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Answering the Relationship Health questions on a customer

Where the manual checks live on the customer record, what each question means, and why "No" is sometimes the healthy answer.

Written by Nick Kewney

Overview

Most Relationship Health checks answer themselves from data already in The Layer. A handful cannot, because they are judgements only the person who owns the account can make. Those are ordinary custom fields on the customer record, created automatically when Relationship Health is enabled.

Until a question is answered it counts as failed, and the panel shows it in amber as waiting for a first answer. That is deliberate: an unanswered question is not evidence of a healthy relationship.

Where to find them

Open the customer and go to the custom fields on the record. Each field's description tells you which check it feeds, so you can answer them without memorising the list. Answer, save, then use Refresh on the Relationship Health panel if you want the score to catch up immediately.

The questions

Field

The question it asks

Healthy answer

Objectives understood

Do we understand, and can we play back, the customer's objectives?

Yes

Vision presented

Has the customer had our vision presentation?

Yes

Customer service plan provided

Has the customer been given the latest customer service plan?

Yes

Reference willingness

Would this customer provide a reference?

Yes

Relationship threat

Are there any threats to the relationship?

No

NPS score

The customer's NPS, as a number. Only used where there is no case feedback to work it out from.

Above 45

Account plan last updated

When the account plan was last worked on. Maintains itself when the plan is edited; set it by hand only to record a review done away from the system.

Within 3 months

Why some questions are healthy on "No"

Several checks are phrased as an absence: no threats, no complaints, no billing disputes, no service credits. For those, No is the good answer. The field description always says so, and the panel's evidence tooltip repeats it, so you do not have to hold the logic in your head.

Fallback fields you may also see

A few fields exist as a safety net for checks that are normally automatic, and are only read when the automatic route is unavailable to your company:

  • Complaints raised and Billing disputes raised, used until case categories have been mapped.

  • Service credits requested, used until credit request case types or categories have been mapped.

  • Contacts exist in our business systems, used until contact responsibilities are in use.

  • Meetings in the last 3 months and Survey or review left, used where the automatic reads do not apply.

If your administrator has mapped the relevant categories, you can ignore these: the automatic answer wins and the field is not read.

A practical routine

  1. Open the customer and look at the Relationship Health panel first. Work from the amber checks: those are the ones waiting on you.

  2. Answer the questions honestly rather than optimistically. A score that flatters the relationship is worse than no score.

  3. Revisit at your normal review cadence. These are point in time judgements, and a Yes recorded a year ago may no longer be true.

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