How to Build Your First Customer Success Retention Program With Parul Bhandari

Introduction: Retention Isn’t an Afterthought

In a SaaS world obsessed with new logos, retention is often treated like the quiet kid at the back of the room, overlooked until renewals loom. But if you want to scale sustainably, customer retention needs to be a core part of your Customer Success strategy from day one. In this episode of The Customer Success Pro Podcast, I sit down with Parul Bhandari, a seasoned CS consultant and upcoming author, to unpack the what, why, and how of building a customer retention program that actually works, whether you’re a two person startup or scaling to thousands of users.

Why Retention Starts Before the First Renewal

Parul’s journey from consultant to CS team builder gave her a unique lens into how early decisions shape long term outcomes. The biggest mistake is waiting until the first renewal to start thinking about retention.

She shared this golden rule:

Retention strategy starts the moment the customer signs the contract

Founders and first sales reps often give away too much too soon, throwing in every module and unlimited support without a scalable plan. Parul’s first step in any CS engagement is to audit the contracts. Understand what’s been promised and what leverage exists to price strategically during renewals.

Another overlooked win is to track customer goals from day one, even if it’s just one sentence in the CRM. Early goal tracking gives you a goldmine of renewal and upsell data down the line.

Retention for Startups: The Building Blocks

For startups juggling product development, fundraising, and sales, retention can feel like a later problem. But as Parul explained, ignoring it early can jeopardize growth.

Key foundational elements include:

• Customer Goal Tracking: Use success plans, even messy ones. Just get the goals documented

• Utilization Metrics: Even freemium tools can provide usage data. Get something in place to understand behavior trends

• Early Renewals: Whether it’s converting a pilot or upgrading from free to paid, treat these moments with a renewal mindset

CS professionals often inherit messy customer bases, contracts, undocumented goals, unclear handoffs. But these resets are also opportunities to build better, faster.

Scaling Retention as You Grow

Once a company has hundreds of customers and a functioning go to market flywheel, the retention strategy must mature with it. This phase is about consistency, structure, and repeatability.

Here’s how to evolve retention efforts at this stage:

• Health Scoring: Start using a red yellow green system informed by usage, sentiment, and business context like stakeholder changes

• Playbooks: Build templated approaches for escalations, renewals, and stakeholder transitions

• Pricing Enablement: CSMs should be trained and empowered to have pricing conversations. Give them the tools to succeed, not just quotas

• Proactive Renewal Strategy: Plan renewals 6 plus months in advance and tailor plays based on account health

Parul emphasized that retention is not just CS’s job. Product evolution, pricing strategy, and internal alignment all play a role.

Retention at Scale: When You Have Thousands of Customers

In hyper growth environments with 20000 plus customers, the playbook changes again. At this stage, it’s about preventing stagnation.

Key strategies include:

• Customer Advisory Boards: Use them to collect product feedback and align roadmap priorities with long term customer needs

• Multi Year Contracts: Offer creative upsell structures or fixed pricing to secure long term ARR

• Internal Review Cycles: Parul recommends a full review of your retention strategy annually

Retention becomes a company wide conversation:

• Sales must sell to the right ICP

• CS must track outcomes

• Product must evolve based on feedback

• Executives must commit to a customer led growth model

The surprise at this stage is that long term customers want more from you, not less. They expect evolution, and if your product stagnates, retention will suffer.

Key Takeaways from This Episode

• Retention Starts at Day One: Waiting until renewals hit is already too late. Start by tracking goals and usage metrics early

• Retention is a Team Sport: Sales, CS, Product, and even your CEO must align to make retention successful

• Train Your Team to Have Commercial Conversations: Don’t shy away from upsells, renewals, or negotiations. Roleplay and prep for them

• Use Health Scores as Strategic Guides: They’re not just for visibility. They’re tools for prioritizing plays

• Mature Retention Requires Creativity: Think multi year deals, pro services, or CABs to keep things fresh and valuable

Whether you’re a solo CSM or a CS leader scaling a team of 50, Parul’s advice reminds us that retention isn’t a reactive task, it’s a strategic growth lever.

Listen Now and Build Data Driven CS Strategies

This episode with Parul Bhandari is a must listen for CSMs, CS leaders, and anyone looking to build or scale a real retention program.

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Want to take your CS career to the next level? 

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