I think the trick sits outside of Gainsight, it’s enablement and communication with your team through your usual channels. It’s not realistic for emails to go out for every email sent, nor are CTAs realistic.

They need to be given enablement material on the program so they understand how it works, perhaps have a monthly reminder of key outreach dates (without going through the detail on when reminder X goes out or when exactly the follow-up might be triggered). And logging to timeline is their other go-to destination to check, in practice, what and when it went out and if it was consumed. 

What @alizee said -- depending on the communication going out, we notify the appropriate Slack channel for the individuals who would be concerned with their clients being contacted.

This is especially true for us since we have multiple account reps who do NOT have Gainsight access, so relying on log to timeline doesn’t work for them.

Two solutions I use for this, which help around the edges:

1. I add a table-style Report to the C/R360 that details all the emails that have previously gone out via JO. That at least provides a reference spot for Gainsight users to visit to understand if something went out.
2. Where it’s possible, I create a Report / Dashboard that details what emails are likely to come up soon. This won’t always work depending on the query logic, and works best in date-based scenarios. As an example: If you send an NPS survey 120 days prior to renewal, a Report detailing which customers are likely in-scope over the next 30 days and what date they are likely to be contacted can be clarifying.

There’s another interesting idea which I haven’t built, but could theoretically be possible, which is a User-based JO Program with CSMs as the recipient that includes some Reporting to say, “Here are the emails that went out recently via JO” or “XX customers received xx emails via automation in the last week.”

That said, technical solutions don’t really replace what I’d consider primarily a process and communications puzzle, as @alizee and @dayn.johnson point out.

Woah, @matthew_lind! 

This idea is 

Our team uses this workflow for things like survey responses, event registration, internal recognition, etc. It works great! Depending on your use case, you can consolidate the details your team would need to know with a data design and build a report to embed in the JO email. Keep in mind the inline reports are limited to 5 columns, so I try to include the key details and a link to the full record (if possible). For surveys, for example, you can include the response URL so the user can open it directly from that email.

Thanks all. We do have a report within each R360 that shows the list of outreaches and who they went to. 

We’re looking for something more like a notification since in the above case and the case of a timeline entry, the CSM has to look for it.  

So within a JO program,  instead of the CC which requires an operational email or the Email Copy which will get sent for every contact which is cumbersome if a CSM is managing customers with many contacts, there is just a Sender Notification checkbox that I click, that will only send 1 email per sender. 

So I start my Touchpoint Program. CSM Joe Smith has 100 contacts that meet the criteria for the participant list. There are 3 email templates in the program. Joe Smith only gets 3 emails instead of 300.  So almost like a CTA but a “Nurture Notification” 

Just a thought you can try creating a timeline entry for the mails out , and enable the notification prefernece to notify on GS .

This will notify on the gainsight bell icon on top right corner.

I think this comes down to somewhat of a philosophical debate:  What activities warrant a push vs. pull notification?

My question to @mradford: What is the CSM expected to do if/when they get a proactive notification that an email was sent to their customer?  Is there an action required? Or is this just as an FYI?

IMO pushes should only be for those things that require some type of action on the part of the CSM. Why distract them with a push notification for something that is merely an FYI, especially if you already have a dashboard report that they can consult in real time and in aggregate (without having to go back and hunt down an email notification if they are trying to remember what email when to whom and when).

Not to mention, do we really want to create and maintain a whole new JO program(s) simply as an FYI mechanism? That seems like overkill, increases maintenance efforts and creates unnecessary tech debt.

I feel that as admins, it’s our job not to simply give the CSM team exactly what they ask for, but to guide them on the most efficient ways to leverage the platform to make the most of their already limited cycles.
CSMs should be encouraged to make active daily use of dashboards to stay abreast of activities going on with their customers that don’t require their immediate attention.  This saves proactive notifications for those things that DO require attention/action. 

One hundred percent. My thinking: a “recent digital engagements” dashboard designed for CSMs and leadership to be able to filter the way they want to see it would be far more valuable than being inundated with notifications whenever an email is sent.

If need be, the same report (or copies of a report with different criteria) could be included on the same dashboard for CSMs, their managers, and leadership.

Hi ​@darkknight  The action would strictly be an FYI.

The dashboard is within each relationship and when CSMs cover multiple Relationships/products and have many customers it can be difficult to keep track of since different products/relationships have different outreaches. If a customer contacts them about a communication that they are unaware of that came from their csm email, it can blindside them. 

Automated nurtures are supposed to free them up to spend more time on activities that require 1:1 like risk/opportunity. 

I agree, I don’t think we want to maintain separate programs just for notifications but asking them to proactively to go into each relationship across multiple products to check what outreaches went out before the customer might contact them doesn’t work either. Not all the CSMs live in Gainsight even though we would like them to spend as much time there as possible. 

I appreciate everyone’s insights and suggestions. 

This times a million. They say they want to be notified about everything, but they shouldn’t be. I’ve been working a lot on bringing details about the going-ons in an account into the timeline. While I don’t expect them to be reading timeline, in the near future that will become rich data for the AI machine to consume and feed back to the SM when they need it.

​@mradford I was suggesting create a dashboard so they don’t have to go into each company/relationship. A well-crafted dashboard with filtered and filterable options can go a long ways in making data available, easily accessible and without distraction. Plus it’s far easier to build and maintain than programs. But you do you! 

Hi ​@darkknight I am not an admin, so unfortunately cannot create dashboards but I can certainly suggest it! Thanks

This, 100 percent! Having a short report at the top that would show the latest outreaches, with filters at the top to dig into individual accounts or individual users, with more detailed drilldown reports below showing engagement and other metrics, would be a great way for CSMs to keep eyes on what went out and easily self-serve more information if needed.

And if I had to guess, those reports may already exist somewhere, and could either be added to a new dashboard or cloned and modified to be used there.