How is each customer success manager's book net retaining?
№ 177 · NRR by CSM book
Definition
MetricNet revenue retention of each customer success manager's book
Unit% of the book's year-ago ARR retained including expansion, contraction and churn
Bar of NRR % per CSM book. Top CSMs should be 110%+. Build by computing 12-month book ARR ratio per CSM. Reveals which CSMs preserve customer value and which leak it. Example: top quartile 118%, bottom quartile 91% (those 91% books need intervention).
- NRR
- Net revenue retention. Cohort revenue this period divided by the same cohort revenue a year ago, including expansion, contraction and churn. New logos excluded.
- CSM
- Customer success manager. Owner of retention and expansion for a book of accounts.
- ARR
- Annual recurring revenue. MRR at period end multiplied by 12, or the annualised value of active contracts.
Benchmarks
| Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|
| 95% to 97% | 101% to 102% | 111% to 115% |
Private B2B SaaS, cohort method, ARR from the customers present at period start measured twelve months later including upsell, cross-sell, downsell and churn, excluding new logos. Blended across ACV bands; the $25K to $50K ACV band is the closest single anchor. · Four independent datasets converge on a median near 101%: Benchmarkit 101% (n=228), SaaS Capital 102% at $25K to $50K ACV, KeyBanc and Sapphire around 101%, and ChartMogul showing even the top quartile at $15M to $30M+ ARR falling below 100% in 2024. Top30 uses SaaS Capital's 111% top quartile, which is a 75th percentile figure and therefore slightly conservative as a top-30 proxy. The widely repeated 120%+ benchmark comes from public company data and does not apply to private companies at this scale, so do not set a CSM target against it. Applying a company-level benchmark to an individual book has a real hazard: books rarely have enough accounts for the number to be stable, and one account moving can swing a $2M book by ten points, so read this as a rolling four-quarter figure and never as a single-quarter performance rating.
| Category | Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACV under $10K (SMB, low-touch) | under 88% | 92% to 96% | 100% to 105% |
| ACV $25K to $50K (mid-market) | 97% | 102% | 111% |
| ACV above $100K (enterprise) | 100% | 105% to 110% | 115% to 125% |
| Hybrid subscription plus usage pricing, any ACV | 100% | 110% | 120%+ |
When it looks bad
The team median sits above 100% but the distribution is bimodal: one or two books above 120% on a single whale expansion, and a cluster below 95% that the average hides. The healthy version is a tight band; the unhealthy version is a barbell.
Seven books at 138%, 121%, 103%, 94%, 91%, 89% and 86%. Weighted company NRR reads 104% and looks acceptable. Five of seven books are below 100%, meaning five CSMs are shrinking their base and two accounts are carrying the company.
What to do about it
- Publish GRR alongside NRR for every book. A book at 108% NRR built on 84% GRR plus 24 points of expansion is a leaky bucket with a good salesperson attached, and SaaS Capital treats gaps above 20 points as abnormal and worth explaining.
- Set the target by the book's ACV mix, not one company number. SaaS Capital's data shows NRR rising with ACV, so an SMB book at 96% and an enterprise book at 96% are two different conversations, and holding both to 110% will push the SMB CSM into discounting to hold logos.
- Run a downsell post-mortem on every contraction above 10% of account ARR, separating seat reductions (a usage problem the CSM can influence) from budget cuts and headcount reductions at the customer (which they cannot). This is what stops NRR reviews turning into blame.
- Where the book is small enough that one account can swing it, report NRR as a rolling four-quarter figure with the largest account shown separately. Statistical noise dressed as performance is the most common misuse of this chart.
Sources
- Benchmarkit (with Pavilion) Median NRR 101% (down from 105% in CY-21, 103% in CY-22). Median GRR 88%, down from 90% over three years. Expansion ARR is 40% of total new ARR at median, 58% at $50M to $100M ARR, 67% above $100M. Expansion CAC ratio $1.00 versus new customer CAC ratio $2.00. Subscription gross margin 81% median. GRR and NRR both rise as ACV rises. 5242563.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net ↗
- SaaS Capital Companies with ACV between $25,000 and $50,000 report median NRR of 102%, top quartile 111%, bottom quartile 97%. NRR correlates positively with ACV. Companies with the very highest ACVs report the highest GRR. NRR defined as December 2024 MRR from customers present in December 2023, divided by total December 2023 MRR. saas-capital.com ↗
- ChartMogul Expansion drives up to 40% of growth for companies at $15M to $30M+ ARR, versus 30% in early 2021. Even the top quartile at $15M to $30M+ ARR failed to reach 100% NRR in 2024. Companies at or above 100% NRR draw over half of added revenue from expansion; companies below 60% NRR draw 70% from new business and 15% from expansion. New customers expand most during year one as they ramp usage, and churn tends to rise in year two. Median churn in the low NRR bucket is 7%, double that of companies at or above 100% NRR. chartmogul.com ↗
- ChartMogul Top quartile NRR by ARR band: 94% at $1M to $3M, 99% at $3M to $15M, above 105% at $15M to $30M. 41.1% of businesses with ARPA above $500 per month hold NRR above 100%, versus 2.7% below $10 ARPA. Best-in-class GRR is around 95% for B2B; 35.7% of businesses above $500 ARPA hold GRR above 85%. Top quartile customer retention is 90% at three months and 70% at twelve months, rising to 93% and 77% at $15M to $30M ARR. chartmogul.com ↗
- KeyBanc Capital Markets and Sapphire Ventures Gross retention is expected to approach the 90% threshold after declining to 86% in 2023. Net retention has remained above 100% through the same period with modest improvement expected. YoY ARR growth expected to accelerate from 15% in 2024 to 20% in 2025. sapphireventures.com ↗
- KeyBanc Capital Markets and Sapphire Ventures Gross retention and net retention have remained relatively consistent at roughly 90% and roughly 101% respectively, and are expected to stay there. sapphireventures.com ↗
- ChurnZero NRR and GRR fell from 2022 through 2024 and stabilised in 2025. Presence of specific post-sale roles is associated with higher NRR: customer enablement 99% versus 94% without, CSMs 98% versus 90%, support 98% versus 93%, account management 98% versus 94%. churnzero.com ↗
- SaaS Capital Average GRR to NRR gap is a little over 12 percentage points. A range of 8 to 20 points is normal. Fewer than 10% of companies report a gap under 5 points, which signals weak upsell and cross-sell. Gaps above 30 points are rare and usually indicate a one-off or a concentration problem. saas-capital.com ↗
- ChartMogul Best-in-class net revenue retention sits in the 110% to 120% range. For B2B SaaS selling to mid-market and enterprise, best-in-class is 115% to 125%. Companies above 100% NRR grow 1.5x to 3x faster than peers. B2C businesses rarely exceed 85% gross retention. chartmogul.com ↗
- Tomasz Tunguz NRR bands: below 100% is losing revenue, 100% to 110% solid, 110% to 120% strong expansion, above 120% best in class. CS efficiency should be measured on ARR per CSM, CS headcount as a percentage of ARR and cost to serve per customer. First CSM is typically hired at 50 to 100 customers and $1M to $3M ARR. tomtunguz.com ↗