How do I define when a customer moves from one stage to another in their lifecycle?

Hi Travis,
This is a small question with many possible answers 😉 In short, you're going to use a Rule to use your Salesforce data to determine the stage of each customer and to populate that stage into Gainsight's Customer information. But the details of that depend on the exact way that your Salesforce data is set up, and therefore it can be helpful to have an expert from Gainsight work through it with you -- are you in the early stages of implementing Gainsight?

This support article is one closely related to your question: https://support.gainsight.com/Training_and_Videos/Implementation_and_Onboarding/Onboarding_Rules_Eng...

Thanks, Seth. Long time customers, now trying to fully leverage the tool.

Let me try to refine the question, it looks like you're answering, how to get customers into Gainsight, which would be triggered based upon a stage in Salesforce, yes. We don't have an issue with getting customers into Gainsight. 

I'm asking, for example, how does each new customer automatically be considered at the "new customer" stage in Gainsight, once added to Gainsight.This does not currently occur.

Now, let's say, we want a customer to move from "New Customer" to "Onboarding" when sales schedules time on a CSM's calendar or data is first uploaded by the customer. What triggers the staging update in Gainsight. 

Based on this support article, it appears it has something to do with Milestones: 

https://support.gainsight.com/Business_Processes/Operationalize_Customer_Lifecycle/Challenge_A7_We_d...

Ah, gotcha!

If you take a look at your Rule that has the "Load to Customer" Action to get your brand new customers into Gainsight, you should be able to add a Field Mapping that sets the Gainsight Customer Stage to New Customer. As shown here: https://cl.ly/3C47201U1F2F

To move customers from "New Customer" to "Onboarding", if you build a Rule that can identify from your SFDC data when a meeting is scheduled or data is uploaded, for the first time, then you would use a Rule with the same "Field Mapping" approach in a Load to Customers action to set the Gainsight Customer Stage to "Onboarding".

The devil's really in the details here, since your collection of Rules and such could interact with each other in ways that I couldn't guess at. I'd suggest opening a support request or spinning up a conversation with your Gainsight CSM as a next step, if this doesn't give you the general concepts that you needed to move forward. If you grant them access to your Salesforce instance, then they can have a front-row seat to your setup to help you navigate through the details.

Ok - thank you, Seth! Do you know what type of action that would be (e.g. CTA, Load to Customer, Load to Action)? It's not very intuitive, especially for such a critical aspect. 

Hi Travis -- "Load to Customer" is what you would use to set the customer stage in Gainsight. And I'd really suggest that you reach out to their support team. They're responsive and kind and can help you make sure you don't mess anything up that I can't predict, since I don't know anything about your instance 🙂

Perfect, thank you! And appreciate the concern, definitely don't want to break anything. Thanks!