How to Navigate the Customer Maturity Model as a CSM

The customer maturity model is what allows Customer Success Managers (CSMs) to understand where each customer is in their journey and what support they need to progress to the next stage. 

Many CSMs struggle with questions like: Why are some customers thriving while others stall after onboarding? Or why do certain accounts expand naturally while others remain stuck in basic usage? 

More often than not, the issue is not the product or the customer’s intent. It is that customers are at different stages of maturity in how they use and operationalize the product.

In this guide, we’ll break down the key stages of the customer maturity model and explain how CSMs can recognize each stage, guide customers forward, and create stronger long-term outcomes.

Key takeaways

• The customer maturity model helps CSMs understand where customers are in their adoption journey and what support they need next.
  
  
• Customers typically progress through five stages: initial adoption, early engagement, growth and expansion, strategic partnership, and advocacy.
  
  
• Guiding customers through maturity stages helps increase product adoption, retention, and expansion opportunities.
  
  
• CSMs play a critical role in helping customers move forward by providing proactive guidance and aligning product usage with business outcomes.
  
  
• Using data, playbooks, and customer success platforms can help teams track maturity progression and intervene when customers stall.

What is a customer maturity model

Definition of the customer maturity model

A customer maturity model is a framework that describes how customers evolve in their use of a product over time. Instead of measuring success only through high-level metrics such as retention or usage, the maturity model focuses on how deeply customers have integrated the product into their workflows and business processes.

Customers rarely move from onboarding to full value immediately. Most progress through several stages, starting with basic adoption and gradually advancing toward strategic, organization-wide use. The maturity model helps customer success teams map these stages so they can better understand how customers develop over time.

By identifying where a customer currently sits in the maturity model, CSMs can determine what type of support and engagement will help that customer progress further.

How it helps align customer goals with product adoption

One of the biggest challenges for CSMs is ensuring that product usage actually connects to the outcomes customers care about. A customer may be actively using the platform, but that does not always mean they are achieving meaningful results.

The customer maturity model helps bridge this gap by linking product adoption with customer objectives. Each stage of maturity typically reflects a deeper level of value realization.

For example:

• Early-stage customers may focus on basic onboarding and initial setup
  
  
• Mid-stage customers begin integrating the product into daily workflows
  
  
• Advanced customers use the platform strategically to drive measurable business outcomes

By recognizing these stages, CSMs can tailor their engagement accordingly. There’s no point in pushing advanced capabilities too early or repeating basic guidance with experienced customers. 

The maturity model helps you keep conversations where they are relevant by taking into account where the customer is in their journey.

What is the role of a CSM in navigating the customer maturity model

Acting as a guide through the maturity journey

Customers rarely progress through the maturity model on their own. Even when the product is intuitive, many organizations need guidance to understand how the platform fits into their broader processes and goals.

This is where CSMs act as strategic guides. They help customers navigate the maturity journey by introducing capabilities and strategies at the right time.

For example:

• Early in the relationship, a CSM may focus on helping the customer achieve quick wins and early activation.
  
  
• As adoption grows, the CSM may introduce advanced features, integrations, or workflow improvements.
  
  
• In more mature stages, the conversation often shifts toward strategic outcomes, measurable ROI, and expansion opportunities.

This staged approach prevents customers from feeling overwhelmed while ensuring they continue progressing toward deeper value.

Structuring success plans by maturity stage

A success plan should change as the customer moves through the maturity model. In the early stages, the plan should focus on onboarding, setup, and first value. The objectives need to be specific and near-term. Completing implementation or training the core users might be some initial goals you set. 

As the customer moves into early engagement, the success plan should shift toward adoption. Focus on increasing active users, introducing relevant features, improving workflow consistency, and helping the customer connect product usage to a clear business goal.

At the growth and expansion stage, the plan should include broader milestones like expanding usage to another team or integrating the product with adjacent systems. This is also where additional stakeholders should be brought in, especially team leads, admins, and commercial decision-makers.

For strategic partnership and advocacy stages, the success plan should move beyond product usage. The focus should be on longer-horizon outcomes such as ROI, executive alignment, operational efficiency, expansion planning, or customer advocacy. 

At this point, the right stakeholders usually include executives, budget owners, product champions, and anyone responsible for measuring business impact.

The simplest way to structure the plan is to ask: what must be true before this customer can move to the next stage? 

Managing maturity gaps between stakeholders

Account maturity is not always evenly distributed. A technical champion might be using the product deeply, while the executive sponsor still sees it as a tactical tool with unclear business impact. 

In this position, you may think the account looks mature from a usage perspective. But at renewal, the account is vulnerable, since there is a stakeholder that does believe in the value of your product. 

If you want proof that executive engagement needs to be treated as part of maturity, consider GitLab as a case study. They have an Executive Sponsorship Program to grow relationships with senior buyers and promote enterprise-wide platform adoption. 

So how do CSMs lookout for stakeholder-level maturity gaps? Signs of this can include strong admin usage but low executive engagement, or advanced workflows without clear ROI reporting. Also pay attention to active users who cannot explain the product’s value in business terms.

It’s part of the CSM’s job to bridge the gap. For the technical champion, you might have to document workflows, adoption wins, and operational improvements. For the executive sponsor, the conversation should translate those wins into outcomes such as efficiency, risk reduction, revenue impact, or team performance.

Balancing customer advocacy with business outcomes

Another key aspect of a CSM’s role is balancing the needs of the customer with the goals of the business. While CSMs advocate for customer success, they must also ensure that the relationship supports long-term retention and growth.

Navigating the maturity model helps achieve this balance. When customers progress through maturity stages, they typically see increasing value from the product. This naturally leads to stronger retention, expansion opportunities, and deeper partnerships.

By focusing on helping customers achieve their desired outcomes, CSMs create relationships that benefit both the customer and the business.

The stages of customer maturity

Customers typically progress through several stages as they adopt, integrate, and eventually rely on a product to achieve meaningful outcomes. The customer maturity model helps customer success teams understand where each account currently sits and what actions will help them move forward.

Recognizing these stages allows CSMs to guide customers more effectively, introduce capabilities at the right time, and avoid overwhelming customers before they are ready.

Stage 1: Initial adoption

At the initial adoption stage, customers are new to the product and are primarily focused on getting started. Their main objective is to understand how the platform works and complete the basic setup required to begin using it.

Customers at this stage are usually learning the product interface and core workflows, and configuring essentials like integrations or initial data imports. They might also be trying to understand how the platform connects to their specific use case.

The CSM’s primary focus at this stage is onboarding and early value delivery. Helping customers reach their first meaningful outcome quickly is critical because early success strongly influences long-term retention.

Key priorities for CSMs include:

• Guiding customers through onboarding milestones
  
  
• Providing training resources and product walkthroughs
  
  
• Helping customers achieve an initial “quick win” that demonstrates value

The goal of this stage is activation. Customers should leave onboarding with a clear understanding of how the product supports their goals.

Stage 2: Early engagement

Once customers are comfortable with the basics, they begin exploring the product more actively. This stage is characterized by increased curiosity and experimentation as users discover additional features and capabilities.

Customers at this stage may:

• Explore new workflows within the platform
  
  
• Begin using more advanced features
  
  
• Involve additional team members in the product

However, engagement can still be fragile. Without guidance, customers may struggle to understand which features matter most or how to use them effectively.

Early activation is critical because the onboarding phase heavily influences long-term retention. Research shows that up to 70% of customer churn happens within the first 90 days, making the initial onboarding experience one of the most important moments in the customer lifecycle.

This is where training and proactive support become important. CSMs should help customers focus on the product capabilities that deliver the most value for their specific use cases.

CSMs can support this stage by running focused training sessions or enablement workshops that are tied to the customer’s actual workflows. These will help users move beyond basic navigation and more deeply into features. 

It also helps to share best practices and use cases from similar customers. This gives the customer a clearer picture of what good usage looks like and helps them avoid spending time on features that are less relevant to their goals.

Most importantly, CSMs should connect product capabilities back to business objectives. Instead of only explaining what a feature does, show how it helps the customer reduce manual work, improve visibility, speed up a process, or achieve another outcome they care about.

The goal is to deepen engagement while ensuring customers adopt the features that will drive meaningful outcomes.

Stage 3: Growth and expansion

At the growth stage, customers begin integrating the product into their regular workflows. The platform becomes part of how teams operate day to day rather than an optional tool used occasionally.

Customers at this stage typically show signs of deeper adoption, such as:

• Consistent product usage across multiple users
  
  
• Integration with other tools in their tech stack
  
  
• Use of more advanced workflows and automation

Because the product is delivering real operational value, this stage often presents expansion opportunities. Additional teams may adopt the platform, or customers may explore higher tiers, add-ons, or complementary products.

The role of the CSM evolves from onboarding support to value amplification. Instead of focusing solely on usage, the conversation shifts toward helping customers scale the value they are already experiencing.

Expansion is becoming critical to SaaS growth. ChartMogul found that for SaaS companies with $15M–$30M+ ARR, expansion accounted for 40% of growth in 2024, up from 30% in early 2021. That makes maturity progression useful in commercial conversations because it shows where expansion is a natural next step. 

Typical CSM activities at this stage include:

• Identifying opportunities to expand usage across teams
  
  
• Recommending advanced features that improve efficiency
  
  
• Supporting upsell and cross-sell conversations when aligned with customer goals

The objective is to help customers scale their success while naturally expanding the relationship.

Stage 4: Strategic partnership

When customers reach the strategic partnership stage, the product has become deeply embedded in their operations. It is no longer just a useful tool but a critical part of how the organization achieves its goals.

Customers at this stage often rely on the platform for key processes and connecting product usage to long-term strategic objectives. They may also want to involve senior stakeholders in conversations about outcomes, ROI, and future plans. 

At this point, the CSM’s role shifts significantly. Rather than focusing on product education, the focus becomes long-term value creation and strategic alignment.

CSMs may support customers by:

• Running executive business reviews that highlight measurable outcomes
  
  
• Aligning product capabilities with the customer’s strategic initiatives
  
  
• Helping customers optimize workflows and operational efficiency

The relationship becomes more collaborative, with both sides working together to maximize the impact of the product.

Stage 5: Advocacy and innovation

The most mature customers eventually become advocates for the product and the company behind it. At this stage, customers are not only achieving strong outcomes but are also actively engaged in shaping the future of the product.

They may recommend it to peers, participate in case studies or testimonials, or speak at events. And it’s not just a marketing benefit, because they might also be more vocal in sharing feedback that helps shape the product roadmap.

This stage represents a true partnership between the company and the customer. The relationship extends beyond product usage to collaboration and innovation.

For CSMs, this stage offers opportunities to:

• Develop customer champions and references
  
  
• Collaborate on new use cases or advanced workflows
  
  
• Establish feedback loops with product and leadership teams

Advocacy-stage customers often become some of the most valuable relationships a company has. Their success stories not only strengthen retention but also contribute to brand credibility and future growth.

How to measure customer progression through the maturity model

Whether a customer has progressed through maturity stages can be very subjective if you don’t have clear markers set. One CSM may see regular product usage and consider an account as mature, while another may wait for executive engagement or measurable business outcomes.

Let’s avoid this by giving each maturity stage a small set of progression signals. These should include both quantitative indicators, such as product usage and feature adoption, and qualitative indicators, such as stakeholder confidence, business alignment, and willingness to discuss broader goals.

Define signals for each stage transition

A customer moving from initial adoption to early engagement might show signs such as completed onboarding milestones and adoption of the first set of relevant features. 

It does not necessarily follow that they are fully mature. It means they have moved beyond setup and are beginning to use the product in a repeatable way.

Progression from early engagement to growth usually requires broader usage. Look for signals like more users joining the account, multiple workflows being adopted, increased feature breadth, and stronger participation in check-ins or QBRs. 

At this point, the product should be moving from “something the customer is learning” to “something the team uses regularly.”

A customer reaching the strategic partnership stage should show deeper business alignment. This may include executive involvement, clear success metrics, recurring QBR engagement, integration with internal processes, and conversations around ROI or long-term planning. 

Advocacy-stage customers go a step further by participating in references, case studies, feedback programmes, events, or co-developed use cases.

Use leading and lagging indicators together

Some signals show that maturity has already increased. These are lagging indicators, such as completed onboarding, successful renewal, expansion, or a published case study. They confirm progress, but appear after the work has already happened.

Leading indicators help CSMs spot that a customer may be ready to move forward. These include rising usage across more users, increased adoption of advanced features, more stakeholders joining meetings, stronger QBR participation, and customers asking more strategic questions. 

These signals are useful because they help CSMs prepare to introduce the next stage before the customer has to ask for it. This aligns with Gartner’s guidance that SaaS leaders should prioritize leading indicators in Customer Success scorecards. 

A healthy maturity model needs both. Leading indicators help teams act at the right time, while lagging indicators confirm whether the customer truly reached the next level.

Configure health scores around maturity, not just risk

Many health scores are built mainly to detect churn risk. That is useful, but it can miss an important point: a customer can be low-risk and still be stuck.

For example, an account might have stable usage and no support issues, but only use a small part of the product. In a traditional health score, that account may look healthy. In a maturity model, it may still be in early engagement because it has not expanded usage, connected the product to business outcomes, or involved additional stakeholders.

To measure maturity properly, health scores should include stage-specific criteria. For an early-stage account, onboarding completion and first value may matter most. 

For a growth-stage account, feature breadth, multi-user adoption, and workflow depth become more important. For strategic accounts, executive engagement, ROI tracking, and business outcome alignment should carry more weight.

Use a maturity gap score to prioritize CSM effort

A maturity gap score can help CSMs identify which accounts need attention first. Instead of only asking whether an account is healthy or at risk, the score compares where the customer is today against what should be true for their current maturity stage.

The score can combine a few stage-specific signals: adoption breadth, stakeholder alignment, workflow depth, and strategic usage. For example, a growth-stage customer may be expected to have multiple active users, consistent use of key features, and at least one business outcome tied to product usage. If they only meet one of those expectations, the maturity gap is high.

This is useful because two customers can have the same health score but very different maturity needs. One may be stable and progressing. Another may look healthy on the surface but be under-adopting for their stage, which makes them more vulnerable at renewal.

CSMs can use the maturity gap score to prioritize recovery plays, stage-review conversations, enablement sessions, or stakeholder expansion. The score forms a basis for answering the important question: which customers are furthest from the maturity level they should have reached by now?

Set minimum thresholds for each maturity level

Teams should define what “performing” means at each stage. The threshold does not need to be complicated, but it should be clear enough for CSMs to apply consistently.

For example, an initial adoption account might be considered performing once onboarding milestones are complete and the core users are active. An early engagement account might require consistent usage, adoption of key features, and participation in enablement sessions. 

A growth-stage account might need multiple active teams, broader feature adoption, and clear evidence that the product supports an operational workflow.

Strategic partnership demands for more than high usage. Look for executive participation, agreed business outcomes, recurring value reviews, and evidence that the product is part of a larger business process. Advocacy ought to be reserved for customers who are both successful, and willing to share that success in some form.

Trigger formal stage-review conversations

Stage movement doesn’t need to be limited to data in a CS platform. If the data suggests a customer is ready to progress, the CSM should turn that into a conversation.

A stage-review conversation can be added to a QBR, renewal planning meeting, or success plan review. The CSM can show the customer what has changed, where they are seeing stronger adoption, and what the next maturity stage would look like. 

This allows for alignment with customer goals, instead of assuming that the customer sees progress the same way the CS team does.

Consider asking: “Based on what your team has achieved so far, what should the next level of value look like for you?”

Common pitfalls to avoid

While the customer maturity model provides a helpful framework, many customer success teams struggle to apply it effectively in practice. Several common pitfalls can prevent customers from progressing through maturity stages or cause CSMs to miss opportunities for deeper engagement.

Recognizing these challenges early helps teams apply the maturity model more effectively and guide customers toward long-term success.

Treating all customers the same

One of the most common mistakes is treating every customer as if they are at the same stage of maturity. In reality, customers progress at different speeds depending on their goals, internal processes, and resources.

When teams apply a one-size-fits-all engagement approach, several problems can occur:

• New customers may feel overwhelmed by advanced recommendations
  
  
• Mature customers may feel underserved if they receive only basic guidance
  
  
• Engagement efforts may fail to align with the customer’s actual needs

The maturity model helps avoid this issue by encouraging CSMs to tailor their engagement strategy based on where the customer is in their journey.

Overlooking early warning signs of churn

Another pitfall is missing early signals that a customer is struggling to progress through the maturity stages. Customers rarely churn suddenly. In most cases, warning signs appear weeks or months in advance.

Common early indicators include:

• Declining product usage
  
  
• Delayed onboarding milestones
  
  
• Reduced participation in check-ins or reviews
  
  
• Unresolved support issues or recurring frustrations

If these signals go unnoticed, customers may remain stuck in early maturity stages or disengage entirely.

CSMs who actively monitor engagement signals and customer feedback can identify these issues early and intervene before the relationship deteriorates.

Focusing only on short-term wins

Quick wins are important, especially during onboarding, but focusing only on immediate usage can limit long-term customer growth.

For example, customers may reach basic adoption milestones but never progress to deeper workflow integration or strategic usage. When this happens, the product may appear helpful but not essential, which increases the likelihood of churn during renewal discussions.

CSMs should focus not only on early activation but also on guiding customers toward higher maturity stages where the product becomes more deeply embedded in their operations.

Introducing advanced capabilities too early

Another common mistake is introducing advanced product capabilities before the customer has fully mastered the basics.

While it may seem helpful to showcase the full power of the platform early, doing so can overwhelm customers who are still learning core workflows. This often leads to confusion rather than adoption.

A maturity-based approach helps CSMs introduce new capabilities at the right time, ensuring customers are ready to adopt them successfully.

Failing to connect product usage to business outcomes

Product usage alone does not guarantee customer success. Customers may use the platform regularly but still struggle to achieve meaningful business results.

If CSMs focus only on feature adoption without linking usage to customer goals, the product may feel like a tool rather than a solution.

To avoid this pitfall, CSMs should continuously connect product usage to measurable outcomes such as efficiency improvements, revenue growth, or operational improvements.

Ignoring opportunities for expansion and advocacy

Finally, some teams focus heavily on struggling customers while overlooking highly successful ones. Mature customers who are achieving strong outcomes often present opportunities for expansion, advocacy, and strategic collaboration.

Failing to recognize these opportunities means missing valuable growth potential.

By actively identifying customers who have reached advanced maturity stages, CSMs can develop stronger partnerships, unlock expansion opportunities, and build long-term advocates for the product.

Best practices for new CSMs to navigate customer maturity models

For new Customer Success Managers, the customer maturity model can initially feel abstract. Understanding the stages is one thing, but applying them consistently across a portfolio of customers requires a structured approach.

The following best practices help CSMs guide customers through maturity stages while building stronger relationships and delivering measurable outcomes.

Build trust early in the relationship

Progress through the maturity model depends heavily on trust. Customers are more likely to adopt recommendations, explore new capabilities, and share challenges when they view the CSM as a reliable partner rather than a product support contact.

New CSMs can build trust quickly by:

• Understanding the customer’s business goals and success metrics
  
  
• Delivering early wins during onboarding
  
  
• Following through on commitments and action items
  
  
• Communicating proactively rather than waiting for issues to arise

When customers feel confident in the relationship, they are more open to deeper adoption and strategic collaboration.

Recognizing and recovering stalled or regressing customers

It’s wishful thinking to hope that customers will move neatly from one maturity stage to the next. Some stall for months, while others move backwards after a stakeholder change, internal restructure, product issue, or shift in business priorities.

Common warning signs include a drop in feature usage, fewer stakeholders attending meetings, delayed action items, slower responses, or a sudden increase in support tickets. 

Experience issues can become relationship risks quickly. PwC found that 32% of customers would walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience, which is why sudden support spikes or unresolved blockers should be treated as critical maturity regression signals. 

The response to these problems should depend on the cause. If the issue is an org change, the CSM may need to re-onboard new stakeholders. 

If it is product friction, the priority is to identify the blocker and involve support or product. If another project has taken priority, the focus should be on reconnecting the product to a business goal that still matters.

For stalled accounts, a re-engagement play can help. This might include a maturity review, a refreshed success plan, a focused training session, or a short list of next actions that help the customer regain momentum.

Not every pause is churn risk. Some customers slow down because of seasonality, internal capacity, or temporary project delays. Regression becomes more concerning when usage drops, stakeholder engagement weakens, and value conversations become vague at the same time.

Focus on outcomes, not just features

Customers often struggle to understand how product features translate into real business value. Simply explaining what a feature does rarely drives meaningful adoption.

Instead, CSMs should focus on outcomes and impact.

For example:

• Instead of highlighting a reporting feature, show how it helps teams make faster decisions
  
  
• Instead of discussing automation capabilities, demonstrate how it reduces manual work
  
  
• Instead of introducing integrations as technical capabilities, explain how they streamline workflows

Connecting product usage to tangible outcomes helps customers understand why progressing to the next maturity stage matters.

Use storytelling to demonstrate value

Storytelling is a powerful way to help customers visualize what success looks like.

Sharing examples of how other organizations progressed through maturity stages can help customers understand what is possible and inspire them to adopt new workflows.

For example, a CSM might share how another team moved from basic usage to automating a recurring process that previously required manual updates or reporting. 

They could also show how a similar customer improved operational efficiency by adopting a broader set of features, such as dashboards, workflows, integrations, or alerts that reduced duplicated work across teams. 

In more mature cases, the CSM might explain how a customer scaled usage beyond the original team, bringing in additional departments or stakeholders so the product became part of a wider business process. 

Stories like this make abstract capabilities feel practical and achievable for your customers. 

Create repeatable playbooks for each maturity stage

Customer success teams become far more effective when they build structured playbooks that correspond to each maturity stage.

Instead of improvising engagement strategies for every account, teams can develop repeatable workflows that guide customers forward.

For example:

• Initial adoption playbook focused on onboarding milestones and early activation
  
  
• Early engagement playbook centered around training, feature discovery, and workflow setup
  
  
• Growth playbook designed to expand usage across teams and introduce advanced capabilities
  
  
• Strategic partnership playbook focused on executive alignment, ROI tracking, and long-term planning

These playbooks help CSMs maintain consistency across the team while ensuring customers receive the right support at the right time.

Use customer data to understand maturity progression

One challenge many CSMs face is accurately determining where a customer sits within the maturity model. Without clear signals, it can be difficult to know whether a customer is ready to progress to the next stage.

Tracking customer data and engagement signals can make this much easier.

Platforms like Velaris, a highly rated software on G2, help CSMs monitor signals that indicate customer maturity, including:

• Product adoption patterns and feature usage that reveal how deeply customers are engaging with the platform
  
  
• Customer health scores that combine multiple signals into a clear view of account health
  
  
• Communication insights from meetings and emails that highlight customer sentiment or emerging risks

Velaris capabilities such as Headlines can surface important account developments automatically, while CallSense helps analyze customer conversations to identify risks, blockers, or expansion signals. AI Topics can identify recurring themes across customer communications, helping teams detect patterns that indicate where customers are in their maturity journey.

These insights allow CSMs to make more informed decisions about when to introduce new capabilities or intervene when engagement declines.

Prioritize proactive engagement

Customers rarely progress through maturity stages without guidance. Waiting for customers to request help often leads to stalled adoption or missed opportunities.

CSMs should reach out when adoption signals suggest the customer may be ready to move forward. For example, if usage is consistent or a key workflow is being repeated successfully, it may be time to introduce the next feature.

Regular check-ins also help keep progression visible. These conversations should review what has changed since the last touchpoint and whether the customer is still working toward the same goals. Based on those factors, what needs to happen next can also be decided. 

CSMs can also share resources before problems appear, such as best practice guides, relevant customer examples, or training materials tied to the customer’s current stage. This helps customers keep moving without waiting until they are blocked.

Proactive guidance helps customers progress more smoothly through the maturity model while strengthening the relationship between the CSM and the customer.

Continuously learn from mature customers

Finally, some of the best insights come from customers who have already reached advanced maturity stages. Observing how these customers use the product can reveal patterns that help guide others.

CSMs should look for opportunities to:

• Document successful customer workflows and playbooks
  
  
• Identify common behaviors among highly successful customers
  
  
• Share these insights across the team and with newer customers

Learning from mature customers helps organizations refine their maturity model and make it easier for future customers to reach the same level of success.

Using the maturity model in renewal and expansion conversations

A customer maturity model can also make renewal and expansion conversations more concrete. Instead of discussing renewal only in terms of usage or contract value, CSMs can show the customer where they are in their maturity journey and what the next level of value could look like.

For example, an account in early engagement may already have active users and basic feature adoption, but still lack workflow depth or broader team involvement. 

In a renewal conversation, the CSM can use this evidence to show that the product is being used, while also identifying what needs to happen next for the customer to get more value from the next contract period.

At the growth stage, maturity evidence can support expansion conversations. If the customer has strong adoption in one team, consistent QBR engagement, and clear outcomes from an existing workflow, the next step may be expanding the product to another department, adding more users, or introducing advanced capabilities.

Framing is important here, because we don’t want the conversation to revolve around pressure to expand, but as more of a natural progression. A useful question is: “Based on where your team is today, what would make this product more valuable over the next six months?”

Now the customer can see what they have already achieved and which next steps would make renewal or expansion feel like a logical continuation of value.

Conclusion

Navigating the customer maturity model allows Customer Success Managers to move beyond reactive account management and guide customers toward deeper, more meaningful adoption. 

By understanding where each customer sits in their maturity journey, CSMs can tailor onboarding, engagement, and value conversations to help customers progress steadily toward long-term success.

As customer portfolios grow, managing these maturity signals manually becomes increasingly difficult. Platforms like Velaris, a highly rated software on G2, help customer success teams centralize customer data, track adoption patterns, monitor health signals, and surface insights that reveal where customers are in their maturity journey.

Book a demo to see how Velaris helps customer success teams monitor customer maturity, identify risks earlier, and guide customers toward long-term success.