---
name: account-signal-relevance-triage
description: "Load when a CS team member pastes a pool of recent public events about one named customer account — news headlines, M&A announcements, leadership changes, earnings excerpts, regulatory filings — alongside contract context (product scope in use, economic buyer, renewal date) and asks which events to act on before a QBR, save motion, or renewal review. Also load when the user asks to triage account news, filter renewal-risk signals, or classify account intelligence. Returns a Triage Table with per-event vector reasoning and Escalate/Monitor tiers, plus a counted discard summary. Do not load for internal telemetry, CRM health scores, churn probability, or cross-portfolio ranking."
---

# Account Signal Triage

## What the job actually is

Someone in Customer Success has pasted a pile of headlines about an account and wants to know which ones to act on. The pile is sorted by how loud each story was. The renewal doesn't care about loudness. It is a decision taken by **a named person**, about **a counted thing**, on **a date**. An event matters only if it reaches one of those three, and it matters urgently only if it reaches it before the decision is taken. So without the contract (what they license, who signs, when) there is nothing to test against. The right answer is then no verdicts at all, just a targeted ask.

Checklists of "risk factors" (funding, layoffs, exec changes, sentiment) fail because every item on them is sometimes decisive and usually irrelevant. So an analyst working from the list ends up escalating whatever was loudest. Test the vector instead of the topic. The same headline, "the CFO resigned", is an emergency at an account whose buyer reports to the CFO a month before renewal, and background noise at an account whose renewal sits with a line-of-business VP next year.

## The three vectors into a contract

**Vector 1: the signer's authority.** The champion or economic buyer, and the reporting line above them. Their departure, a reorganisation of their team, a new boss who controls their budget, or a move of the renewal to procurement all weaken or remove the decision-maker. Their public standing going up counts too: a promotion, a keynote, a post crediting our product in their own name. That is capital they will spend to push the renewal through. It's an expansion signal worth tracking, never an emergency.

**Vector 2: the counted thing (product scope in use).** Every contract counts something: seats, sites, stages, modules, a named team's licences, volumes. Events that change the number or the existence of that unit reach the renewal as arithmetic. A divestiture, closure or layoff in the unit that uses the product removes it. That's a confirmed hit even before anyone counts exactly which seats go, because a smaller team renews fewer seats. An acquisition or new business that will run on the licensed product adds to it. Growth in the counted thing is an **expansion signal**, even when it's confirmed and lands before the gate. Don't relabel it as risk because the quote will need re-sizing. Always check *whose* seats: hiring in a department the contract doesn't serve adds nothing, and a consumer app launched by a B2B account is outside scope. A new tool that replaces a module in use, an acquired company that already runs a rival product, or a new owner that runs a rival across its own business attacks this vector directly. Give the rival its own row, separate from the ownership change.

**Vector 3: the renewal environment.** Budget pressure, a spending freeze, a new owner, a vendor-consolidation mandate, a strategic review or sale of the unit holding the contract, a regulation that creates or removes the work a licensed module does. This vector needs the most specific evidence. "Operational efficiency", "disciplined growth", "cost optimisation" and a new CEO's first-week speech describe the weather. The account's own budget weather still earns a Monitor row, because it shapes how hard the buyer must argue, but it can't carry an Escalate. A statement that names software contracts, vendor rationalisation or this product category names the contract. "Efficiency", "cost discipline", "profitable growth" and "operational excellence" never count as naming the category, even in a new owner's press release.

An award or ranking is noise unless it names the very capability the account licenses. Recognition for that module reinforces the scope in use (vector 2): an expansion signal at Monitor.

Discard is a verdict too, and the costs are lopsided. A Monitor row costs the reader a glance; a real signal wrongly discarded is invisible until the renewal goes wrong. So discard only what you can rule out. News about the account's own leadership (a new CFO or CEO sits in the budget chain above almost any buyer), the buyer's own team, or a rival product in the account's orbit keeps a Monitor row unless the brief shows it cannot reach this contract.

An event that travels none of these vectors is noise, however big: the account's funding round, a generic company award, a profile in trade press, a competitor's raise, a peer company's fine, an industry-wide rule that touches nothing licensed.

## The contract must be on the table first

The vectors only exist once you know the contract. You need three facts: **product scope** (what they license and what the contract counts), **the champion or economic buyer** (name and role), and **contract shape** (term, pricing unit, renewal or co-term date). If any is missing, give no verdicts at all: no table, no discard line, nothing labelled "provisional". Even a charity golf day can't be called noise until you know nothing we sell runs events. Ask once, in prose that comes from this pool. Say what the brief has and what it lacks. Then, for each missing fact, name the event in their list whose verdict it would decide and how it could flip. That makes each ask a different shape, which is right.

## Setting priority: Escalate or Monitor

Measure every fuse from when the entry *takes effect* to the decision date, never from when the article was published.

Read `references/escalate-rules.md` for the five numbered Escalate criteria before setting any tier.

**Monitor** covers every other entry that posted: all expansion signals, however large; risks that take effect after the date or carry no date at all; anything reported only by a weak source; the customer's own budget weather; and ownership or leadership changes where no review, date or category has been named. Each Monitor row says what would raise it.

When several entries escalate, say in one sentence why they are separate hits on separate lines and not one story counted three times. When several entries post to the same line, they are one pressure, and each earns only the priority it would earn alone.

## Writing it up

When many entries post, shorten each cell rather than dropping rows: with five or more rows, keep each reasoning cell to about 15 words and each discard reason to a few words. Start with the heading itself.

1. `## Triage Table — <Account>`
2. A bold **Read:** sentence: the decision date, which row leads, and what the loudest item in the pool came to.
3. A table of posted entries only, strongest first: **Event** (eight words at most, your paraphrase) | **Vector → element** (the vector and the contract figure, in the brief's words) | **Relevance class** | **Proximity reasoning** (one sentence of at most 25 words, opening "Vector N:") | **Action tier** (Escalate or Monitor). Bounced entries never appear in the table, not even with a dash.
4. One bold line: `**Discarded: N events. Reasons: [reason — why it misses this contract: count; ...].**`
5. `---`, then one or two sentences under a bold label, spoken to the account team: for an Escalate, who does what before when; otherwise why nothing is urgent and what would change that. Add a **Contradiction note** only when two entries conflict.

No churn probabilities, no ranking against other customers, no drafted emails.

Read `references/worked-examples.md` for five annotated triage packets and `references/signal-rules.md` for extended rules on scope, regulations, sources, duplicates and contradictions, figures, and provisional verdicts.