Why Customer Success Needs Product Engagement Metrics

SaaS customers can’t be successful with your product if they don’t actually use it. Sure, some may keep paying (my dad’s still paying for AOL), but that’s not success. Real success is active, ongoing use — the kind that leads to renewals and revenue.

That’s where your Customer Success (CS) team comes in. Their job is to help customers get value from the product. If an account isn’t engaged, they fix it. If an account is engaged, they build on it.

But CS teams shouldn’t fly blind. That’s where product engagement comes in — the foundation for every other customer success metric. When you understand how people are actually using your product, you can see what’s working, what’s not, and what to do about it.

Here are 4 core metrics your CS team should track:

Active Users and Accounts

Product Engagement Score

Product Adoption Rate

Activation Rate (for new accounts)

The “What” of Customer Success Metrics

Metric 1: Active Users and Accounts

Active user = someone who used your product in a set time frame (even if just once).

Active account = any account with at least one active user in that time frame.

You get to decide what counts as “active.” A login might be enough — but ideally, you’ll track meaningful actions tied to your product’s core value. (Logging in doesn’t always mean real engagement.)

Match the timeframe to how your product’s used. If it’s daily-use, track DAUs. If it’s weekly, go for WAUs.

Heads up: Most B2B SaaS products work on an account basis, so tracking engagement at the account level is crucial. Make sure you can define “active” for both users and accounts.

That said, “active” only scratches the surface. To get a true sense of customer health, you’ll need to dig deeper.

Metric 2: Product Engagement Score

This is your north star for Customer Success.

Being “active” isn’t the same as being engaged — and a high login count doesn’t always mean value. As Lincoln Murphy puts it: logins and random clicks can signal confusion just as easily as success.

An engagement score tells you how often users do key actions in your product — and how important those actions are. Weight the important ones more heavily. Track scores at the user, account, and product level.

Bonus: when you assign each user a score between 1 and 100, it’s easier to spot trends over time. You’ll know who’s thriving, who’s stuck, and who might be slipping away.

Metric 3: Product Adoption Rate

User adoption rate = % of key features a user has used over time.

Account adoption rate = % of key features used by at least one user in the account.

While engagement tells you how much they’re doing, adoption tells you how broadly they’re using your product.

Say you’ve got 10 key features. One account has used 2 in the last 30 days — that’s a 20% adoption rate. Another used 8? That’s 80%.

Low adoption means users are focused on a few things. High adoption means they’re exploring more — a good sign for long-term stickiness.

Metric 4: Activation Rate

Activation rate = how far a user or account has progressed toward being fully onboarded or reaching first value.

You decide what “Activation” looks like — a mix of steps like inviting teammates, completing a task, uploading files, etc.

Then, you track how many steps a user/account has completed. If they’ve hit 4 out of 7 milestones, they’re 57% activated. Easy.

Especially useful for trial accounts, but valuable across the board.

The “How” of Customer Success Metrics

Now that you’ve got your metrics, here’s how to make them useful.

Customer success metrics work at two levels:

Management-level = insights into overall customer health (e.g. total active accounts this month).

Tactical-level = action triggers for your CS team (e.g. which account has engagement dropping fast?).

Let’s break it down by metric.

Metric 1: Active Users and Accounts

This one’s more tactical. On its own, it doesn’t say much about product health. But it helps your CS team see who’s showing up — and who isn’t.

Useful for planning too. If your active accounts dropped this month, maybe it’s time to investigate.

And if you don’t have an engagement score yet, tracking active accounts is a decent (though imperfect) starting point.

Metric 2: Product Engagement Score

This one’s powerful at both levels.

At the management level, it tells you whether paid users are getting more or less value from your product over time. You can also slice engagement by segment — pricing tier, industry, CSM — to learn what’s working and where.

At the tactical level, engagement scores help your CS team:

Spot high-risk accounts

Flag great accounts for advocacy or case studies

Identify accounts ripe for expansion

Track user-level shifts that signal churn or growth

Power users = potential champions.

Declining users = early churn signals.

Both are worth watching.

Metric 3: Product Adoption Rate

Another dual-purpose metric.

Zoomed out, adoption shows whether your users are getting the full value of your product — or just poking around the edges. It’s especially useful for comparing segments, like self-serve vs. high-touch.

Zoomed in, it helps CS teams guide specific accounts. If a team’s only using 2 out of 10 core features, there’s a clear opportunity to help them go deeper.

Metric 4: Activation Rate

A must-have for onboarding.

Management can track how well activation is going overall. Are new accounts getting to first value quickly?

Your CS team, meanwhile, can use this metric to spot stuck accounts — and do something about it. They’ll know exactly which activation steps haven’t been completed and where to focus.

Product Engagement Metrics Are the Bedrock of Customer Success

These metrics give you a read on customer health. But more importantly, they help you act.

Used right, they support your strategy and your day-to-day work. That’s the sweet spot.

Your CS team shouldn’t be guessing. With the right engagement data, they won’t have to.