KPIs Every VP of Customer Success Must Track

The VP of Customer Success owns the single metric that most determines the long-term valuation of a recurring-revenue business: net revenue retention (NRR). NRR and its counterpart gross revenue retention (GRR) frame the entire CS mandate, because they separate the two levers CS controls: preventing revenue leakage (churn, contraction) and driving revenue growth from the existing base (expansion). Churn rate and retention rate are the outcome metrics, but customer health score is the predictive tool that lets the VP intervene before an account is lost rather than after. On the experience side, CSAT, NPS, first response time, ticket resolution time, and escalation rate reveal whether day-to-day service is building or eroding the relationships that renewals depend on, and time to value determines whether new customers reach the aha moment fast enough to stick. The strategic VP of CS refuses to run the function as a cost center measured by ticket volume; instead they run it as a revenue function measured by NRR, using health scores and lifecycle data to route proactive effort to the accounts where it changes the renewal outcome.