Esther Azeezat Oyeyemi

Health scores and adoption numbers usually show a customer slipping only after the drift has begun.

• Knowing why someone came and noticing when they go quiet catches it sooner.
• Their habit comes from a university fellowship where every first-time attendee was assigned to a named person who looked after two, three or five people, checked on them afterwards and noticed who did not come back.
• The pastor's line “we have to preserve the harvest” framed getting people through the door as only half the job.

A client went quiet and usage dropped.

• Nothing was wrong with the product; a check-in revealed the client had been promoted into a new role and handed the account to a successor, so the relationship had to be rebuilt from the start.
• Oyeyemi writes that they have managed 150+ accounts and still work this way.

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Onboarding goals should therefore ask “are we getting this customer closer to the outcome they came here for?” rather than “have we completed the setup?”. Value also differs by buyer, so the same product has to be explained differently depending on who is paying.

The post says value for a lean five-person team might mean ten hours of manual spreadsheet work saved each week, while for an enterprise director it might mean better risk management and peace of mind. It describes asking a new client early in onboarding “Why did you choose us?” and finding the answer eye-opening: the value the team assumed it was delivering was not the value the customer was looking for.

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The method is to acknowledge the gap honestly, ask what outcome the customer wants, then show what is possible with the tools they already have — or escalate internally when a real solution can be built.

• They are clear that this is not a policy of saying yes to everything: sometimes the answer is genuinely no.
• First, test whether another route can solve the customer's actual problem.

A key account asked about an advanced workflow feature the product did not support.

• Instead of refusing, Oyeyemi asked what outcome the customer wanted and walked through alternative workflows using existing tools.
• The response shifted from potential churn to “Oh, I didn't realize we could do it that way.
• That actually works for us.”
• A second post uses a market-stall analogy: a seller missing the black size-38 shoe leaves to find it and keeps the buyer engaged rather than letting them walk.
• Oyeyemi applies the same idea to a customer requesting a custom plan outside the standard packages, taking the request to the product team and eventually having it built.

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Real frameworks, Oyeyemi argues, teach you how to think when things go sideways. Faced with a stuck account, the checklist move is to prepare a presentation highlighting unused features; the framework move is to ask why adoption froze and fix that blocker first.

Grace, a CSM at a legal tech startup, has a client three months into a one-year deal with adoption stuck at 30%, the paid-for automated clause templates untouched, and a QBR two months out.

• Instead of building the deck, Grace asks whether the obstacle is workflow, trust in automation, or comfort with manual review, then builds a 60-day recovery plan that starts with one clause win and expands adoption.
• Oyeyemi's summary line: adoption sticks when you remove friction, not when you sell features.
• Peleg Samson is the source of the checklist-versus-framework framing; Grace is Oyeyemi's worked example.

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Less frequent use does not mean the product has become less valuable; the customer may need it for one campaign, a busy business period, or a single feature a few times a year. The recommendation is to map a customer's natural usage cycles, keep contact light and contextual, and send reminders tied to what they last did, rather than putting them in a low-usage bucket and firing off desperate “We miss you!” emails.

Using Canva as a personal example, Oyeyemi says they used it heavily for a period, barely touched it for months, and still got significant value from it.

• The contrast is between asking “Why haven't you logged in lately?” and saying “You used this feature during your last campaign.
• We've just improved it.”

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The habits they cite include letting the customer do most of the talking, showing understanding before offering a solution, involving the right colleagues instead of solving everything alone, keeping emails to one message, one purpose and one clear next step, and treating renewals as a reminder of results achieved rather than a discount negotiation. Underneath is the chain they repeat: communication drives adoption, adoption drives retention, retention drives revenue.

At a legal tech SaaS startup where adoption had stalled and the legal team said people were not using the platform, Oyeyemi says they acknowledged the frustration and pointed to friction visible in the customer's own data before troubleshooting.

• That changed the tone of the conversation; active users later grew from 9 lawyers to 15.
• To translate the numbers, “adoption increased by 67%” becomes “your team saved 240 hours this quarter.”

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One thread treats stockouts and overstocks as separate problems: address stockouts through demand forecasting, safety stock, regular review of sales trends and strong supplier relationships; address overstock through just-in-time ordering, ABC analysis of inventory by value, and regular audits.

• A broader post presents inventory management alongside debtor's management and expense tracking, and lists inventory accuracy, demand forecasting, storage costs and shrinkage from theft, damage or misplacement as problems efficient management addresses.
• A later return post reports a virtual assistant certificate from ALX, work with IT support teams, and a venture helping startups and small businesses use digital tools and automation.
• It lists Trello, ClickUp, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, Canva, Zoho Books and Google Workspace as tools.

A supermarket client had overstocked seasonal items taking up storage space. After moving to just-in-time ordering and ABC analysis, overstock fell by 25%, freeing room for fast-moving products.

Inventory and operations appear to be the profile's earlier focus, with the customer success writing building on that work rather than replacing it.

• A return post describes inventory management as the favourite part of the work even as it reports new training and automation services.
• Ask for publication dates to verify the chronology.

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A buyer at a local market wants a black size-38 shoe the seller doesn’t have.

• Instead of sending them away, the seller says he’ll get it, disappears to fetch it, and sometimes offers a soda or biscuits while they wait.
• Esther Azeezat Oyeyemi compares this with a software customer who wanted a custom plan outside the standard packages.
• Rather than saying it was unavailable, the post says the product team was asked whether they could work something out, and a custom solution was built.
• The post is clear that this doesn’t mean saying yes to everything: sometimes the honest answer is no.
• Before refusing, ask whether there’s another way to solve the customer’s actual problem.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful for renewal or objection-handling messaging that delivers a limitation without ending the conversation. Script the “find a path forward” move into customer-success talk tracks.

The post argues that communication, not product knowledge, distinguishes an adequate customer success manager from an excellent one.

• It illustrates the point with a legal-tech example: adoption had stalled, so instead of opening with troubleshooting, they acknowledged the team’s frustration and pointed to friction visible in the customer’s own data.
• Active users then rose from 9 lawyers to 15 over a few months.
• Other specifics include translating “adoption increased by 67%” into “your team saved 240 hours this quarter”; keeping emails to one message, one purpose and one clear next step; bringing in the right colleagues rather than solving everything alone; and treating renewals as a reminder of results achieved, not a discount negotiation.

For brands planning a campaign

Ready-to-use material for onboarding emails, QBR talking points or a value-realization asset: the 9-to-15 adoption story and hours-saved translation are concrete enough to reuse in copy.

Responding to Peleg Samson's point that most teams have checklists with fancy names rather than frameworks, the post walks through a CSM named Grace whose client signed a one-year deal three months earlier and had adoption frozen at 30%, with the paid-for automated clause templates untouched and a QBR two months away.

• The checklist move is to build the deck, highlight the unused features and hope it lands.
• The framework move is to ask why adoption stalled — workflow friction, trust, or comfort with manual review — and spend the next 60 days on a success recovery plan that starts with one clause and then expands adoption.
• The closing line: adoption sticks when you remove friction, not when you sell features.

For brands planning a campaign

A ready structure for adoption-recovery campaigns aimed at legal or compliance software buyers, where manual-review habits are often the real blocker.

Esther Azeezat Oyeyemi calls “No, we don't have that” the most expensive sentence in customer success and describes almost saying it to a key account.

• Knowing the advanced workflow feature didn’t exist, they acknowledged the limitation, asked what outcome the customer was trying to reach, then walked through alternative workflows using tools the customer already had.
• The customer’s reaction shifted from potential churn to “Oh, I didn't realize we could do it that way.
• That actually works for us.”
• The post adds that AI can automate standard answers, but judging what a customer is really trying to achieve is human work.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful for messaging about product gaps, roadmap “not yet” answers, or the human layer in AI-assisted support and self-service.

Using Canva as a personal example, Esther Azeezat Oyeyemi says they used it heavily for a period, barely touched it for months, and still got significant value.

• A usage dip can reflect a seasonal need—a specific campaign, a busy business period or a feature needed a few times a year—so these accounts shouldn’t be put in a low-usage bucket and hit with desperate “We miss you!” emails.
• Instead, map customers’ natural usage cycles, keep communication light and contextual, and tie reminders to what they last did—for instance, flagging an improvement to the feature they relied on during their last campaign.

For brands planning a campaign

Relevant to re-engagement campaigns and lifecycle segmentation. The contrast between “why haven't you logged in lately?” and “this improved since your last campaign” is directly copy-testable.

The post argues that even a good product can be a bad investment if customers can’t connect its features to something they want.

• It lists three questions buyers need answered: what problem this solves, what outcome they get, and whether that value is worth the spend.
• It reframes the onboarding question from “Have we completed the setup?” to “Are we getting this customer closer to the outcome they came here for?”
• Value differs by buyer: for a lean five-person team, it might mean saving 10 hours of manual spreadsheet work each week; for an enterprise director, better risk management and peace of mind.
• The post also describes asking a new client “Why did you choose us?” and finding the answer eye-opening.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful for onboarding-goal design and briefs that need customer-language value statements instead of feature lists.

Esther Azeezat Oyeyemi traces their retention instincts to a university faith-based fellowship.

• First-time worshippers filled in forms during services, and each was assigned to a member who looked after two, three or five newcomers.
• They then moved through a foundation class and Bible study before being encouraged to bring someone else.
• The post says people kept coming back not because of a clever strategy, but because someone remembered their name and noticed when they were absent.
• The pastor’s line, “we have to preserve the harvest,” frames getting people through the door as only half the job.
• The post also reports 150+ managed accounts and describes a client who went quiet after being promoted into a new role, then introduced a successor—requiring the relationship to be rebuilt.

For brands planning a campaign

The promotion-handover scenario is relevant to campaigns aimed at named account contacts whose roles may change. It makes the case for multi-threaded relationship coverage rather than relying on a single contact.

A return-to-LinkedIn post reports completing virtual assistant training with ALX, joining IT support work and launching a creative business solutions venture that helps startups and small businesses use digital tools and AI-powered systems.

• Listed services include appointment setting and calendar management, email marketing and cold calling for lead generation, inventory management—described as the favourite part—and business automation.
• Named tools include Trello, ClickUp, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, Canva, Zoho Books and Google Workspace.

For brands planning a campaign

Points to an adjacent audience: small businesses seeking operations and automation help rather than SaaS customer success, changing both the pitch and the buyer.

One post treats stockouts and overstocks as separate problems.

• It addresses stockouts with demand forecasting, safety stock, regular reviews of sales trends and strong supplier relationships; it tackles overstock with just-in-time ordering, ABC analysis of inventory by value and regular audits.
• A supermarket client had overstocked seasonal items taking up storage space, then cut overstock by 25% after switching to just-in-time ordering and ABC analysis, freeing room for fast-moving products.
• A companion post covers inventory accuracy, demand forecasting, storage costs and shrinkage, and asks readers how they manage inventory.

For brands planning a campaign

Relevant to retail and inventory-software campaigns; the supermarket before-and-after and the just-in-time/ABC pairing offer a concrete case to work from.

Onboarding goals, they say, should ask, "are we getting this customer closer to the outcome they came here for?" rather than "have we completed the setup?"

• Value varies by buyer: a five-person team may measure weekly hours saved on manual spreadsheet work, while an enterprise director may measure risk management and peace of mind.
• A customer success manager helps customers connect what the product does to what they want to achieve.

Oyeyemi describes asking new clients early in onboarding, "Why did you choose us?", and using the answer to check what value the team assumes it is delivering.

For brands planning a campaign

For a B2B SaaS team hiring a customer success manager to improve onboarding, this supports interviewing candidates on how they would rewrite success measures around the customer's stated outcome and ask customers why they bought, rather than relying on setup or feature-activation counts alone.

Examples: Source 1

That person also encouraged regular attendees to bring someone new.

• Their argument: people often leave not because the product is bad, but because nobody is paying attention.
• In one work example, a client went quiet and usage dropped, though nothing was wrong with the product.
• A check-in revealed the client had been promoted and handed the account to a successor, so the relationship had to be rebuilt from the start.
• Oyeyemi says health scores and adoption numbers tend to flag a slipping customer only after the decline begins; understanding why someone came and noticing when they go quiet can catch it sooner.
• They cite having managed 150+ accounts.

For brands planning a campaign

For a retention-focused hiring brief, ask candidates to describe their outreach cadence and the signals they would use to spot a quiet account. Ask for an example of when a usage metric alone would have missed a change in the customer's role or situation.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

In one case, a customer asked about an advanced workflow feature the product did not support.

• Rather than ending the conversation, Oyeyemi acknowledged the limitation, asked what outcome the customer wanted, and walked through alternative workflows using existing tools.
• The customer moved from potential churn to accepting a different route to the goal.
• A second post uses a market-stall analogy: a seller without the right shoe size leaves to find it and keeps the buyer engaged rather than letting them walk.
• Oyeyemi applies the same approach to a customer requesting a custom plan outside existing packages, taking the request to the product team; the plan was eventually built.

Acknowledge the gap, redirect to the customer's desired outcome, then show what is possible with current tools or a custom arrangement.

Oyeyemi says this does not mean saying yes to every request; sometimes the answer is no. First, they ask whether another route can solve the customer's actual problem.

For brands planning a campaign

For a retention or onboarding hire, ask how they would handle a genuine product limitation: what the CSM should say, when to escalate to product, and how to keep the conversation focused on the customer's outcome rather than the missing feature.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

In one example, Grace, a CSM at a legal tech startup, has a client three months into a one-year deal, with adoption stuck at 30% and paid-for automated clause templates untouched.

• The QBR is two months away.
• The checklist approach is to build the deck and highlight unused features.
• The framework approach asks why adoption has stalled — the workflow, trust in automation, or comfort with manual review — and addresses that blocker first.
• Grace builds a 60-day success recovery plan, starting with one clause win before expanding adoption.
• The principle: adoption sticks when friction is removed, not when features are sold.

For brands planning a campaign

A hiring panel can use this as a scenario question: give candidates a stalled account with a QBR approaching and see whether they propose a recovery plan aimed at the blocker or a presentation aimed at the metrics.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Using their own experience as a Canva customer — heavy use during busy periods, months of near-zero use, still strong value — they say less frequent use does not mean the product became less valuable; the customer may need it for a campaign, a busy season, or one feature a few times a year.

• The recommended handling is not to dump these accounts into a low-usage bucket with "we miss you" emails, but to map natural usage cycles, keep contact light and contextual, and send useful reminders when a feature the customer previously relied on has changed.
• The contrast offered is between "Why haven't you logged in lately?" and "You used this feature during your last campaign — we've just improved it."

For brands planning a campaign

For SaaS products with seasonal or campaign-driven usage, ask candidates how they distinguish genuine disengagement from a predictable usage cycle and adjust churn scoring and outreach accordingly. This is a better fit than treating every low-usage account as at risk.

Examples: Source 1

The habits they list include letting the customer do most of the talking, showing understanding before offering solutions, and translating data into language the customer remembers: "adoption increased by 67%" becomes "your team saved 240 hours this quarter."

• In a legal tech SaaS example where adoption had stalled, acknowledging the customer's frustration shifted the tone; active users later grew from 9 lawyers to 15.
• In this approach, renewal conversations focus on results rather than discounts, and emails carry one message, one purpose, and one next step.

For brands planning a campaign

For a customer success hire, give candidates a raw adoption or usage number and ask them to turn it into a customer-facing value statement. Ask how they would open a renewal conversation.

Examples: Source 1

One post describes a client supermarket struggling with overstocked seasonal items.

• After introducing a just-in-time system and ABC analysis, overstock fell by 25%, freeing storage for fast-moving products.
• Another post covers inventory management alongside debtor's management and expense tracking, listing inventory accuracy, demand forecasting, storage costs, and shrinkage from theft, damage, or misplacement among the problems efficient management addresses.

For brands planning a campaign

For inventory or operations software vendors, this is the strongest evidence in the corpus of domain familiarity and a defined service area.

• It is a second specialty for customer success hiring panels to weigh: it broadens a candidate's operational grounding but differs from software retention work.
• Ask which area they want to build a career around.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The advertised services are appointment setting and calendar management, email marketing and cold calling for lead generation, inventory management, and business automation. The tools named are Trello, ClickUp, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, Canva, Zoho Books, and Google Workspace.

For brands planning a campaign

This is a different buying conversation from Oyeyemi's customer success writing.

• It suits vendors selling operations, automation, or productivity tools who want a practitioner to demonstrate tools they already use.
• For a SaaS retention role, ask whether the candidate wants a dedicated customer success position or a portfolio of freelance operational services.

Examples: Source 1

They close with a direct question inviting comments. The conversational, first-person register carries operational detail through stories rather than abstract frameworks.

For brands planning a campaign

A sponsored post needs a real scenario and a specific outcome, not a general product claim.

• A closing question offers a natural engagement hook.
• The creator's own examples are the strongest asset, so brands should supply a scenario or be ready for the creator to draw on their client work.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4 · Source 5 · Source 6 · Source 7

Listed services include appointment setting and calendar management, email marketing and cold calling, inventory management, and business automation. Tools named include Trello, ClickUp, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, Canva, Zoho Books, and Google Workspace.

View example

The post describes a training programme, not employment or client work.

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The post does not specify the role or whether this is employment, a programme, or a collaboration; ask for clarification before assessing the relationship.

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They use it as an example of seasonal customers who should not be treated as churn risks. This describes product use from the customer side, not a stated commercial partnership.

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Choudhery's min-max planning post explores the tension Oyeyemi describes: too little inventory means stockouts and delayed repairs, while too much ties up capital and risks waste. Both frame inventory parameters as something to review as demand and lead times change, not set once.

Choudhery writes from inside a large utility's supply chain, separating demand planning from supply planning and discussing storm-season demand, safety stock and supplier lead times.

• Oyeyemi's inventory posts are advisory and geared toward small clients, built around a supermarket example and practices such as ABC analysis and just-in-time ordering.
• They sit alongside a customer success practice rather than a single operations role.

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Both treat inventory accuracy as a process problem rather than a reporting problem.

Henson writes as an ERP consultant and software vendor: the posts point to internal consumption that never gets recorded, recommend Kanban with QR-coded cards and end with a product link, making the writing a marketing channel for a tool he built. Oyeyemi's inventory posts stay generic and advisory, with no product pitch or software recommendation beyond naming tools they use in their own service work.

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Moyer's posts make the same point: customers remember how often you helped prevent something from breaking, not how fast you responded once it did. Both treat proactive attention and ownership of the outcome as what separates an adequate customer success manager from a strong one.

Moyer writes about the discipline itself, laying out team-level principles and reflective questions about being proactive and taking ownership, without a named client story.

• Oyeyemi makes the same case through specific accounts and numbers: a client promoted into a new role who handed over the account, active users growing from nine lawyers to fifteen, and adoption stuck at 30% with a quarterly review approaching.
• Their work also includes an inventory and operations strand that Moyer's posts do not.

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Both of their posts argue that good customer success work means being proactive: noticing adoption trends before they become renewal risks, understanding a customer's “why” beyond product usage, and building touchpoints that are not driven by urgency.

• They also argue that the strongest teams own the customer journey rather than one slice of it.
• For a panel shortlisting customer success specialists, that focus is easier to screen than Oyeyemi’s spread across customer success, inventory operations and virtual-assistant work.

Only two posts, and both stay at the level of principle.

• They name behaviours but do not offer the worked cases in Oyeyemi’s posts: a stalled account with adoption frozen at 30%, a client whose quiet period turned out to be a promotion and handover, and a conversation that moved a customer from a flat “we don't have that” to a working alternative workflow.
• A hiring panel can probe Moyer’s principles with scenario questions, but should ask for examples of how they diagnose a specific account.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The posts distinguish demand planning from supply (material) planning and argue that combining the two functions produces shortages, excess inventory and lower forecast accuracy.

• They also set out min-max planning in utility operations — reorder points, safety stock, storm-season and emergency demand, and supplier lead times — and explain why those levels need regular review instead of being set once.
• That demonstrates domain fluency a general customer success writer does not.

Neither post covers onboarding, adoption, retention or customer conversation technique, all behaviours needed for the role.

• Both posts sit within one planning specialism, with one written from an employer’s supply chain transformation perspective.
• Choose Imran Choudhery for product-adjacent credibility with planning buyers, and ask for separate evidence of customer success craft.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Henson names the customer-side failure directly: discrepancies caused by internal consumption that goes unrecorded — R&D borrowing components for prototypes, production cannibalising a finished build, and maintenance grabbing fasteners.

• The resulting phantom stock levels drive bad pricing, delayed investment and customer promises based on unreliable information.
• Henson also describes the fix in shopfloor terms: Kanban bins that trigger both reorders and inventory adjustments.
• The posts put a number on the cost, too: manufacturers losing $100K+ a month in revenue to stockouts while their systems show healthy stock.

The posts read closer to product marketing than customer success.

• One ends with a call to action for a Kanban product, putting the problem in service of a sale; neither documents an onboarding, adoption or retention method.
• Choose Kyle Henson for manufacturing-domain credibility with a software buyer, and ask for separate evidence of onboarding and retention experience.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2