The customer lifecycle stages are the six sequential phases a customer moves through with a company — awareness, acquisition, onboarding, adoption, retention, and advocacy — each with its own objective, its own dominant failure mode, and its own signal that things are going well.

Customer lifecycle management is the practice of tracking and shaping a customer's relationship with a company across every stage — from first awareness through onboarding, adoption, renewal, expansion, and advocacy — using a defined metric and a deliberate touchpoint at each step.