Marketing and sales don’t understand the reasons that drive lost renewals and they just seem to blame CS. How can revops help align with all departments so that we can all work together to understand the challenges facing renewals?

Correlation between Go-to-Market actions and renewal success is one of the most studied areas in SaaS firms. Although the answer will vary for each firm, having a data driven point of view on actions and indicators that lead to positive renewal outcomes is imperative. Examples of actions and indicators:

- Seat utilization

- Renewal meeting 90 days ahead of renewal date

- Account continuity

- Customer-specific metrics (e.g. HC growth)

- Documented and updated customer objectives

With clarity around actions and indicators that influence renewal outcomes, the next step is to define:

- Which team own each action/ indicator? Roles and resposibilities/ "swim lanes"

- What "good looks like" for each action and indicator?

- How to report performance against each?

- How to ensure accountability?

In my experience, the "blame game" as referred comes from lack of clarity and alignment on the steps above.

Not to be overly generalistic, but is the reporting on lost renewal reasons clear and accessible? 

If not, that's not helping the blame game. We're all human, and without data to guide our understanding and foster alignment on changes to features, processes, or pricing structure, we'll react assumptively.