Stop guessing.
Start measuring.
Assess. Execute. Transform. The open CS maturity framework.
Customer Success has a framework problem
Sales has MEDDIC. Marketing has ABM. DevOps has DORA. What does CS have?
Every CS team reinvents the wheel — building health scores from scratch, guessing at benchmarks, and hoping their metrics are the right ones.
Existing frameworks are paywalled, vendor-locked, or too generic to be useful.
It's time for an open standard.
Distilled CS gives you a repeatable system: assess where you stand, execute what matters, and transform your CS org — stage by stage.
The CS Strategy Loop
A repeating cycle that drives continuous improvement — not a one-time exercise.
Assess
Know where you stand
Score your CS maturity across 7 domains. Understand your strengths, gaps, and stage.
Execute
Act on what matters
Follow stage-specific playbooks. Focus on the highest-leverage moves for your current maturity.
Transform
Measure, level up, repeat
Track your progress. Re-assess to validate growth. Cross into your next maturity stage.
Built on seven guiding principles
The beliefs that shape every recommendation, metric, and benchmark in the framework.
Outcomes Over Activities
Measure what customers achieve, not what your team does.
Context Drives Strategy
What works at $5M ARR breaks at $100M. Tailor everything.
Proactive Over Reactive
Intervene before customers disengage, not after they churn.
Data-Informed, Not Data-Paralyzed
Track fewer metrics, but act on them ruthlessly.
Customer Success Is a Culture, Not a Department
CS fails in a silo. Embed it across every team that touches the customer.
Segment, Then Scale
Not every customer needs a CSM. Build coverage models that match value.
Four stages of CS maturity — The Distilled CS Framework
From reactive firefighting to predictive growth engine. Where does your team stand?
- No formal customer segmentation — every customer gets a similar experience
- Health is assessed by gut feel, not data
- No documented playbooks or journey maps
- 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
- 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
- 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
Open source. Vendor neutral. Community driven.
Distilled CS is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. No vendor lock-in, no paywall, no agenda. Just like the FinOps Foundation standardized cloud cost management, Distilled CS aims to give Customer Success a shared language and measurement framework.
Built by practitioners, for practitioners.
Contribute on GitHub