The Customer Success Glossary

An escalation is the process of transferring a customer issue to a higher tier of expertise, authority, or urgency when it can't be resolved at its current level. In customer success, escalations go beyond support tickets to include relationship-level risks like executive disengagement, misaligned expectations, and account health deterioration that require strategic intervention.

Customer experience (CX) is the cumulative perception a customer forms based on every interaction they have with a company, spanning marketing, sales, onboarding, product usage, support, and renewal. For CS teams, CX isn't a separate initiative — it's the outcome of how well you execute every post-sale touchpoint, from the first kickoff call to the renewal conversation.

An enterprise customer is a large-scale business account, typically with $100K+ in annual contract value, that requires dedicated customer success management due to its organizational complexity, multi-stakeholder decision-making, and strategic revenue significance. These accounts demand high-touch engagement, executive alignment, and customized success plans.

An executive business review (EBR) is a strategic meeting between a vendor's leadership and the customer's senior decision-makers, focused on business outcomes, value delivered, and future alignment. Unlike quarterly business reviews that track operational progress with day-to-day contacts, EBRs elevate the conversation to the executive level where renewal decisions, budget approvals, and expansion commitments are made.

Expansion revenue is the additional recurring revenue generated from existing customers beyond their original contract value. It includes upsells, cross-sells, seat expansions, and usage-based growth. Unlike new customer acquisition, expansion revenue compounds through established relationships, making it the most capital-efficient growth lever in SaaS.