Customer Goals vs. Success Plans

Hey there,

Everyone is excited about the introduction of customer goals to Gainsight. However, its resemblance to Success Plans has caused a fair bit of dilemma. The way I see it is Customer Goals are best used to define the customer objectives while success plans can be used as a project management tool to define a framework to achieve those objectives. 

To answer your questions, 

1. Can Customer Goals be shared externally similar to Success Plans?
   • I believe that functionality is not yet available but I’ll certainly update this thread once I double check with the product team and I’m able to gather more information about it. 
2. Can we report on customer goals with related SPs and CTAs apart from the C360 view?
   • ​​​​​​​Yes, we can. Click Here to learn about the objects involved in Customer Goals that can be used in reporting. 
3. Are custom fields suggested to receive the most value from this new module?
   • ​​​​​​​The intent behind this question is unclear to me. If you could please elaborate more about the use case, I’ll be able to gather more information about it.

Customer goals can be shared externally as part of a Success Plan or through a custom report on 360. Custom fields can add a lot of value. We can use them to collect more information (metrics, targets, key sponsor, business unit, etc.) from Sales/Post-sales teams.

We have a couple of key business leaders who have seen Customer Goals and are really excited to start using them. But they are not sure they want to use Goals AND Success Plans as it will create too much administrative burden on the CSMs. 

While the decision in not made, they are seriously considering moving away from Success Plans completely and pursuing customer goals only with associated CTAs as a way of account planning and measuring value delivered. 

​@Carol_Keyes Curious what you have done here. We are running into the same confusion.

​@laurennewman7 

What We Learned

• Moving from success plans to customer goals helped us simplify in theory, but in practice the value hasn’t been consistently clear to teams.
• We also implemented customer goals at the relationship level—driven by organizational separation and product BU differentiation—adding complexity and more clicks for a CSM to actually add and update. 
• Adoption and execution have varied across teams, which has limited consistency and reduced confidence that customer goals alone are the right mechanism.
• Internally, we also set Goal metric targets too aggressively which left CSMs entering goals inconsistently, and management lacked governance for quality. 
• Leaders’ biggest complaint for feature enhancement was to have Goal hierarchy, so you could set a multi-year strategic goal with child goals that were more achievable within a single year. 

Next Steps

• Re-evaluate our approach with a focus on simplicity, clarity, and measurable value for CSMs and customers.
• Explore reintroducing success plans, either as the primary framework or alongside goals at the company level.
• Shift the emphasis from the artifact itself (goals vs. plans) to ensuring a clear line of sight between customer outcomes, BU priorities, and CSM execution.
• Use next year as an opportunity to standardize the approach across teams, reduce friction, and align on a model that better supports scale and consistency.