Nadia Rahman Executive mandate Customer Success Seat · USD 4,300 / month
90-day Customer Success mandate: Vandermeer Software
Nadia Rahman owns renewals. She may not discount her way to one.
Vandermeer renews 84 percent of its customers and finds out a customer is leaving, on average, eleven days before the renewal date. Nobody is tracking health, three people are doing success alongside support, and the only retention tool anyone reaches for is a discount.
From 7 December, Nadia owns the success function, customer health, onboarding and the renewal process. She may approve a renewal discount to 10 percent; anything deeper is the CEO's. Eleven days of notice before a churn is the number this mandate exists to change, and it is a leading-indicator problem rather than a renewal problem.
Document control
- Document number
- MAN-VDM-01
- Version
- 1.0
- Effective
- 7 December 2026
- Owner
- Nadia Rahman, Fractional Head of Customer Success
- Approved by
- Joost Vandermeer, CEO
- Next review
- 8 March 2027
- Classification
- Confidential. Leadership team
Why
What the diagnostic found
| Observed | Evidence |
|---|---|
| Churn is discovered 11 days out on average | 18 churned accounts, date of first internal awareness against renewal date |
| No health score or usage signal in use | Usage data exists in the product and is not looked at |
| Three staff split between success and support | Support always wins, because support is urgent |
| Onboarding is a 45 minute call and a PDF | Same for a 12 seat and a 400 seat customer |
| Discount is the standard retention move | 9 of the last 14 saves involved a discount averaging 22 percent |
| Customers who complete onboarding renew at 94 percent | Against 84 overall. The signal is already there |
The last row is the finding. Onboarding completion is the strongest available predictor of renewal at Vandermeer and it is currently measured by nobody.
Authority
Decision rights
| Nadia decides | CEO decides | |
|---|---|---|
| Success function structure and remit | Yes | |
| Health scoring and how risk is defined | Yes | |
| Onboarding design and segmentation | Yes | |
| The renewal process and who runs each renewal | Yes | |
| Escalation into engineering, to an agreed cap | Yes, with the CTO | |
| Renewal discount to 10 percent | Yes | |
| Renewal discount above 10 percent | CEO, per account | |
| Any credit, refund or service-level payment | CEO | |
| Changing a contract term to save an account | CEO and legal | |
| Letting an account go deliberately | Recommends | CEO |
Plan
What the 90 days does
-
Separate success from support
One person on support, two on success. Support stops eating the function.
-
Health score built from usage the product already emits
Login frequency, feature breadth, admin engagement, support sentiment. Nothing new instrumented.
-
Every account scored, red list published
The first red list will contain accounts nobody was worried about. That is the point.
-
Onboarding segmented into three paths
Under 25 seats, 25 to 150, above 150. Completion tracked from here.
-
Renewals worked from 120 days out, not 11
A calendar, an owner per renewal, and a conversation before the quarter it falls in.
-
Review
Warning time, onboarding completion and discount depth. Renewal rate is reported, not judged.
Measures
How this gets judged on 8 March
| Measure | Today | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Average warning before a churn | 11 days | Over 60 days |
| Accounts with a health score | 0 | All of them, updated weekly |
| Onboarding completion tracked | Not measured | Measured, and above 80 percent |
| Renewals worked from 120 days out | None | Every renewal in the quarter |
| Average discount on a save | 22 percent | Under 10 percent |
| Gross renewal rate | 84 percent | Reported. Not a 90 day target |
Renewal rate is a lagging measure on an annual contract base: most of the renewals in this window were decided by an experience the customer had six months ago. Judging a 90 day mandate on it would be judging it on someone else's work.
Document control
Revision history
| Version | Date | Author | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 28 November 2026 | Nadia Rahman | Agreed and signed. Effective 7 December 2026. |
| 0.2 | 24 November 2026 | Nadia Rahman | Draft. Discount cap reduced from 15 to 10 percent once the 22 percent average on past saves was calculated. |
| 0.1 | 20 November 2026 | Nadia Rahman | First draft from the retention diagnostic of 17 November. |