The signal
At a large pharmaceutical customer, the person who knew the product best was laid off. The replacement was new to the platform and unfamiliar with the dashboards, reports, and workflows already in place. The concern was not a stated rejection of the product. It was the loss of the person who knew how to use it.
The dig
An established executive-sponsor relationship helped clarify what had changed. The immediate job was to preserve operational knowledge and help the successor become effective. A customer cannot get much value from a workflow they do not know exists.
The response
I brought in a Customer Success Engineer and made our recurring calls into working sessions. Together, we helped the replacement understand existing dashboards, automated reporting, storage-health monitoring, and alerts. The engineer provided hands-on technical enablement; I coordinated the customer engagement and continuity effort.
We also invited people from additional teams into relevant sessions. Instead of depending on one person to explain the product’s usefulness internally, we helped more people see how it could support their own work.
What changed
The replacement received practical support getting up to speed, and participation broadened beyond the original champion. The response focused on keeping the customer’s work moving and helping more people understand how to use what was already in place.
What this case teaches
A missing champion is a continuity problem before it is a renewal pitch. Find the knowledge that left, the work that still matters, and the people who now need to carry it forward.