What Is a Client Health Score and How to Calculate It

02. Health Score vs NPS: The Key Distinction

Net Promoter Score measures declared sentiment — what clients say about your business when asked directly. It is a periodic survey that captures how a client feels at a specific moment in time. A client health score measures observed behavior — what is actually happening in the relationship based on data already in your CRM. Task activity, communication recency, follow-up status, billing health. These are not what clients say; they are what clients do. Both are useful for different purposes. NPS is appropriate for periodic audits of stated satisfaction — once or twice a year. Health scores are appropriate for daily operational monitoring — catching the relationship declining before the client articulates their dissatisfaction. By the time a client gives you a low NPS score, they are usually close to leaving. By the time their health score has been declining for six weeks, you still have time to intervene.

03. The Four-Component Formula

The formula has four components that combine to produce a score between 0 and 100: **Component 1 — Base Score (50):** Every client relationship starts at 50 — the neutral midpoint. Adjustments from the other three components move the score above or below this baseline. **Component 2 — Activity Signals:**

• Active tasks assigned: +20
• Active project in progress: +10
• No active tasks or projects: −15

04. Real-World Score Examples

Four clients showing how the formula produces different scores based on actual relationship activity:

• Brightworks Co. — Active tasks (+20), active project (+10), contact this week (+15), follow-up scheduled (+5): Score 100. Active, well-maintained relationship.
• Folio Studio — Active tasks (+20), contact within 30 days (+5), no follow-up scheduled (0): Score 75. Healthy but could benefit from a scheduled next step.
• Redwood Agency — No tasks or projects (0), contact 31-60 days ago (−10), no follow-up (0): Score 40. At Risk — work has slowed and communication is fading.
• Crest & Pine — No tasks or projects (−15), contact beyond 60 days (−25), no follow-up (0): Score 10. Dormant — highest priority for immediate outreach.

05. The Three Client Health Buckets

Scores group naturally into three buckets that suggest different responses: **Healthy (50-100):** Active work, regular communication, relationship momentum. Action: schedule check-ins every 2-4 weeks, propose additional scope, request referrals. These clients are advocates — invest in deepening the relationship. **At Risk (20-49):** Cooling relationships where work is slowing and communication gaps are opening. Action: unscheduled outreach call this week. Do not wait for the next scheduled check-in. This bucket generates most agency churn — clients here rarely proactively communicate that they are drifting. **Dormant (0-19):** No active work and no meaningful contact for 60+ days. Action: immediate personal outreach — this is highest-priority. Some dormant clients are simply between projects; others have made a quiet decision to move on. You cannot know which without contacting them.

06. Enriching the Formula With Additional Signals

The four-component formula works as a starting point. Additional signals improve accuracy for agencies with the data to track them:

• Invoice payment status: On-time payments (+5), overdue 30 days (−10), overdue 60+ days (−20). Slow payment is often an early signal of relationship problems before they are articulated.
• Briefing response rate: How quickly clients respond to briefing requests. Fast responses indicate active engagement; slow or absent responses indicate declining attention.
• Meeting frequency trend: Is the meeting cadence stable, increasing, or decreasing? A client who used to meet weekly now meeting monthly without a stated reason is a signal.
• New project initiation frequency: Clients who proactively bring new work tend to stay. Clients who have stopped initiating new projects are more likely to be evaluating alternatives.

07. Tracking Trends Over Time

A single score matters less than the direction of change over time. A score of 60 rising from 45 over four weeks indicates a recovering relationship. The same score of 60 falling from 80 indicates decline. Two patterns warrant immediate outreach regardless of the current score: Sustained decline: any client whose score has declined for three or more consecutive weeks, even if still in the Healthy range. A score falling from 85 to 78 to 71 to 64 in four weeks is a trend, not normal variation. Sharp drop: a decline of 20 or more points in a single week. This indicates a significant change in relationship activity — a project ending, a communication lapse, or something else that happened and requires follow-up.

08. Three Levels of Automation

Agencies implement health scores at three levels of sophistication:

• Level 1 — Spreadsheet: Manual entry in Google Sheets. Feasible for fewer than 8 clients; the manual input discipline breaks as team and client base grow. Score accuracy depends on someone updating it every week, which rarely happens consistently.
• Level 2 — Manual CRM field: A custom field requiring weekly human entry. Better than spreadsheets because the score lives alongside client data, but the accuracy problem remains. Inconsistent without enforced process.
• Level 3 — Automated calculation: Formula runs continuously based on live CRM data. Scores recalculate when tasks are updated, contacts logged, or follow-ups scheduled. No manual input. This is the only approach that scales reliably beyond 10-15 clients.

09. Implementation in Melororium

Melororium calculates client health scores automatically from existing CRM data — no manual scoring, no weekly spreadsheet discipline required. The dashboard shows three stat cards: Healthy clients (count + revenue total), At Risk clients (count + revenue at risk), and Dormant clients (count + dormant revenue). The revenue totals make the business impact of relationship health immediately visible — not just how many clients are at risk, but how much revenue is at risk. The client table includes individual health scores with one-line explanations of the primary driver: 'At Risk — no contact in 38 days' or 'Healthy — active project, recent follow-up.' Each explanation points to the specific action that would improve the score. Scores recalculate in real time: logging a client contact immediately updates their communication recency. Assigning a new task immediately updates their activity signal. The score you see reflects the current state of the relationship, not last week's data.