If you ask Pradeep Raman how his team measures Customer Success (CS), he won’t talk about health scores or NPS. Instead, he focuses on the percentage of customers who committed to a deployment and actually finished it on time and at full scope. This metric shows if customers are getting value and if Microsoft is earning revenue.
Pradeep is the VP of Customer Success at Microsoft. He leads Customer Success for Azure and manages the Cloud Accelerate Factory, a global program that helps thousands of enterprise customers with deployments. On his [Un]Churned episode, he explained the two metrics his team uses and why he thinks most Customer Success teams focus on the wrong goals.
Key Takeaways
- A single deployment metric can be more effective than a composite health score. Microsoft’s main KPI is ‘commit to consume,’ which measures the percentage of customers who committed to a project and actually deployed it on time and at full scope.
- Expansion based on the customer’s roadmap differs from expansion driven by the vendor’s sales targets. The ‘next-best-action’ metric focuses on what the customer should deploy next, rather than waiting for the contract renewal.
- Getting customers to value faster is good business, not goodwill. If customers see a valuable impact only after going live, getting them there faster is a direct investment in revenue.
- N-1 staffing only works if your metric drives toward systems, not headcount. Microsoft deliberately runs leaner than the workload demands, then compensates with agentic AI and operational rigor.
- CS orgs at any scale can apply this framework by identifying the single output that proves a customer is getting value. It’s not what they report in a survey, but what they’ve actually built.
When most CS teams ask “how’s this account doing?” the answer is a composite of health scoring, NPS, last QBR date, and license utilization. At Microsoft, the answer is one number: what percentage of customers who committed to a deployment actually completed it, on time, at full scope.
The ‘commit to consume’ metric drives Microsoft’s entire Customer Success approach for Azure. All programs, staffing, and AI tools are designed to improve this number.
Why ‘Commit to Consume’ Changes Everything
Customer Success health metrics often focus on inputs, especially during onboarding. Teams track metrics like how often a customer logs in, which features they use, and how quickly they reply to emails. Pradeep’s ‘commit to consume’ metric measures an output: did the customer actually deploy the project they promised to build? In other words, are they getting the value they expected?
Azure is a consumption business. Signing a contract is just the starting line, and a customer’s true revenue potential only materializes when workloads run. As Pradeep put it on [Un]Churned, “No customer celebrates a victory when they sign an agreement with anyone. It’s only when they deploy projects [that] they actually realize the value. And for us as the cloud platform provider, that is when we realize the value.”
To help customers get value faster, Microsoft created the Cloud Accelerate Factory. This is a fully funded, no-cost deployment program for all Azure customers, no matter their size. Around 180 people and suppliers manage deployment projects worldwide, aiming to get customers into production quickly. The idea is that customers who deploy see value, and those who see value stay longer.
How “Next Best Action” Extends the Model
‘Commit to consume’ shows if customers are reaching value. ‘Next best action’ points to what they should do next.
At the end of every customer engagement, Pradeep’s team asks, “What’s the next deployment project that would increase the value of this customer’s footprint?” Not the next upsell tied to the revenue calendar, but the next logical workload given how the customer is already using the platform.
When growth is based on the customer’s deployment roadmap, the CS team needs to know what the customer has built and what the next step should be, not just when the contract is up for renewal. This change in focus affects what CS teams look for in every engagement.
Both metrics are tracked every week, broken down by country and workload, and reviewed regularly as part of business routines.
The rules of Customer Success have changed. The teams winning on retention are the ones who figured that out first. See what they’re doing differently in the New Rules of CS series.
What Does This Require of the CS Team Structure?
Two key decisions help these metrics succeed.
The first is what Pradeep calls N-1 staffing. If it takes ‘N’ people to do a job, staff at ‘N-1’ and still expect the job to get done. While this sounds like a cost-cutting move, it’s actually a forcing function. His team responded by building custom agentic AI into their delivery workflows. They use an intake agent that processes nominations, and a technical architect agent that ingests customer call transcripts and generates deployment recommendations. These agents were a result of the constraints the ‘N-1’ thinking put on the team, and their solution to growing faster with less headcount.
The second is the deployment investment itself. Resources follow what actually matters. Microsoft wouldn’t be running thousands of deployment projects at zero cost to customers if its CS org existed to protect NPS scores. The Cloud Accelerate Factory is the most visible evidence of what the business actually believes about Customer Success.
You don’t need Microsoft’s resources to use this approach. The key question is simple: what is the one result that proves a customer is getting value? It’s not about survey answers, but about what the customer has actually built. Start with that, and the rest of the organization will follow.
Hear More From CS Leaders Reinventing Customer Success
Each week on the [Un]Churned podcast, host Josh Schachter interviews post-sales leaders about retention, growth, and the move to agentic CS. Listen to the full episode with Pradeep Raman from Microsoft here. Listen to more insights from industry leaders on [Un]Churned, available on Spotify and Youtube. For weekly episode deep dives delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to the [Un]Churned Substack.
