Introduction

Managing risk is crucial for long-term success in SaaS. Whether it's mitigating adoption challenges, addressing product issues, or navigating company-wide changes, a proactive approach to risk tracking can make all the difference. In this guide, we'll start with the fundamentals of setting up risk-tracking playbooks. 

Why does this matter?

A robust risk-tracking strategy can yield significant benefits:

1. Faster Mitigation: With predefined playbooks for common risks, you can identify issues earlier and more efficiently, which will provide opportunities to take action sooner.
2. Scalable Processes: Implementing repeatable processes will ensure consistency across your Customer Success team, helping you to scale effectively.
3. Continuous Improvement: Adjusting playbooks over time based on real-world experiences will enable continuous improvement and adaptation to evolving risk factors.

How to get started

Here's a step-by-step approach to building and implementing a risk-tracking strategy:

1. Identify Common Risk Types: Begin by defining the most common types of risks your organization faces. 
2. Develop Playbooks: Once you've identified common risk types, create specific playbooks to address each one effectively. For example:
   • Adoption Risk Playbook
   • Loss of Key Stakeholder Playbook
   • Product Risk Playbook
   • Support Risk Playbook
   • Company Risk Playbook
   • Sentiment Risk Playbook
   • Engagement Risk Playbook
   • Value Risk Playbook

Tip: A general best practice for creating risk playbooks is to include no more than 3-4 tasks.  They should generally always include:

• An Email Assist to send to the customer or to someone internally.
• The addition of a Timeline entry.
• A risk-specific mitigation action.

3. Implement Risk CTAs: Create risk CTAs (Call to Actions) to ensure that identified risks are promptly addressed and monitored. Flag risks as necessary and prioritize them based on their severity and impact.
4. Timeline Updates: Keep timelines updated regularly and involve executives by using @mentions to ensure visibility and accountability.
5. Ghost Email: Send ghost emails to executives when customers are non-responsive to ensure that relevant stakeholders are aware of potential risks.
6. Risk Dashboards/Reports: Develop risk dashboards and reports to visualize trends, roadblocks, and open risks. Include metrics such as risks with upcoming renewals within 90 or 120 days, time to close, and ARR at risk to provide actionable insights.
7. Weekly Digest to Executives: Distribute weekly digests to executives, highlighting open risks and providing updates on risk mitigation efforts.

Gainsight features you’ll need

To facilitate the implementation of your risk tracking strategy, you will need to use the following Gainsight features:

1. CTAs (Manual): Create and manage CTAs to track risks, tasks, and action items related to customer engagements
2. Playbooks: Develop predefined playbooks to streamline the response to common risks.
3. CTA Reasons: Use CTA reasons to categorize and track different types of risks effectively.

What’s next?

Once you have basic risk tracking set up, consider exploring advanced risk mitigation strategies and leveraging automation to streamline your processes further.

Next, read our guide on How to use health score to reduce risk to enhance your risk identification and management using data-driven health scores.

Further reading and inspiration

• Webinar - Designing a Risk Management Process
• Webinar - How a Gainsight CSM uses Gainsight to Mitigate Risk