Renewing an account that barely uses your product is one of the hardest calls in customer success. The customer knows usage is low. You know it too. The temptation is to avoid the subject and talk about the contract, which makes the customer feel you are only interested in the invoice.
A role-play lets you practise the harder, more honest conversation before it counts. This guide sets out a scenario, a call structure, the questions worth asking and how to run the exercise alone or with a partner. Everything here is an illustration to adapt to your product and your company's policies.
Why this scenario is worth practising
With a healthy account, the renewal is a short confirmation. With an under-used one, you face questions you cannot answer with a slide.
- Is the value real but unrealised, or was it never there?
- Who still cares about this product, and who has moved on?
- Will the customer renew out of habit and cancel next year?
Handled well, the call can turn a weak renewal into a better-fitted one. Handled badly, it produces a cancellation or a renewal that quietly fails later.
The scenario
Your role: customer success manager at a software company. The customer: Priya, operations lead at a mid-sized logistics firm. Her team licensed 25 seats. Roughly six are active. Renewal is in six weeks. Her mood: polite but guarded. She suspects you are calling to push the renewal. Your goal: understand why adoption is low, agree on what would make the product useful, and leave with a clear next step. You do not need to close the renewal on this call.
(These details are invented for practice. Change the numbers and context to match your own accounts.)
A call structure
1. Name the situation, kindly (20 seconds). "Priya, before we talk about the renewal, I would like to be honest about something I have noticed: only a few of the seats seem to be in regular use. I would like to understand why, rather than guess."
Naming the gap first builds trust. Pretending it is not there does the opposite.
2. Ask diagnostic questions (5 to 8 minutes).
- "What did you hope the team would get out of this when you started?"
- "Where did it fall short of that?"
- "Who on the team uses it, and what do they use it for?"
- "What are the others doing instead?"
- "If it worked the way you imagined, what would be different?"
Listen for outcomes, not features. A goal such as "fewer manual handovers" gives you something to measure.
3. Reflect it back. "So the six active users rely on the reporting, while the rest never got trained. Is that fair?"
4. Tie the renewal to outcomes. "If we could get another ten people using it by the end of next quarter, would that justify keeping it? What would we need to do to get there?"
Suggest something small and specific: a training session, a trimmed set of seats or a review in 60 days. Offering to right-size the contract can be an honest answer if the fit is partial, though check your company's policy first.
5. Agree the next step. "I will send you a short adoption plan on Wednesday. Can we speak again next week to decide?"
Lines the customer may use
"We are not using it, so why renew?" "That is a fair question. Let me understand what stopped it working, and then we can decide whether it is worth fixing."
"We might just cancel." "Thanks for telling me. Before you decide, can I ask what would need to change for it to be worth keeping?"
"Can you give us a discount?" Ask what outcome the discount would solve. If the issue is adoption, price alone will not fix it. More on this in price objection phone drills.
"Send me the renewal quote." "Happy to. Can I ask what you will weigh it against, so the quote answers the right question?" Compare with send me an email.
What good looks like
- You named the adoption gap in the first minute.
- You asked more questions than you made statements.
- You summarised the customer's reasons in their own words.
- Any proposal was small, specific and tied to a goal they stated.
- You ended with a dated next step.
How to run the role-play
With a partner: one plays the customer from the scenario above, the other plays you. Swap roles. Keep each round to about five minutes, then spend two minutes on feedback.
Alone, with an AI customer: in DIRI AI you speak by voice with an AI customer in a prepared situation. The AI plays the customer, so you can try the opening, handle a guarded reply and try again, then read a report on your call. The Free plan costs nothing and needs no card: 3 voice calls a month of up to five minutes each. Look at the pricing page or the sample dialogues.
Variations to try: a customer who is angry about an old outage, one who says the champion left, and one who simply says "send it over".
Related: Renewal and Upsell Call Practice for Account Managers, SaaS churn check-in call script, Practise objection handling, Insurance Renewal Rate-Increase Call Script.
FAQ
How do I bring up low usage without sounding accusatory?
Name it plainly and kindly, and say you want to understand it. "I have noticed" followed by a question works better than a verdict.
Should I always try to renew an under-used account?
Not at any cost. If the fit is poor, an honest conversation about a smaller scope or an exit can be better for both sides. Follow your company's policy.
How long should a renewal role-play last?
About five minutes per round, followed by a short debrief, is enough to practise one scenario properly.
Can I practise this alone?
Yes. In DIRI AI you can rehearse with an AI customer, and the Free plan includes 3 calls a month of up to five minutes each.