We have another admin in our community we are ready to Spotlight! 🔦
We asked
I love being part of a community that wants to help support and elevate others.
Thank you Justina and cheers to rest of our community of admins! 🥂
- How did you get started as a Gainsight Administrator?
I joined a newly formed customer success team as a CSM. Shortly after that we made a decision to buy Gainsight and someone needed to lead the implementation. My amazing boss thought I'd be the right fit, so I took it on and found that I really enjoyed it. When the project was coming to an end, we started discussing how Gainsight will be run in the future. Since I led the implementation, we decided to take me off the CSM role and a new role was created, making me the first person in the company in a Customer Success Operations role. This was especially exciting as customer success operations or even Gainsight administrator roles were practically non-existent at the time.
- What motivates you in your current role?
Over the years my role has changed significantly. It went from being focused on Gainsight, to operations, to a mix of strategy and operations. In my current role specifically, I am so excited about the potential for impact. My company still has a long way to go in maturing their customer success organisation and it is amazing to be able to drive and shape that journey, know how much there still is to do and see the impact my team and I are making on the business and its people.
- Is there anything you would have done differently when starting out?
Realistically, no. I did the best I could in a field that was so new that there wasn't much information about it. I had amazing support from my leadership and growth was happening in the direction that I enjoyed. I do wish I had read the few books that were published at the time, but I also know that it probably would not have made a difference to me (my learning style is more geared on trying things out and I don't retain information from books well).
- What tip would you give to anyone getting started as a Gainsight Admin? - I have many!
- Focus on your technical skills first - the admin role requires hard skills so you need to master those. If I were to hire a junior admin, I'd go for someone who knows Gainsight vs someone who has, say, process improvement experience.
- As you advance, improve your knowledge about business processes, strategy and goals - Gainsight reflects those processes, it makes them real, more than just a document and the goals inform what you need to prioritize and do next. Knowing the background will help you excel at your role and build the best solutions.
- Come to your leadership with solutions, not problems. It is more than likely that in this career path you will be looked at as a subject matter expert and will need to help inform tactics and strategy. Offering solutions when there is a problem will make your manager's life easier and help accelerate your career path.
- What is the next challenge you are about to tackle in Gainsight?
We are changing the way we work with customers internally, so we have a significant change program coming up. It is a complete reinvention of our customer segmentation, how our lifecycle works and success planning. It will make the way we operate simpler, clearer and more effective. From Gainsight's perspective it is not hugely complex or groundbreaking work, but it will be very impactful for our teams, business and customers.
