internal sponsorship but tight budgets may show only moderate Increase. As modifiers shift, such as a new executive champion emerging or a sudden budget freeze, their position on the grid moves accordingly.

That positioning isn’t static. Each destination on the map corresponds to a typical pattern of motion modifiers, and as those modifiers change, so too does the customer’s location and the size of their Radius of Possibility. In other words, the matrix doesn’t just describe where customers are; it reveals where they can realistically go. A CS Agent using this model can determine a tailored departure point, assess the best next milestone, and adapt the journey as circumstances evolve. It’s not a map with a single route, it’s a dynamic navigation system.

In Part 2: Beyond Orientation - Navigating the Radius of Possibility, we’ll layer in how to identify and prioritize those viable destinations, explore the full “Radius of Possibility” concept, and see how both individual and cohort patterns unlock deeper, AI-driven orchestration.