Acquiring new customers has become increasingly expensive. However, modern CRM platforms are giving companies powerful new tools to keep their existing customers happy and engaged.
One of these is the customer health score which measures how likely a customer is to grow with your business or churn. However, setting up an effective health score requires careful thought about what truly matters in your customer relationships.
This blog will walk you through building a health scoring model in HubSpot that works. You'll learn practical steps to create a scoring system that helps you spot at-risk accounts before it's too late and identify growth opportunities.
A customer health score measures how happy and engaged your customers are. It helps you understand whether a customer is likely to stick around, leave, or be open to buying more from you.
Tracking health scores can help you improve customer retention. A study found that insights-driven businesses are growing at an average of more than 30% annually.
However, relying on just one or two numbers won’t give you the full picture. For example, a customer might be using your product a lot, which seems positive, but if they’re also sending in a lot of complaints or leaving bad reviews, that’s a warning sign.
A balanced health score examines different kinds of data—like how often customers use your product and how satisfied they are—to give you a clearer, more complete view.
HubSpot makes this process easier by combining measurable data (like how often a customer logs in or uses certain features) and more subjective insights (like customer feedback or interactions with your support team).
This approach gives you a comprehensive view of each customer, allowing you to balance hard data, such as product usage, with softer factors like satisfaction levels and communication habits.
Different customer activities and behaviors tell you different things about how well your customer is doing. Some of these things matter more than others.
This is where weighted metrics come in—they help you assign importance to each piece of customer information when calculating their overall health score.
Follow these steps to setting up weighted metrics:
Start by identifying all the possible ways to measure your customers' engagement and success with your product. Then, focus on the metrics that truly reflect how well they use it. For example, if you run a project management software, important metrics might include:
These are just examples, but you should pick the metrics that best show how successful customers are with your product.
In this case, frequent usage suggests that the software is integrated into their daily workflows, meaning it’s providing ongoing value and is less likely to be abandoned.
When customers use advanced features, it shows they’re taking full advantage of the product’s capabilities. If they use it consistently, it’s a good indicator that they see deeper benefits beyond the basics, which can increase long-term retention.
After identifying your key metrics, the next step is determining how much weight each one should carry in your overall health score. To do this effectively, work backward from what a "healthy" customer looks like in your data.
Look at your most successful customers—those who are profitable, engaged, and show long-term retention—and identify common patterns in their behavior.
For example, if your most successful customers consistently use advanced features, this should have a higher weight in your scoring model.
On the other hand, if a customer generates a high volume of support tickets, this might indicate they are struggling and should be assigned a lower score.
Think of a health score like a point system where different customer actions either add or subtract points. Each interaction or behavior impacts the total score, giving you a clearer picture of customer health.
Here's an example of how points might work:
Positive Actions:
Negative Actions:
In this example, expanding user licenses carries the most weight, influencing the overall health score.
On the other hand, daily login has less impact on the score but is still factored in. This allows you to prioritize metrics based on how much they contribute to customer health.
You can then set score ranges to categorize customer health. For instance, 80-100 points is healthy (Green), 50-79 points is neutral (Yellow), and 0-49 points is at-risk (Red).
This weighting process helps ensure that the score reflects what matters for the customer’s success with your product.
Not all customers engage with your product similarly, so you should customize your health score based on different customer segments. Start by analyzing the data from various customer types to understand what “healthy” looks like for each.
For instance, enterprise customers might require a higher focus on product integration and advanced features, while small businesses may prioritize time savings and cost-effectiveness.
To do this, break your customer base into enterprise, mid-market, and small business segments. Then, for each segment, create a custom version of your health score by adjusting the metric weights according to what drives success for that specific group.
Enterprise customers might place greater weight on metrics like the number of active departments and integration with their existing systems. Meanwhile, small business customers may place greater weight on basic feature usage and time saved using the product.
Automation is the next step once your health score model is in place. With HubSpot, you can automate score calculation using workflows that track customer behavior and update scores.
Start by creating workflows that monitor customer actions, such as feature usage, login frequency, or feedback submission.
For example, you could set up a workflow that tracks whether a customer logs in regularly, uses advanced features, or submits support tickets. The system will then automatically update the customer’s health score based on these actions, ensuring that your data stays current.
If a customer hasn’t logged in for two weeks or raises multiple support issues, the workflow can deduct points from their health score. Conversely, if a customer starts using a new feature or gives positive feedback, the workflow adds points to their score.
You can also configure alerts to notify your team when a customer’s score falls below a certain threshold. This helps you respond proactively to at-risk customers before they churn.
HubSpot lets you assign status indicators based on the score value, such as green, yellow, or red. This makes it easy to see which customers are doing well and which ones need more attention.
A health score model isn't something you set up once and forget about. Your business changes, your product grows, and your customers' needs shift over time. Making dynamic adjustments means regularly updating how you measure customer health to match these changes.
Here are simple steps to keep your health score model up-to-date:
Look at your customer health scores every three to six months to make sure they still make sense.
Start by looking at customers who recently churned. Check their health scores in the months leading up to their departure. Did the scores fail to highlight any warning signs? Were there behaviors that could have predicted churn but weren’t being tracked?
Next, examine your most successful customers. What are they doing differently? Are there any new patterns in how they use your product?
For instance, if you notice that customers who regularly use your mobile app tend to stay longer, it may be time to start including mobile usage as a factor in your health score.
You should be invested enough in each customer’s success to check up on them regularly. Research shows that companies with a dedicated customer success function experience a 34% lower churn rate and a 31% increase in customer lifetime value.
Whenever your product or business undergoes significant changes, your health score model should be updated to reflect this. If you launch new features, begin tracking who is adopting them and how frequently they’re used.
Add points to your health score for customers who embrace these features, and consider reducing the weight of older features that may no longer be as critical.
For example, if you’ve introduced team collaboration tools, you might start assigning points for creating projects, inviting team members, or using shared workspaces.
At the same time, it may be sensible to reduce the emphasis on individual user actions and shift the focus to team-based activities.
If your pricing model changes, revisit the health score criteria. Assess what features are included in each plan and adjust the score accordingly. You may even need to create separate scoring models for different pricing tiers to reflect the value each customer tier is receiving.
Gathering feedback ensures your health score accurately reflects customer sentiment. 73% of people consider customer experience an important factor in their purchasing decisions. Feedback can show you how satisfied customers are with their experiences.
HubSpot’s tools let you set up regular surveys, such as quarterly NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys and quick satisfaction surveys after customer service interactions.
You can also request feedback when customers try out new features. Ongoing feedback shows gaps between what you think is important and what your customers truly value.
For example, if customers consistently rate your product highly but have low health scores, it could indicate that you’re measuring the wrong metrics.
On the flip side, if customers with high health scores report frequent issues, you may need to track additional behaviors to ensure your score captures the full picture of customer satisfaction.
Every business is different, and what makes a customer "healthy" varies depending on how they should be using your product. Your health score model needs to reflect what success looks like for your specific customers.
If you're unsure where to start, these examples can help you think about what matters most in your business and how to weigh different factors accordingly.
These are companies that expect customers to use their products frequently—think project management tools, communication platforms, or design software. Success for these companies means customers actively use the product every day or week.
Their health score might look like this:
For high-engagement products, usage is the clearest sign of value. If customers aren't logging in regularly or using core features, they're probably not getting enough value to justify renewal.
Support tickets matter less here because engaged users often create more tickets simply because they use the product more.
These companies provide essential business services where smooth operation and quick problem resolution are important—think billing software, security services, or infrastructure tools.
Success here means the product works reliably, and when issues arise, they're solved quickly. Their health score might look like this:
For these companies, the quality of support interactions often matters more than daily active usage. A customer might not use the product constantly, but it needs to work perfectly when they do.
Low support ticket numbers and high satisfaction scores usually indicate a healthy customer relationship.
Health scores are a powerful tool for assessing customer engagement and predicting long-term success. However, they are only as effective as the way you set them up. Leverage weighted metrics and dynamic adjustments to keep your health scores accurate and relevant.
Your customer health score should evolve with your customers. Regularly reviewing and adjusting your health score ensures that it stays aligned with changing customer behaviors, product updates, and business goals.
This consistent fine-tuning gives you better predictions of customer success, early detection of potential churn, and the identification of new growth opportunities.
For more tips on optimizing HubSpot Health Scores and making the most of your customer data, check out our full guide.
At Origin 63, we help businesses use HubSpot's powerful tools to their full potential. Our team can help you set up a customized health scoring model that aligns perfectly with your business goals and customer success metrics.
Beyond health scores, we'll help you integrate this data with other HubSpot features to create a comprehensive customer success strategy. Let's work together to turn your customer data into actionable insights that drive growth and retention. Get in touch with us today to start building a health score model that works for your business.