{"site":{"name":"Koji","description":"AI-native customer research platform that helps teams conduct, analyze, and synthesize customer interviews at scale.","url":"https://www.koji.so","contentTypes":["blog","documentation"],"lastUpdated":"2026-10-11T10:09:15.557Z"},"content":[{"type":"blog","id":"cfecf821-81da-447b-b4a3-72508ee1b2f9","slug":"renewal-risk-interviews-customer-success-playbook","title":"Renewal Risk Interviews: A Customer Success Playbook for Finding Out Why Accounts Will Not Renew","url":"https://www.koji.so/blog/renewal-risk-interviews-customer-success-playbook","summary":"A Customer Success playbook for renewal risk interviews: talk to the champion, budget owner and an end user 90 to 150 days before renewal, use event-based questions, and run it across the whole book with AI-moderated interviews in Koji. Covers timing, mistakes, setup steps, example questions and sourced retention data.","content":"Renewal risk interviews are short, one-to-one conversations with the people at an account who decide whether you renew, run 90 to 150 days before the date. With AI-moderated interviews you can hold them for every account in your book, not only the five your VP is watching, and read the answers as one report. By the end of this guide you will know who to talk to, what to ask, how to set it up in Koji this week and what to do with what you hear.\n\n## Why renewal risk interviews matter now\n\nRetention is getting harder to hold, and the tools most CS teams use to see trouble coming are not built to explain it.\n\n- **Gross retention is slipping.** The 2026 SaaS & AI Performance Benchmarks from Aleph and Benchmarkit, built on full-year 2025 actuals, put median gross revenue retention at 84%, down from 88% a year earlier, with every quartile moving down together ([Aleph](https://www.getaleph.com/answers/gross-revenue-retention-saas-2026)).\n- **Net retention is barely above flat.** SaaS Capital's 2025 retention benchmarks, drawn from more than 1,000 private B2B SaaS companies, show a median net revenue retention of 101% and gross retention of 91%. Companies with ACV above $250,000 hold a median GRR of 95% ([SaaS Capital](https://www.saas-capital.com/blog-posts/what-is-a-good-retention-rate-for-a-private-saas-company/)). Read those two numbers together: at 101% NRR, expansion barely covers what you lose, so every account that leaves without warning shows up in the number.\n- **Your customers decide without you.** Gartner's 2026 buyer survey found 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience ([Gartner](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-03-09-gartner-sales-survey-finds-67-percent-of-b2b-buyers-prefer-a-rep-free-experience)). The people deciding on your renewal are doing the same thing: forming a view in meetings you are not invited to.\n- **AI made CS faster, not better at renewals.** Gainsight's 2025 CS Index, a survey of more than 400 companies, found more mature teams use AI for churn risk identification, sentiment analysis and renewal preparation ([Gainsight](https://www.gainsight.com/blog/new-cs-index-report-reveals-trends-to-watch-in-2025/)). Gainsight itself notes that teams have become more efficient but renewal outcomes have not kept pace.\n\nHere is the problem under all of it. A health score tells you that usage dropped. It cannot tell you that the new VP of Operations has asked finance for a list of every tool above a set cost. Gartner's research on customer success programs warns that survey-based or subjective satisfaction measures used alone are not enough to predict whether a customer will be retained and grown. You need the reason, from the person, in time to act. If you learn it in the last 30 days, you are negotiating. If you learn it at day 120, you are fixing something.\n\nThe cost of not asking is a forecast you cannot defend. Your renewal number then rests on a green dot in a dashboard and your CSM's feeling about a champion who may not hold the budget.\n\n## What good looks like\n\nThe version that works is small and dull.\n\n![A customer success team in a meeting room reviewing account notes before a renewal conversation](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1690378820474-b468b8ee64d3?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w5NDUzMDN8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwxfHx0ZWFtJTIwbWVldGluZyUyMGxhcHRvcCUyMG9mZmljZXxlbnwxfDB8fHwxNzkxNzAxNDEwfDA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080)\n\n_Photo by [Lyubomyr Reverchuk](https://unsplash.com/@lreverchuk?utm_source=koji&utm_medium=referral) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=koji&utm_medium=referral)_\n\n![Checklist for running renewal risk interviews: who to talk to, when, what to ask and what to do with the answers](/visuals/renewal-risk-interview-checklist/renewal-risk-interview-checklist.png \"Save this checklist for your next renewal cycle\")\n\n**Time it to the decision, not the contract date.** Start 120 to 150 days before renewal for annual contracts. Budget cycles close earlier than the contract end, and by day 60 most of the choice is made. For multi-year deals, run it 6 months out and again at the next budget cycle.\n\n**Talk to three roles, not one.** The champion who uses the product, the person who owns the budget, and one everyday user the champion did not pick. The gap between what these three say is your risk signal. Five or six accounts with all three roles will teach you more than twenty champion-only chats.\n\n**Ask for events, not opinions.** \"How satisfied are you?\" gets a 7. \"Tell me about the last time you needed this and it did not work\" gets a story. Anchor on the last 90 days, on who was in the room and what was decided.\n\n**Make the budget question normal.** \"Is there anything changing in how your team buys or reviews tools this year?\" lands better than \"Are you going to renew?\" Ask it near the end, once they are talking.\n\n**Keep sales out of it.** The moment the interview becomes an upsell, you lose candour. State up front that you are listening and that you will not follow up with a quote.\n\n**Close the loop within a week.** Tell the customer one thing you will do because of what they said. It is the best retention move in the whole process.\n\n### Common mistakes\n\n- Interviewing only accounts already flagged red. You learn why the lost accounts left, and nothing about the quiet ones.\n- Using the interview as a disguised renewal ask.\n- Skipping the person who signs the invoice because \"that's the CSM's champion's job\".\n- Reading the one scary comment instead of the pattern across accounts.\n- Asking about the product only. Renewal decisions are about budget, priorities and internal politics as much as features.\n- Waiting for a perfect question set. Run 10 accounts, then adjust.\n\n## How to set it up in Koji, step by step\n\n![Process for setting up renewal risk interviews in Koji, from template to report](/visuals/renewal-risk-interviews-koji-setup/renewal-risk-interviews-koji-setup.png \"Six steps from template to renewal risk report\")\n\nYou need an account. Personal invite links from a CSV import need the Interviews or Enterprise plan; on any plan you can share one study link with everyone. Previews are free on every plan.\n\n1. **Start from a template.** Open the template gallery in the dashboard and pick the QBR Prep Research template under Customer Success, or start a blank study and describe the goal. Tell the assistant: \"I want to understand which accounts renewing in the next 120 days are at risk and why, from the champion, the budget owner and an end user.\"\n2. **Shape the research brief.** The brief holds the goal, who you want to hear from, the tone and the follow-up depth. Set the opening to say this is a listening exercise for the customer's benefit, and add a guardrail so the interviewer does not discuss pricing or renewal terms. You can edit the brief by hand or ask the assistant to change a part.\n3. **Add structured questions where you need a number.** Mix open-ended questions with a scale, a single choice and a yes/no so the report can chart them across accounts. Example questions:\n   - \"Tell me about the last time [product] did not work the way you needed. What happened?\" (open-ended)\n   - \"How likely is your team to still be relying on [product] a year from now?\" (scale, 1 to 10)\n   - \"Who else at your company would have a say if you reviewed this tool?\" (single choice: nobody / my manager / finance / IT or security / a new leader)\n   - \"Has anything changed in your team, priorities or budget since you signed?\" (yes/no, with follow-up)\n   - \"If you had to explain the value of [product] to your CFO in one minute, what would you say?\" (open-ended)\n   - \"What would make you look at alternatives?\" (open-ended)\n4. **Choose voice or text, and preview it.** Participants pick the way they are comfortable with. Take the Preview tab yourself first: previews never use credits and never count as responses.\n5. **Invite the right people.** Import a CSV from your CRM with account, role and renewal date as columns. Each person gets a private invite link tied to them, so you can see who has finished and keep the columns next to every response. If you want maximum candour on a sensitive account, use the shared study link instead, which can stay anonymous.\n\n![Koji CSV import creating personalised interview links for each respondent](/email/shots/shot-csv-import.jpg \"Every person on your list gets their own link, and you see who has started\")\n\n6. **Read the report.** As interviews finish, Koji analyses each one and builds a report with themes, findings and the quotes behind each, with a quality score per interview. Only interviews that meet the quality bar use credits and enter the report.\n\n## What you get\n\nThe next morning, you open one report instead of 40 call notes. You see which themes repeat (budget review, a competitor evaluation, a migration worry), what share of interviewees raised each and the quotes behind them. Because you imported role and renewal date, you can slice it: what do budget owners say that champions do not? What do accounts renewing in Q1 worry about compared with Q3?\n\n![Koji report showing a finding backed by supporting participant quotes](/email/shots/shot-evidence-panel.jpg \"Each finding links back to the participants who said it\")\n\nThen use it where decisions are made:\n\n- **Forecast call:** replace \"feels green\" with \"6 of 9 budget owners said tools are under review\".\n- **Account plan:** a specific action per account, from the quote, not the dashboard.\n- **Product and exec review:** the three recurring gaps, in the customers' words.\n- **Health score:** compare the score with what customers said, and fix the inputs that miss.\n\n## The same playbook elsewhere\n\nThe pattern, \"ask the deciders what is changing before the decision\", works well beyond SaaS renewals.\n\n- **GTM teams** run it as win-loss interviews, after the decision rather than before. See [the win-loss interview questions guide](/blog/win-loss-interview-questions-2026).\n- **HR** runs it as stay interviews: asking people who have not left yet what would make them go.\n- **Investors** run it at portfolio companies, asking customers of the company what would make them leave.\n- **Founders** run it before diligence, as described in the [founder reference-call playbook](/blog/investor-customer-reference-calls-founders).\n\nIf you want the after-the-fact version, the [customer exit interviews guide](/blog/customer-exit-interviews-guide-2026) covers it. Renewal risk interviews are the same questions asked while there is still time to change the answer.\n\n## Why Koji for renewal risk interviews\n\n![Table comparing health scores, surveys, CSM calls and Koji for renewal risk research](/visuals/renewal-risk-research-methods-compared/renewal-risk-research-methods-compared.png \"How the four common approaches compare on what a CS leader needs\")\n\n|                              | Health score only | NPS / CSAT survey | CSM-run calls           | Koji AI interviews                |\n| ---------------------------- | ----------------- | ----------------- | ----------------------- | --------------------------------- |\n| Explains why                 | No                | Rarely            | Yes                     | Yes, with follow-ups              |\n| Covers every account         | Yes               | Yes               | Top accounts only       | Yes                               |\n| Reaches the budget owner     | No                | Sometimes         | Depends on relationship | Yes, by personal link             |\n| Same questions each time     | Yes               | Yes               | No                      | Yes                               |\n| Time to read across accounts | Instant           | Fast              | Slow, manual notes      | Report built as interviews finish |\n| Effort per account           | None              | Low               | High                    | Low                               |\n\nFairness to each: a health score is the right early warning and you should keep it. A survey is quick and gives a trend line. A good CSM conversation beats anything on trust, and nothing here replaces it for your top ten accounts. The gap is the 200 accounts below that line, and the reason behind the number.\n\nWhy Koji for this job:\n\n- **Follow-up depth.** The interviewer probes a vague answer, so \"budget is tight\" turns into which budget and whose decision.\n- **Structured and open questions in one flow.** A 1 to 10 likelihood and a story behind it, in the same conversation, charted across accounts.\n- **Voice, text and phone.** Participants choose, and outbound calls can reach people who will not click a link.\n- **Traceable findings.** Every finding links back to the interviews and quotes, so you can defend it in a forecast review.\n- **A quality bar.** Interviews are scored 1 to 5 and only those scoring 3 or more enter the report, so a click-through does not skew your read.\n\n## Questions you might have about AI interviews\n\n**Will my customers talk to an AI instead of their CSM?** Many will if you set it up honestly. Say in the invitation that it is an AI interviewer, that a real person on your team reads the results, and why you are asking. Keep it short and let them pick voice or text. Start with a pilot of 10 accounts and read the completion rate before you scale.\n\n**Will it damage the relationship?** It can if it feels like surveillance or a sales tactic. Use a personal invite from the CSM, state that nothing is sold in the conversation, and close the loop afterwards. Some customers find it easier to criticise a product to a neutral interviewer than to the person they work with every week. Treat that as something to test, not a guarantee.\n\n**Where does the account data go?** Koji encrypts data in transit and at rest and makes a Data Processing Agreement available to business customers. Participant data can be anonymised, and you control retention and deletion. Read the [privacy and security guide](/docs/ai-interview-data-privacy-security) and have your security team check it against your own policy.\n\n## When Koji may not be the right fit\n\nIf your book is fewer than 15 strategic accounts and your CSMs already speak with the budget owner every month, you do not need this. Personal calls will serve you better. It is also a poor fit where customers do not speak English or a supported language, or where a contract forbids third-party recording. In those cases, use the interview guide from the template and run the conversations yourself.\n\n## Metrics to track\n\n- Completion rate by role (champion, budget owner, user)\n- Share of accounts with at least two roles interviewed\n- Risk themes by share of interviewees, per quarter\n- Gap between health score and interview sentiment\n- Accounts where a risk was found and acted on before day 90\n- Renewal rate and GRR for interviewed versus not-interviewed accounts, read with care since you chose who to interview\n\n## FAQ\n\n**How many accounts should I interview?** Start with 10 to 20 accounts renewing in the next 150 days, covering at least two roles at each. Widen once the completion rate and the themes look steady.\n\n**How long should the interview be?** Keep it short enough that a busy budget owner will finish it, and let the follow-up questions supply the depth. Run your own preview to time it, and tighten the question set if it runs long.\n\n**Should I tell customers it is about renewal?** Be honest that it is about their experience and what would make your partnership more useful. Do not hide the purpose, and do not discuss price or terms.\n\n**Can I run it for small accounts with no CSM?** Yes. This is where it pays off most, since nobody is calling them today. Use the shared link or a CSV import.\n\n**What do I do if the interview reveals a serious problem?** Treat it as a ticket for a human. Reach out within two working days, with the quote, and loop in the exec sponsor.\n\n## Ready to start?\n\nOpen the [template gallery](/for/customer-success), pick QBR Prep Research and adapt the brief to renewals, or read about [how CS teams use Koji](/for/customer-success). All playbooks for this audience live in the [Customer Success use-case library](/use-cases/customer-success). Related reading: [Customer Research for Customer Success Teams](/blog/customer-research-for-customer-success-teams-2026), [Why price is never the real reason customers churn](/blog/why-price-is-never-the-real-churn-reason), [Importing participants via CSV](/docs/importing-participants-csv), [How the quality gate works](/docs/how-the-quality-gate-works) and [Generating research reports](/docs/generating-research-reports).\n","category":"Use Cases","lastModified":"2026-10-11T06:50:10.665631+00:00","metaTitle":"Renewal Risk Interviews for Customer Success","metaDescription":"Find out why accounts will not renew 90 to 150 days out. A Customer Success playbook for interviewing champions and budget owners with AI, step by step.","keywords":["renewal risk interviews","customer success renewal playbook","renewal risk assessment","pre-renewal customer interviews","churn prevention customer success","health score validation"],"aiSummary":"A Customer Success playbook for renewal risk interviews: talk to the champion, budget owner and an end user 90 to 150 days before renewal, use event-based questions, and run it across the whole book with AI-moderated interviews in Koji. Covers timing, mistakes, setup steps, example questions and sourced retention data.","aiKeywords":["renewal risk interviews","customer success","AI-moderated interviews","gross revenue retention","health score","churn prevention","champion","budget owner"],"aiContentType":"guide","faqItems":[{"answer":"Start with 10 to 20 accounts renewing in the next 150 days, covering at least two roles at each. Widen once the completion rate and the themes look steady.","question":"How many accounts should I interview?"},{"answer":"For annual contracts, 120 to 150 days before the renewal date. Budget cycles close earlier than the contract end, so waiting until the last 60 days leaves little room to change the outcome.","question":"When should renewal risk interviews start?"},{"answer":"Be honest that it is about their experience and what would make the partnership more useful. Do not hide the purpose, and do not discuss price or contract terms in the conversation.","question":"Should I tell customers the interview is about renewal?"},{"answer":"Yes. This is where AI-moderated interviews help most, since nobody is calling these accounts today. Use a shared study link, or a CSV import with personal links on the Interviews or Enterprise plan.","question":"Can I run renewal risk interviews for small accounts with no CSM?"},{"answer":"Personal invite links from a CSV import need the Interviews or Enterprise plan. On any plan you can share one study link with everyone, and previews are free.","question":"Do I need the Interviews plan?"},{"answer":"Treat it as a ticket for a human. Reach out within two working days with the quote, and bring in the executive sponsor.","question":"What do I do when an interview reveals a serious problem?"}],"relatedTopics":["renewal risk","customer success","churn prevention"]}],"pagination":{"total":1,"returned":1,"offset":0}}