5 Proven Customer Success Strategy Examples to Boost Retention and Growth

Customer success is more than a buzzword—it's a crucial business function that directly impacts customer retention, product adoption, and long-term growth. A well-defined customer success strategy can turn your users into loyal advocates and reduce churn significantly.

In this post, we'll walk through five real-world customer success strategy examples used by top-performing companies. Whether you're starting fresh or looking to enhance your existing approach, these examples will help inspire and guide your success initiatives.

1. Onboarding as a Core Strategy – HubSpot

HubSpot, a leading CRM and marketing platform, places customer onboarding at the heart of its success strategy. Their onboarding process is highly personalized, goal-driven, and supported by educational content like video tutorials and live training sessions.

Key Takeaway:
Create a scalable yet personalized onboarding flow. Use automation and resources like help centers, onboarding checklists, and account managers to ensure your customers achieve their first success milestone quickly.

2. Proactive Engagement – Slack

Slack is known for its proactive customer success model. Their CS team actively monitors customer activity and usage trends to identify potential churn risks. When a drop in engagement is detected, Slack reaches out with personalized messages or offers help.

Key Takeaway:
Monitor product usage patterns and set up triggers to alert your CS team when a customer might be struggling. Proactive support can significantly reduce churn and increase satisfaction.

3. Customer Health Scoring – Gainsight

Gainsight, a customer success platform itself, uses a customer health score strategy to keep tabs on client satisfaction. This score includes multiple metrics like usage frequency, support tickets, NPS, and business outcomes.

Key Takeaway:
Develop a health scoring system tailored to your business. Use these insights to prioritize outreach, drive renewals, and plan upsell opportunities.

4. Advocacy Programs – Salesforce

Salesforce runs a strong customer advocacy program as part of their success strategy. They empower happy customers to become brand ambassadors through case studies, webinars, and community events.

Key Takeaway:
Turn satisfied customers into advocates. Build a referral program, host user events, or highlight success stories to strengthen brand credibility and drive new business organically.

5. Customer Education – Asana

Asana invests heavily in customer education through its Asana Academy. The academy offers free courses, certification programs, and workshops that help users become power users of the product.

Key Takeaway:
Educate your customers continuously. A well-informed customer is more likely to stick around and extract value from your product or service.

Why These Customer Success Strategies Work

Each of the strategies above is rooted in one principle: helping the customer achieve their desired outcome. Whether through education, proactive support, or personalized onboarding, successful companies focus on long-term value, not just short-term gains.

Final Thoughts

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to customer success, but learning from proven strategies can give your business a head start. Whether you're scaling your CS team or just building one, implementing even one of these customer success strategy examples can lead to measurable improvements in retention, engagement, and satisfaction.

Looking to level up your customer success game? Start by understanding your customers’ goals, then build a strategy around helping them succeed.