Share and Learn Best Practices

Hi!In the Gainsight PULSE community sessions, which focussed on the Salesforce trailblazer discussion presented by Christina Fidura from Salesforce, there was a reference re what happened when Adobe pulled the plug on their community.Any guidance where I might be able to read up on that please? thank you!

It took the collision of three forces to move me from CS Ops to Community Management:I found that facilitating collaborative conversations was the 20% of my role that I wished were 80%, and I had opportunities to describe that to my boss, my boss’ boss, and my boss’ boss’ boss (aka our CEO). Gainsight’s customer admins started their own community meetups, which led to a Slack channel, in addition to the official Gainsight community, which demonstrated the depth of the energy and enthusiasm that was available. Senior management identified that the Gainsight market was hungry for more admins, to the degree that it was slowing down customers and prospects who were eager for that kind of expert systems consultant.I was the right person to pave the way for more people to get into a CS Ops or Gainsight Admin role, and to make people in the role more successful. I did it by creating resources and events that connected knowledgeable people to learners.You can do the same, for your admins or fo

We just released our CS Compensation report and are showcasing the results for North America and EMEA in webinars earlier this morning and next week for EMEA. A few common questions emerged - how are you solving this today? What other CSM comp questions do YOU have? Answer/ Add as responses to this post!I’ve added a few of my answers in bold Regarding bonus compensation, do you have any insights on the prevelence of quarterly vs annual calculations/targets and payouts? Seeing more shifting to Quarterly (including Gainsight!) or semi-annually - more flexibility/cash flow for CSM, more flexibility to adjust the plans as year evolves I’d like recommendations or resources for identifying a comp structure for a CSM who’s sole role is upselling to existing customer base please How do you adjust comp model based on size of BoB per CSM. I’d say we tend to land at a much higher customer count per CSM than what’s the industry average.  For smaller organizations, where CSMs are taking on churn r

The Gainsight Community never fails to inspire and motivate me. After the ChatGPT fest at Pulse, and seeing Seth’s amazing “Hot Takes” I realized, I need to do some dang marketing with my CSMs. So I asked ChatGPT for a slack message about different functionality in a hot ones theme. Then I thought, well, I’m in Austin and it’s going to be Tuesday so.. Taco themed. It ended up being an email and I MAY have said “I need this a little shorter with more Taco Puns.” And this amazing email came to be! My CSMs LOVED it. And I’m seeing traffic from it! I decided on focusing on Cockpit so that I can reinforce “this is your home base”. What’s an easy thing to get them to buy into? If they adopt Cockpit, the other good stuff comes almost naturally.  

 WOW!  I am truly overwhelmed with gratitude in getting to see you all at the PX Connections Breakfast.  @jmobley @aroberts and I really enjoyed getting to sit with you all in addition to our wonderful leaders : Caitlin Quilan (GM of PX), Karl Rumelhart (President, Products, Tech & Global Ops),  Gil Michilin (SVP of Engineering for PX), Denise Stokowski (Group VP, Platform Products), Kartik Yegneshwar (VP of Global Support & Technical Success), and our incredible Enterprise Tech Support Analyst, @rschlette Rob Schlette! If I didn’t get a chance to say “Hello” personally, I’m certain you were able to meet with our incredible team listed above.   My email is kkenny@gainsight.com and would LOVE to hear from you on the event and any follow up items. 💖 I hope everyone made some connections with our leadership as well as with other amazing PX Customers.   I heard some engaging conversations and saw lots of big smiles.  Pulse is truly a special event where we can build off the commun

 As a first time Pulse attendee, I have to say that Pulse did not disappoint! It was a jam packed week of sessions, customer meetings, meet and greets, Pulse puppies, etc. As a first time speaker for the CSM track (“Verified Outcomes and Success Plans”), I was able to witness the magic of Pulse in person! A few notes from my session that I spoke on: Do you currently have a value framework program at your company? If not, you can still apply the key parts of the “Outcomes Hypothesis” to help customers quickly identify and achieve value with your company.  Understanding our customer’s key value drivers (business challenges they are trying to solve for) is so essential. At Gainsight, we found that our customer’s with at least 1 verified outcome at 3 months prior to renewal had 30% higher GRR than customers without verified outcomes.  As CSMs, can we look at our BOB and identify each of our customer’s value drivers Value realization programs are designed to help you define how you are goin

Hello out there all you beautiful PX-ers!  (or those that may be interested in PX!!) Are you coming to Pulse this year?!  If so - make sure to add to your calendars our PX Connections Meetup!  What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)?Well for starters - you can meet with the incredible PX CS team!  Myself (Kat Kenny, Manager of the CS PX team at Gainsight), and the incredible team of CSMs Alisha Roberts @aroberts , @jnies Julia Nies, and @jmobley Jack Mobley will all be there! Meet other amazing PX Customers -  Share best practices, outcomes, strategic objectives, and key learnings with one another!  Breakfast and Proximity to Keynote! - We will have Breakfast available in this room (level 3, 3014) and it’s right next door to the Keynote so you can be sure to get a great seat and not have to rush your Breakfast :)TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS!!! WHERE: LEVEL 3, 3014WHEN: 7:00 AM - 8:00 AM PST    SEE YOU ALL THERE!

That’s it. That’s the post. 😎(But, really… Thanks to the Gainsight team and all the speakers that made it an incredible experience.)

At Pulse 2023, we’re announcing a partnership between Gainsight’s philanthropic education programs (Pulse Impact) and our Community platform! We’re capturing what drives the Customer Success community: the people that make it up. Our diversity, our talent, and our passion for making the world more Human-First make Pulse Impact and Community a natural fit!Share something below about how Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) show up in your life, or let us know if you’d like to partner with our programs. Check out my comment below to see what kind of partnerships we’re looking for—we can’t wait to hear from you.If you’re at Pulse 2023 in person, stop by the Expo Hall to chat about Pulse Impact with us!

I hope you all got a TON of great ideas from the sessions!

You know this scene: You’re at Pulse (or any other networking event, really), you’ve met someone new, and you’re going to connect on LinkedIn. Except it’s hard to spell the name, or there are 17 people with that name on LinkedIn or your thumbs get all nervous when typing “publicly”. So do this:LinkedIn has a QR code within that’s specific to you. You can show your code and they can take a picture with their camera. Or reverse the process: Show them how to display their code and you scan it with your camera.To find your code:Open the mobile LinkedIn app. At the top, tap in the search bar. Inside the right end of the search bar, a QR code icon will appear. Tap that QR icon. You can display your code, or switch to scan mode to gather someone else’s code.Happy networking, friends!

I'm thrilled to attend my first Pulse event! I just joined Intelligage, a company that provides AI-powered customer success solutions. While I'll be working at our booth, I'm also eager to connect with everyone here. I've heard great things about the puppies, so they're definitely on my must-see list. If you have any tips (I have checked out the pro-tips), let me know. Looking forward to meeting you all!

Pulse is now less than 1 week away, can you believe it?! We can’t wait to welcome you to Moscone Center West and explore the future of customer success, community, and product – all while celebrating 10 unbelievable years of Pulse.  You should have received your Know Before You Go email yesterday, but below I wanted to highlight just a few key points! As always, please feel free to reach out directly or via pulseus@gainsight.com if there’s anything you need. Cheers, The Gainsight Pulse Team   Hot Tips! Verify your badge information using the link in your Know Before You Go (KBYG) email!  Save the KBYG email and have your QR code available on your smartphone (or printed out) ready to scan at check-in. Registration will be open during the following times: Tuesday 2:00 PM - 6:00 PM Pro-tip - this is a quieter time to grab your badge than before the keynote on Wednesday! Wedne

Let me also hop on and take part in the hottest topic of discussion these days - Digital CS! Want to know what’s the Gainsight’s way of managing Digital Led CS? No worries, I will be sharing all about Digital led best practices on 4th of April 2023 at 8 AM PST.Be a part of the discussion by registering 👉🏻here!One hour couldn’t just be enough to talk all about the most important topic these days. Let’s start the discussion now in the comments section!Post your questions/thoughts in the comment section below 👇🏻 and we will do our best to cover them during the session! 

Gainsight has been creating a ton of great content around Digital Customer Success, and walking the talk on Digital CS motions. One of the coolest things we’ve done on this initiative is create our new Digital CS Destination in the Gamechanger community - which is now officially live on our site!As you check out the new page (and maybe even bookmark it for later reference! 😄) I wanted to share why we built this page and how we did it using Gainsight functionality.  NEW! Digital CS Custom Page on the Gamechanger Community  The Challenge/NeedOur community already has a ton of great content tagged to ‘digital CS’ or ‘digital-led’ programs - but, that content is posted (just like this article!) in other forums like CS Inspiration. And its great content to have here - but, harder to surface if you are looking for a subset of topics around Digital CS. We wanted to find a way to:Make it easy to find Digital CS tagged content, quickly. Avoid creating a new (and empty to start) forum/area - re

Hey Everyone!First, I’m super thrilled to be back in the Gainsight community - as an Alum, it’s an honor to be invited to give a talk at Pulse. In 2022, Nick Mehta joined me on the CELab (Customer Education Laboratory) podcast to talk about education and enablement (Episode 76).  Our focus was to take a macro perspective on Customer Success today – where it’s at and where it’s headed – and question the role that Customer Education plays.  In that discussion, Nick presented shared how he considers education as being at the core of what we do in Customer Success and shared four (4) key areas - in SaaS - where we need to focus.  In this session we’re going to expand upon these topics and much more.  Join me as we:Talk about how Customer Education is “the Core” of Customer Success Understand Program Maturity - where are you at?   Growing your program - where are you headed? And finding the others - people who know and understand Customer Education and can help you.Customer Education is, as

👋🏼 We’re officially one week away from our in-person Pulse conference in San Francisco and I can’t wait to present with @CassidyCardoso on Driving Engagement with Stakeholder Alignment.As a CSM, it’s crucial to ensure you’re meeting with the right personas at the right cadence to make sure you’re aligned with your customers and this can look different across segments (high touch, mid touch and digital touch). Come join the conversation on Wednesday at 2pm PT as Cassidy and I talk through 1) why stakeholder alignment is important, 2) identifying who your personas are within your customer base, 3) what the right cadence looks like by segment and 4) how this is executed within Gainsight. 🤗 Get Fired Up! 

We are beginning our DCS journey, including creating a foundational success hub in our community. I'd love to hear what other success hubs look like? What kind of content do you feature? Is it a separate "hub" in your community or integrated within? How do customers leverage it? Etc.