Customer Renewal and Account Risk Assessment for Customer Success and Account Management TeamsThe account looked fine at the quarterly review. It churned at renewal.
Thirty-nine exercises about the months before a renewal — a usage drop with a comfortable explanation, a champion who is leaving, procurement asking for fifteen per cent, an uplift nobody has noticed — scored on whether you see the risk early and act at the right size when you do.
A square with two axes, not a score — and it refuses to print what sixteen blocks cannot carry
The Customer Renewal and Account Risk Assessment is a forty-minute applied-judgment assessment for customer success, account management and renewals professionals. It measures two things separately: whether you read the early signals that an account is drifting, and whether you act at a size that fits the signal rather than escalating everything or discounting first.
Most renewal training teaches a playbook and most account-health tools score the account. Neither measures the person. This puts you inside thirty-nine situations where a capable account manager could reasonably go either way, and asks what you are most likely to do — not what a manual says should be done, because behavioural-tendency framing is harder to fake and predicts real behaviour better than knowledge framing.
Sixteen of the exercises are forced-choice blocks: four statements, and you name the one you would most likely do and the one you would least likely do. Every statement in a block is written to be equally reasonable, so there is no nice answer to spot, and the four span four different kinds of move, so the choice is between kinds of move rather than between good and bad. Both poles are keyed and scored against two separately authored answer priors, one per pole, rather than against a coin.
The design that scores this format asks for about thirty blocks. This instrument carries sixteen, and the report says so at the top of its own panel in the largest type on it: no dimension is given a number from the forced-choice strand. Each dimension takes a three-way placement with the reason printed, and the figures on the page come from the twenty-three keyed exercises — single-choice situations with graded credit, select-all exercises, binary claims about the evidence, and matching exercises. A full Thurstonian calibration needs live data and has not been run; what is reported before that is a within-person centred tendency, with its assumption stated on the page.
The report is a square. Signal reading runs across; right-sized intervention runs up. Every corner is labelled with an action rather than an adjective — 'sees it early, acts at the wrong size: a scoping conversation, not a training course' — and your position is a box rather than a dot, drawn at the 68 per cent and 95 per cent bands on both axes. A box that crosses a line puts you on the line, with both corners' actions printed, because a person at 51 and a person at 49 are not two kinds of person.
The two errors this role actually makes — escalating everything, which spends a sponsor's patience before it is needed, and discounting as the first move, which teaches the customer what to ask for next year — are offered as defensible options throughout, counted from your own answers against what a typical respondent picks, and printed side by side with a worked example from your own sitting. They are never added together, because they need opposite fixes.
What you walk away with
A drop with a plausible cause, a quiet contact who pays on time, a happy review at a third of the licences bought, a rival in the building. What each stands for, and whether you read it before the renewal call.
Three new users doubling the tickets, one power user's low score, one team of four falling. Whether the move fits the signal, or whether everything gets a manager, an executive, or a credit note.
What a fifteen per cent request stands for before you answer it with a number. A feature that is planned but not dated. A promise from the original sale that was never built.
A champion resigning in two weeks, a champion promoted, a sponsor who has stopped replying, a tenth of your book through one person for three years.
What to open with after two outages, after a new finance director asks every supplier to justify spend, and twenty days before an auto-renew at an uplift nobody has mentioned.
Escalating everything and discounting first, each with its own count, its own worked example from your answers, its own cost and its own fix — and one if-then sentence to take into the next renewal.
Inside your report
Illustrative sample — your report is generated from your own responses.
Every corner is an action, not an adjective. A box that crosses a line puts you on the line, and the report prints both corners' actions rather than choosing one the next sitting could contradict.
From your own answers. The executive sponsor at your biggest account has not replied to three emails. You chose: ask your own executive to reach the sponsor directly.
The fix. Before bringing anyone senior in, write one line: the signal read, and the one thing you want them to do.
From your own answers. Procurement asks for fifteen per cent at a healthy account. You chose: ask what the reduction is for before answering with a number.
The fix. Before saying any number, ask what the reduction is for and what it is compared with.
Two counts, two costs, two fixes. They are never added together, because one is fixed by writing a line before escalating and the other by asking a question before naming a number, and an average tells you to do neither.
Built for
- Customer success managers and account managers who own renewals
- Renewals and post-sales specialists in subscription, services and contract businesses
- Team leads deciding who takes the hardest renewal on the book, and who needs a scoping conversation first
- Anybody moving from new-business sales into an account-owning role
Find out whether you see it early, and what you do when you do
39 exercises across five formats · about 40 minutes · the square, the two habits counted from your own answers, and one change to take into the next renewal.
₹999 (incl. GST) · assessment and full report, nothing further to pay
Frequently asked questions
Two things, separately: whether you read the early signals that an account is drifting, and whether you act at a size that fits the signal rather than escalating everything or discounting first. Five parts feed those two axes: signal reading, right-sized intervention, commercial honesty, sponsors and second contacts, and the renewal conversation. It does not measure selling, negotiation on new business, product knowledge or how much revenue you have retained, and it predicts nothing about any named account.
Sixteen blocks of four statements, all written to be equally reasonable, and you name the one you would most likely do and the one you would least likely do. The design that scores this format asks for about thirty blocks. With sixteen, the report gives no dimension a number from that strand; each dimension takes a three-way placement with the reason printed, and the numbers come from the twenty-three keyed exercises. A full calibration needs live data and has not been run.
A quadrant with two continuous axes: signal reading across and right-sized intervention up. Each corner is labelled with an action rather than a word, and your position is drawn as a box at the 68 per cent and 95 per cent bands rather than as a dot. If the box crosses a line you are reported as on the line, with both corners' actions, rather than placed in a corner the next sitting could contradict.
It counts both from your own answers. Escalating everything and discounting first are offered as defensible options across the form. The report prints how many chances you took of each against what a typical respondent takes, a worked example from your own sitting, the cost of each habit and its fix, side by side and never added together.
About forty minutes for thirty-nine exercises across five formats. ₹999 in India, inclusive of GST, or US$9.99 elsewhere, one time, for the sitting and the full report. It can be retaken, and the report prints the number of points a re-sit has to move by before the change is real.
Each one takes a single capability, puts you inside the situations where it is actually tested, and scores your choices against published evidence — with a report designed for that capability alone, not a template. They span hiring, compliance, education, operations and personal skill.
Browse the catalogue →Methodology: Thirty-nine original exercises across five formats: sixteen forced-choice blocks of four statements, each asking which you would most and least likely do; eight single-choice situations with graded credit; six select-every-that-applies exercises; five binary claims about renewal practice; and four matching exercises. One response instruction is declared for the whole instrument and it is BEHAVIOURAL TENDENCY: what you are most likely to do, never what ought to be done. The binary claims are keyed to published evidence and sit in the keyed strand beside the situations; they do not change the instruction. Construct statement: this measures applied judgment about renewal and account risk - whether somebody reads the early signals that an account is drifting, acts at a size that fits the signal rather than escalating everything or discounting first, is honest about price and about what the product cannot do, builds a second contact and a sponsor before they are needed, and runs the renewal conversation without surprises. It does not measure selling skill, negotiation on new business, product knowledge, how much revenue anybody has retained, personality, or fitness for any particular role, and nothing in it predicts the outcome of any named account. Scoring is a THURSTONIAN FORCED-CHOICE TENDENCY INDEX (C5) built to be honest about its size. The sixteen blocks are matched on social desirability within each block, so that no block contains an obviously nice answer, and each block's four statements span four different dimensions, so the choice is between kinds of move and both within-person and between-person comparison survive. Each block is keyed on both poles and the two poles never key the same statement. Keyed accuracy on the poles is chance-corrected against TWO authored priors per block - the share of ordinary respondents expected to name each statement as their most likely move, and a separately authored share for their least likely move - because the option almost nobody would do first is not the option most people would do last. C5 asks for about thirty blocks and this instrument carries sixteen. It says so on the report and refuses what sixteen cannot carry: no dimension is given a number from the forced-choice strand alone; each dimension takes a three-way placement with the reason printed, and the figures come from the keyed strand of twenty-three exercises. A full Thurstonian IRT calibration needs live data; until then what is reported is a within-person centred tendency - which kinds of move the respondent reaches for beyond what the sixteen situations asked for - with that assumption stated on the page. The desirability matching is there to make the format honest rather than to defeat a determined faker: faking effects in real selection settings are far smaller than in laboratory instructions (Birkeland, Manson, Kisamore, Brannick and Smith 2006), and the report claims nothing more. The headline is a quadrant with two continuous axes, signal reading and right-sized intervention, each built from the keyed strand, each chance-corrected against the declared priors on every option, each carrying its standard error band at 68 and 95 per cent, with reliability stated as McDonald's omega from item count and an assumed inter-item correlation of .24 until live data replaces it. Any part under eight exercises, or under omega .70, carries a placement and no number, and the refusal is printed. No percentile appears because there is no norm group yet. The two errors the role actually makes - escalating everything, which spends a sponsor's patience before it is needed, and discounting as the first move, which teaches the customer what to do next year - are offered as defensible options throughout, counted from the respondent's own answers, and printed side by side, never netted. Sources: Reichheld and Sasser (1990) on the economics of defection; Bolton (1998) on relationship duration and usage; Keaveney (1995) on switching triggers; Gustafsson, Johnson and Roos (2005) on satisfaction, commitment and triggers; Bendapudi and Leone (2002) on key-contact turnover; Palmatier, Dant, Grewal and Evans (2006) on relationship marketing effectiveness; Anderson, Narus and van Rossum (2006) on customer value propositions; Anderson and Simester (2004) and Mela, Gupta and Lehmann (1997) on the long-run effect of discounts on price sensitivity; Homburg, Koschate and Hoyer (2005) on satisfaction and willingness to pay; Tax, Brown and Chandrashekaran (1998) on justice in service recovery; Hibbard, Kumar and Stern (2001) on destructive acts in relationships; Dixon, Freeman and Toman (2010) on customer effort; Bowman and Narayandas (2004) on customer management effort and profitability; Ascarza (2018) on retention futility and targeting by responsiveness; Brown and Maydeu-Olivares (2011) on item response modelling of forced-choice questionnaires; McDaniel, Hartman, Whetzel and Grubb (2007) on response instructions in situational judgment tests; and Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) on implementation intentions, which is why the report ends in one if-then sentence. Every exercise is an original work written for this instrument. No item reproduces any commercial instrument, no vendor, platform, customer or competitor is named anywhere, and the instrument is not affiliated with, endorsed by or derived from any published assessment, certification or methodology.