If you only read one thing today, read this.
Monday.com just showed how they keep NDR at ~111% while running ~90% gross margin—and what they’ll spotlight at Investor Day on Sept 17 (Elevate NYC). (Source: Monday.com Q2-2025 Investors Call)
That’s a masterclass in expansion discipline and efficiency you can copy right now.
The Signal That Matters: NDR as a System (Not a Report)
NDR ~111% and guided to stay there through FY’25. Treat NDR like a product KPI with owners, triggers, and SLAs—not a finance number you read after quarter-end.
Gross margin ~90% gives room to fund proactive CS and AI without blowing up cost. Your support design should show up here, not just in a “customer story.”
If you’re new here and want the fundamentals, start with our top CS frameworks in the Guides library so you can plug these moves into a clean operating system.
The System Behind the Numbers
1. A real multi-product ladder
Work Management → CRM → Dev → Service. CRM just crossed $100M ARR, and monday service is scaling fast with a distinct go-to-market that attaches well in enterprise.
Management is only assuming a small FY’25 revenue contribution from Service, which means upside if attach keeps compounding.
2. AI to compress time and tickets
Users have performed 46M AI actions since launch, and paid overage is already showing up. This is not “demo candy”; it’s operating leverage that supports margin and frees CS capacity for expansion plays.
3. Enterprise momentum + prudence down-market
Record net new $100k+ customers while acknowledging minor Google/SEO softness in SMB, already mitigated and baked into guidance.
Read: keep pushing upmarket while you fix acquisition mix.
4. Leadership and cadence
New Chief Customer Officer (end-to-end journey) and CMO (ex-Google Workspace/Waze/Vimeo).
Plus, Investor Day on Sept 17 during Elevate NYC to put proof on a public stage—use the same timing strategy for your board and customers.
Why This Matters for Customer Success
CS owns revenue triggers, not “check-ins.”
Seats, feature depth, team breadth, and service workflows create natural upgrade paths. Your job is to detect, assign, and close.
Service is a revenue lever, not a ticket queue
AI triage, knowledge suggestions, and SLA rigor lower cost and unlock cross-sell capacity; that’s the signal behind monday service’s push.
One NDR story, zero activity theater
Report NDR by cohort and play, not by CSM anecdotes. (If you need a structure, grab my Customer Success Playbook Template and add an “Expansion Plays” section.)
For a deeper dive on lifecycle execution, pair this with my piece Why Customer Success Still Runs on Spreadsheets (and What to Steal from E-Commerce) to automate stages and free time for expansion.
Your 30-60-90 (Copy/Paste)
Days 0–30: Build the Expansion Radar
Pick 3 revenue triggers (seat limit hits, new team activation, premium feature trials).
Assign owners with 48-hour SLAs for outreach.
Track in a simple Expansion Log: Trigger → Account → Owner → Offer → Outcome. Daily stand-up, no slides.
Days 31–60: Ship a Revenue Health Score
Inputs: active users, team breadth, feature depth, ticket volume/age, contract terms.
One number per account. Review weekly with Sales Ops and Product.
Days 61–75: Operationalize AI-assisted service
Start with the top 10 ticket types: auto-triage + knowledge suggestion.
Target: –20% ticket volume and –25% time-to-first-response in 30 days, then reallocate saved capacity to expansion offers. (This mirrors the direction of monday service and its attach model.)
Days 76–90: Publish the Expansion Runbook
For each trigger: Owner → SLA → Talk-track → Offer (add-on/tier/seat pack) → Proof.
Add a Quarterly NDR Review: cohorts by play, not by CSM.
If billing friction is slowing renewals, run my checklist from Rillet $70M: Kill Billing Friction, Protect Renewals to close the leaks before Q4.
Metrics to Steal (and Bench)
NDR: ~111% overall, guided stable through FY’25. Use it as your sanity check.
Gross margin: ~90% in Q2—make your AI/service design show up here.
CRM: $100M ARR—proof the ladder works beyond work management.
AI adoption: 46M actions since launch—aim for measurable usage-to-outcome links in your product.
Gross retention: All-time high—a clean base makes expansion stick.
Hiring context: ~30% headcount growth planned in FY’25—signal that scale requires process, not heroics.
To see how I apply the same “expansion over activities” lens across markets, read TRIFFT Loyalty raises €550k — What CS leaders should do next and my Ashby Series D teardown.
My Takeaway
Most teams report NDR. Monday engineers it—product ladder, AI-assisted service, and ruthless operational clarity. Run the 30-60-90 above and show NDR gains this quarter, not “someday.”
If you want peer support and live examples, hop into the CS Café Community and steal what’s already working.