Our Head of Customer Success has a high Follow Thru but is constantly failing to hit her retention Rocks because she gets bogged down in resolving individual support tickets instead of building the proactive retention system. How do we fix this?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a leader with high Follow Thru is failing to build proactive systems because they are constantly resolving individual support tickets, you are dealing with a capacity and role-definition issue rather than a lack of capability. A high Follow Thru score means they have the natural conative instinct to build structure, but they are stuck in the wrong operational seat.

To resolve this, look closely at your Accountability Chart. Your Head of Customer Success is likely occupying two distinct seats: a leadership seat focused on strategy and proactive system building, and an operational seat focused on daily ticket resolution. Because the urgent work of ticket resolution always trumps the important work of system building, they have no capacity left to execute their strategic Rocks.

You must separate these seats. Keep the Head of Customer Success in the leadership seat, and create a separate Customer Support Representative seat to handle individual tickets. Clearly define the roles for both.

If your current budget does not allow for a new hire, use your next Level 10 Meeting to IDS the capacity issue. You can temporarily delegate some ticket-resolution tasks to other team members or utilize AI tools to automate basic customer inquiries. This frees up the necessary capacity for your leader to use their natural Follow Thru strengths to build the proactive systems your business needs.