Baseline

An account's own normal level for a measure, usually the median over a trailing window of twelve weeks or months. Surges and silences are measured against it, not against a global figure.

DefinitionAn account's own normal level for a measure, usually the median over a trailing window of twelve weeks or months. Surges and silences are measured against it, not against a global figure.

Baseline versus norm

The baseline is the account's own history. The norm is what similar accounts do. A surge is against the baseline; a gap is against the norm.

Window length

Too short and normal fluctuation becomes a surge. Twelve periods is the usual floor.

How it is computed

The median of the account's own values over a trailing window, usually twelve weeks or twelve months, excluding the current period. A movement is judged against this, not against other accounts.

Example

An account's weekly orders over twelve weeks have a median of $8,200. This week it ordered $3,100, 38 percent of baseline. Another account at $3,100 has a baseline of $2,900 and is fine.

Where it goes wrong

Using the mean, which one unusual order drags. Or using a baseline so long that a customer who changed a year ago is still compared with what it used to be.

Articles that use this term

AI and self-service analytics

A weekly sales digest worth reading: what a good one looks like, line by line

An annotated example of a weekly sales digest built from computed tables: the header that states the period and the checks, ten movements each with the measure, the level, the change, the threshold and the citation, the three lists that follow, untouched, slipped and dormant, the line that says what did not move, and the footer with the definition version. What each element is for, and the version of the same digest that nobody reads.

16 Sept 20263 min read AI and self-service analytics

Account health score: why a computed score beats a colour-coded one

What is wrong with the red-amber-green account health field most CRMs carry, what a computed health score is made of, five inputs from the ledger and the CRM with stated weights, how the weights are set from the company's own churn history rather than opinion, why the score is shown with its inputs and never alone, the identity that every account has one score from the same rule, and how the score is validated against what happened.

16 Sept 20263 min read Data quality and reconciliation

Baseline and norm: what this account usually does, and what accounts like it do

The difference between a baseline, an account's own typical level from its own history, and a norm, what similar accounts do when the relationship is full, why the two answer different questions, has this account changed and how far is it from where it could be, which measures use which, surge and dormancy against baseline, gap and share against norm, the case where an account is at its baseline and far from the norm, and the rule that both are stated on the line that uses them.

16 Sept 20263 min read Forecast and pipeline · Customer service

Contact volume per account against its own baseline: the surge list

How a customer service leader turns the ticket export into a weekly list of accounts whose contact volume has jumped against their own history, why the account's own baseline beats a global threshold, the surge score, and the two readings every surge has: a product problem or an account about to leave.

16 Sept 20262 min read Forecast and pipeline · Commercial banking

Deposit flight by relationship: balances leaving before the customer does

How a commercial bank finds the relationships whose operating balances have fallen against their own baseline while the accounts remain open, from the daily or month-end balance file: the balance baseline per customer, the decline signal, the split between seasonal, business-driven and moved-elsewhere, and the list per relationship manager ranked by the balances that have gone.

16 Sept 20262 min read Board and management reporting · Customer service

First contact resolution per account: the customers who have to call twice

How a customer service leader measures repeat contact per account from the ticket export: tickets reopened or re-raised on the same issue within a stated window, the accounts whose repeat rate is well above the base, the categories where repeats cluster, and why an account-level repeat rate is a churn signal the team average cannot show.

16 Sept 20262 min read