A health score on its own doesn't save anyone. It tells you an account sits at 38 or 81, and then someone still has to decide what that means for today. When that decision is left to each CSM, the same score produces five different responses, and the accounts in the middle quietly get none.
Segmenting accounts into health bands closes that gap. Each band comes with an owner, a cadence and a default play, so a score change turns into a specific next step. This guide uses four bands, Rescue, Protect, Sustain and Grow, and walks through what to do with the accounts in each one.
Why Segment by Health Instead of Working the List
Most teams already segment by ARR or plan tier. That tells you how much attention an account deserves in general. Health tells you what kind of attention it needs right now. A large account can be perfectly stable, and a small one can be days from churning.
Health segments give you three things a ranked list does not:
- A shared language. "This account just moved into Protect" means the same thing to a CSM, an AE and a VP.
- Default actions. Each band has a standard motion, so nobody starts from a blank page.
- Capacity planning. You can see how many accounts need urgent work versus routine care, and staff accordingly.
Quivly's Health Score uses these four bands by default, with cutoffs of 0 to 25, 25 to 50, 50 to 75 and 75 to 100 that teams can drag to match how they triage. The framework below works with any cutoffs, as long as your team agrees on them.
Rescue: Save the Renewal
Rescue accounts show serious, current risk. Usage may have collapsed, a champion may have left, a billing issue may be unresolved or several of these may be happening at once. The goal is simple: find out what is wrong and fix it before the renewal decision is made.
What a Rescue response looks like
- Diagnose first. Look at which categories are pulling the score down. A revenue problem and a product adoption problem need very different conversations.
- Start a save play. Quivly's Plays describes this motion: a churn signal starts a save play, with the reason attached, before renewal.
- Escalate the relationship. Schedule an exec sync, loop in the AE and, if your usual contact has gone quiet, reach out through an executive sponsor or another contact.
- Remove friction. Close open support tickets and resolve billing questions quickly so they don't become reasons to leave.
Owner: the named CSM, with the AE and a CS leader involved. Cadence: review at least weekly until the account moves up a band.
Protect: Catch the Slide Early
Protect accounts aren't in crisis, but something is off. This is the band where the most retention is won or lost, because problems are still small enough to fix with a conversation rather than a concession.
What a Protect response looks like
- Find the trigger. Did the account drop in from Sustain? If so, which category changed? A drop in weekly active usage, a cluster of new tickets or a missed meeting each points to a different fix.
- Check in with a reason. Reach out with something specific, such as a usage trend or an open issue, rather than a generic "just checking in."
- Offer targeted help. Training for new users, a configuration review or a walkthrough of features the account hasn't adopted.
- Set a watch window. Agree internally on when the account should be back in Sustain, and what happens if it isn't.
Quivly's Actions Feed shows what this looks like in practice: an action flags that weekly active usage is down 42% over two weeks, beyond the 15% threshold that Quivly says typically precedes churn, and suggests a save-play email, an exec sync or looping in the AE.
Sustain: Keep Healthy Accounts Healthy, Efficiently
Sustain accounts are in good shape. The risk here is not churn so much as drift. Without any attention, healthy accounts can slowly disengage, and nobody notices until they show up in Protect.
Sustain is where scaled, one-to-many programs earn their keep. Instead of a CSM manually touching every healthy account, triggered programs handle the routine work:
- Adoption nudges pointing customers to features similar accounts use.
- Renewal cadences on a 90, 60 and 30 day schedule, as described on Quivly's Plays page.
- Feedback loops that route detractor survey responses to a person.
- Light-touch reviews for accounts that don't need a full business review meeting.
The CSM's job in Sustain is mostly to watch for movement and step in when a signal fires. For a deeper look at running these programs, see our guide to digital customer success.
Grow: Turn Health Into Expansion
Grow accounts are healthy and getting value. They are your best candidates for expansion, references and case studies. But a high score alone doesn't mean an account is ready to buy more. Look for buying signals on top of health:
- New seats or users being added.
- Usage approaching plan or tier limits.
- Hiring on teams that use your product.
- Adoption spreading beyond the original champion to other teams.
When those signals appear, route an expansion play to the person who owns the account. Quivly's Plays page describes exactly this: usage and buying signals route an expansion play to the account owner, with steps like an expansion review or an upgrade nudge running through email, Slack or in-app channels.
Grow accounts still need care. Ask for feedback, invite them to share their story and keep the relationship warm so they stay in the band.
Watch the Movement, Not Just the Band
Where an account sits matters. Where it is heading matters more. An account that slides from Grow to Sustain in a week is a bigger concern than one that has sat steadily in Sustain for a year.
Treat transitions as triggers
- Sustain to Protect: start a check-in and diagnosis.
- Protect to Rescue: escalate to a save play and involve the AE.
- Protect back to Sustain: confirm the fix held, then hand back to routine programs.
- Sustain to Grow: check for buying signals and flag the account owner.
Look inside the band
A band is a summary, and summaries can hide tension. Quivly's Health Score page shows an account scoring 57, solidly in Sustain, while its analysis flags an outstanding balance larger than its monthly recurring revenue, a renewal due immediately and engagement channels gone silent. Product usage was strong enough to keep the overall score up. Before you apply a band's default play, glance at the category scores. A single category in crisis can justify Rescue-level action even when the composite looks fine.
Build a Weekly Operating Rhythm
Bands only work if the team uses them consistently. Write down who owns each band and how often it gets reviewed.
| Band | Primary owner | Review cadence | Default motion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rescue | CSM + AE + CS leader | Weekly or faster | Save play, exec sync, friction removal |
| Protect | CSM | Weekly | Diagnose, targeted check-in, watch window |
| Sustain | Automated programs, CSM on escalation | Monthly | Adoption nudges, renewal cadence, feedback |
| Grow | CSM + account owner | Monthly | Expansion play when buying signals appear |
Within each band, prioritize by impact. Quivly's Actions Feed ranks actions by deal size, renewal proximity, severity and historical conversion, so the highest-leverage work rises to the top. Actions that age out without a response escalate to the AE, a CSM lead or the exec sponsor, so nothing dies quietly in a queue.
Finally, measure whether the framework works. Track how many accounts move up versus down each month, how long accounts stay in Rescue and Protect, and how often accounts that churned were flagged in a lower band beforehand.
FAQ
Four is a practical number. It is enough to separate urgent risk, early warning, steady state and growth, without so many bands that the differences blur. Fewer than three tends to lump very different accounts together.
Start with one set of cutoffs so the bands mean the same thing across your book. Adjust if a segment consistently clusters in one band or if outcomes show the cutoffs aren't separating risk well.
Much of Sustain can run on triggered programs, with a person stepping in when a signal fires. Expansion conversations in Grow usually benefit from a human. In Quivly, drafts stay in review unless you have allowed an AI agent to send that step.
Check the category scores and the data behind them. If the CSM's context is right, act on it and use the mismatch to recalibrate the score model. Ready to turn health bands into daily actions? See how Quivly's Health Score sorts every account into Rescue, Protect, Sustain and Grow, and how Plays run the right motion for each band.
