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An open framework to assess your Customer Success organization's maturity and focus on what matters.

Distilled CS provides a structured approach to customer success — with a maturity assessment, stage-specific playbooks, benchmarks, and an execution checklist. Open source and vendor neutral.

Distilled CS Assess Execute Transform

The Strategy Loop

A continuous cycle of improvement — assess your current state, execute stage-appropriate actions, and transform your CS organisation over time.

01

Assess

Know where you stand

Score your CS maturity across 7 domains. Understand your strengths, gaps, and stage.

02

Execute

Act on what matters

Follow stage-specific playbooks. Focus on the highest-leverage moves for your current maturity.

03

Transform

Measure, level up, repeat

Track your progress. Re-assess to validate growth. Cross into your next maturity stage.

Four stages of CS maturity

A progression model from reactive operations to predictive, data-led customer success. The assessment determines where your team currently sits.

Crawl Reactive / Foundational
  • No formal customer segmentation — every customer gets a similar experience
  • Health is assessed by gut feel, not data
  • No documented playbooks or journey maps
Walk Informed / Structured
  • Customer base is segmented by ARR or tier, engagement models differ by segment
  • Basic health scores exist but may be inconsistently maintained
  • Some playbooks documented, especially for onboarding and renewal
Run Proactive / Operationalized
  • Multi-dimensional health scores with automated alerts and triggers
  • Comprehensive playbooks for all lifecycle stages
  • Customer journey fully mapped with defined milestones and success criteria
Fly Predictive / Optimized
  • Predictive health scoring with machine learning models
  • CS influences product roadmap based on customer outcome data
  • Expansion revenue is a primary CS metric with shared ownership

Built on seven guiding principles

The beliefs that shape every recommendation, metric, and benchmark in the framework.

01

Outcomes Over Activities

Measure what customers achieve, not what your team does.

02

Context Drives Strategy

What works at $5M ARR breaks at $100M. Tailor everything.

03

Proactive Over Reactive

Intervene before customers disengage, not after they churn.

04

Data-Informed, Not Data-Paralyzed

Track fewer metrics, but act on them ruthlessly.

05

Customer Success Is a Culture, Not a Department

CS fails in a silo. Embed it across every team that touches the customer.

06

Segment, Then Scale

Not every customer needs a CSM. Build coverage models that match value.

Open source. Vendor neutral. Community driven.

Distilled CS is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. No vendor lock-in, no paywall, no hidden agenda. The framework is built to give Customer Success teams a shared language and measurement standard — regardless of the tools they use.

Built by practitioners, for practitioners.

Contribute on GitHub

Find out where your CS team stands

Take the Assessment