Interview Drills — Case Exercise (Take-home / Live Study)

Open-ended case studies — the take-home or live exercise most CSM loops center on. You're handed a customer and asked to build something: an onboarding plan, a QBR, a churn-risk mitigation, an expansion play. Each drill has a Framework (the structure a strong answer follows), a Model answer (a concise worked example), and a Rubric (what an evaluator looks for). These mirror the capstone deliverables — you're graded on structure, prioritization, stakeholder mapping, and measurable success criteria, not on knowing trivia. The app can role-play these as timed live cases or grade a written take-home (see mock-interview.md).

The universal case structure: Restate the goal and the customer's desired outcome → map the stakeholders (who decides, who uses, who blocks) → lay out a phased plan with owners and dates → prioritize ruthlessly (what gets the first win) → define measurable success criteria and the metric you'll move → name the top risk and how you'd catch it early. Use it on almost any "build a plan for this customer" prompt.

D1

difficulty: easy
concept: onboarding Take-home: A mid-market customer just signed for your product. Build their first-90-days onboarding plan.
Framework: Restate why they bought and what success looks like for them → identify the early win to aim for → lay out phases (kickoff → setup → first win → adoption) with timeline, owners, and who-does-what → name a measurable success criterion for day 90 → flag the top onboarding risk.
Model answer: "They bought to cut support-ticket resolution time. Target early win: their team resolves 10 tickets in the tool by week 2. Plan — Week 1: kickoff + confirm goals, clean sales handoff, set up 2 admins. Weeks 2–3: configure their top workflow, train the 6 frontline agents, hit the early win. Weeks 4–8: drive daily use, share one best practice. Days 60–90: review against goal. Success criterion: ≥70% of agents active weekly and median resolution time down 15% by day 90. Top risk: agents don't adopt — I'd watch weekly active users and intervene if it stalls by week 3."
Rubric: Strong answers anchor on the customer's own goal (not a feature tour), phase the plan with owners and dates, target a concrete early win, and define a measurable day-90 outcome. Weak answers give a generic setup checklist, no timeline or owners, and call "they're set up" success.

D2

difficulty: medium
concept: qbr Live case: You have a QBR with a key account in two days. Structure the meeting and the deck.
Framework: State the QBR's purpose (make value visible, align on next quarter, surface risk) → map who's in the room (champion, economic buyer, end users) and what each cares about → outline the agenda/deck sections → quantify value delivered → propose goals + a recommendation for next quarter → leave room to surface concerns.
Model answer: "Purpose: prove ROI ahead of a renewal in Q3 and set next-quarter goals. Room: the VP (economic buyer — cares about ROI), my champion (cares about their team looking good), two power users. Deck: (1) recap of their goals, (2) results — 'saved your team ~200 hours and cut onboarding time 30% last quarter,' (3) adoption health, (4) goals for next quarter, (5) my recommendation — pilot Module X tied to their stated Q3 goal, (6) open risks/asks. I'd quantify everything in their terms and end by asking what's changed on their side."
Rubric: Strong answers tie the QBR to a business outcome (usually the renewal), tailor content to the people in the room, lead with quantified value in the customer's terms, and align on forward goals plus a value-led recommendation. Weak answers present a generic product-usage report, ignore who's attending, and show activity ('we had 5 calls') instead of outcomes.

D3

difficulty: medium
concept: churn-risk Take-home: A $120k account's health score just dropped to red — usage down 40%, champion went quiet. Design a churn-risk mitigation plan.
Framework: Read the signals and form a hypothesis for the real cause → map stakeholders (is the champion still there? who else has influence?) → prioritize the fastest diagnostic action → lay out an intervention plan with steps, owners, and timing → decide what to escalate and when → define what "recovered" looks like as a measurable target.
Model answer: "Signals suggest a lost champion or a stalled use case, not a product failure. First action this week: get a call with the champion (or, if they've left, find the new owner) to learn the real story. Map stakeholders: confirm the economic buyer and any new decision-maker. Plan: diagnose root cause → re-establish the value case with a focused win → if a product gap is blocking them, escalate to product with clear impact and a date. Recovery target: health back to amber within 30 days — weekly active users recovered to baseline and a confirmed renewal conversation booked. Top risk: a silent champion change; I'd verify contacts immediately."
Rubric: Strong answers hunt for the real (often deeper) cause before acting, re-map stakeholders (especially a lost champion), sequence diagnosis-before-solution, escalate with clear impact, and set a measurable recovery target with a deadline. Weak answers jump to discounts or feature-dumps, ignore the human/champion dynamics, and have no definition of 'saved.'

D4

difficulty: medium
concept: stakeholder-mapping Live case: Walk me through how you'd map and manage stakeholders for a large, multi-team account before its renewal.
Framework: Define the stakeholder types you'd identify (economic buyer, champion, day-to-day users, blockers/detractors, influencers) → describe how you'd find them and assess influence + sentiment → identify single-threading risk → build a coverage plan (who you engage, how often, with what message) → tie it to the renewal outcome.
Model answer: "I'd build a simple map: the economic buyer (signs/owns budget), my champion (advocates internally), the power users (feel daily value), and any detractor or new exec who could block. For each I'd note influence, sentiment, and last contact. The biggest risk is single-threading — relying on one champion who could leave — so I'd deliberately build a second relationship, ideally with the economic buyer. Coverage plan: monthly value touchpoints with users, a QBR with the buyer, and a heads-up path to the champion. Goal: by renewal, at least two engaged advocates and the buyer clearly seeing ROI."
Rubric: Strong answers distinguish roles (buyer vs. champion vs. user vs. blocker), assess influence and sentiment, explicitly call out single-threading risk and multi-thread to fix it, and connect the map to the renewal. Weak answers treat 'the customer' as one person, list contacts with no roles or influence, and have no plan to widen relationships.

D5

difficulty: hard
concept: expansion Take-home: A happy, fully-adopted customer is up for renewal in 90 days. Build a renewal + expansion plan that grows the account.
Framework: Confirm the renewal is healthy (value delivered, relationship strong) → map who must say yes to more spend → identify a genuine, value-led expansion opportunity tied to their goals → sequence the plan (reinforce value → land renewal → propose expansion as a trusted advisor) → define the success metric (NRR/expansion target) → name the risk that could turn a safe renewal into a fight.
Model answer: "Renewal looks safe — strong adoption, clear ROI from last QBR. I'd still start early. Stakeholders for expansion: the economic buyer plus a new team lead whose group isn't on the product yet. Value-led opportunity: that second team has the same goal my champion's team already wins at — a natural cross-sell. Sequence: QBR to reinforce delivered value → confirm a clean renewal → then propose a pilot for the second team, framed as helping them hit their goal, not as a quota. Target: renew at 100% GRR and grow the account ~20% (NRR >115%). Risk: pushing expansion before the renewal is locked could sour it — so I sequence renewal first."
Rubric: Strong answers treat expansion as value-led (tied to a real customer goal, proposed as a trusted advisor), map the additional buyer for new spend, sequence renewal-then-expansion, and target NRR/expansion explicitly. Weak answers push upsells with no fit, ignore who approves new budget, risk the renewal by over-selling, or set no growth metric.

D6

difficulty: hard
concept: scaled-success Live case: You're given a portfolio of 80 mostly-small accounts and limited time. Design how you'd prevent churn across the book at scale.
Framework: Acknowledge you can't high-touch all 80 → segment the book (by value, risk, or lifecycle) → decide where human time goes vs. where you use scaled/automated plays → define the signals that trigger an intervention → build the operating cadence → set a portfolio-level success metric → name the trade-off you're accepting.
Model answer: "I can't give 80 accounts white-glove attention, so I'd segment. Tier by revenue and health: the top ~15 by value or any red-health account get human attention; the rest run on scaled plays. Triggers for intervention: health score going red, usage dropping below a threshold, or a key contact leaving — those auto-flag for a personal reach-out. Everyone gets scaled touches: onboarding emails, an adoption webinar, a quarterly check-in template. Operating cadence: review the risk dashboard weekly, work the flagged accounts first. Portfolio metric: gross retention ≥90% across the book and ≥80% of accounts at green/amber health. Trade-off: some low-value accounts get less attention — accepted, because focusing on value and risk retains the most revenue per hour."
Rubric: Strong answers admit the constraint and segment deliberately, route scarce human time to value/risk, define concrete intervention triggers from health/usage signals, set a portfolio-level metric, and own the trade-off. Weak answers pretend to high-touch everyone, have no segmentation or triggers, and measure activity instead of retention.