Share and Learn Best Practices

Want to learn more about one of our most exciting new features? This week we'll be hosting a webinar on use cases and best practices for GSnap. Feel free to share any ideas or best practices from your organization's experience with GSnap thus far! [i]We'll be continuing the conversation below! Additionally, tune in to our weekly CSM led webinar on Tuesday July 19th @ 9am PST where we will be discussing this topic! Click here to register.

 Our “Customer Spotlight” series features Gainsight super users on our online Community. For this week’s installment, we’re featuring Allie Gold from ZeroFOX.[i]Tell us about ZeroFOXSocial media has become the new cyber battleground, presenting one of the largest and most dynamic risks to organizational security in decades. The ZeroFOX Platform continuously monitors social media platforms for security risks and business threats targeting employees, customers, brands, and organizations. Using intelligent data collection with an automated scriptable analysis engine, the ZeroFOX platform automatically identifies and remediates social media security issues including impersonator accounts, phishing attacks, fraud, customer scams, exposed PII, and much more. We're headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland.[i]What tips do you have for our members on how to get the most out of the Gainsight Community?I would say that if you ever have a question about a feature, search for it in the Community board

We are looking for guidance on what best in class CS teams have in terms of percentage of accounts that can be in red/yellow (either by # or by ARR $). Does anyone have any ideas on best practices or guidance? Obviously this will be different on how you define red/yellow, but we're looking for a ballpark figure on what is a reasonable amount of escalations to be had at any given time. Thanks!

I'm interesting in understanding best practices of Customer Success organizations that manage 1,000+ customers. Can anyone from this vibrant community share best practices, blog posts or thoughts on how they manage 1000+ customers? I'm also interested in hearing what features of Gainsight assist in managing that many accounts. Thanks!

How do you manage critical handoffs in your organization?

How did you build the right environment to support the launch of Gainsight?

What are some of the most important reports and metrics that your CS organization tracks?

Success Snapshots are a highly effective tool to increase the efficiency of your EBR process by allowing CSMs to download ready-to-use, customizable Business Review presentation decks that leverage all of the information contained in Gainsight. How is your CS team currently using the Success Snapshot tool? What are some best practices you'd found in using Snapshots? [i]We'll be continuing the conversation below! Additionally, tune in to our weekly CSM led webinar on Tuesday July 12th @ 9am PST where we will be discussing this topic! Click here to register.

As you may know, Gainsight recently announced a new organizational structure to prioritize Customer Success. You can learn more about this exciting change either by reading this blog post by our VP of Customer Success and Business Operations Allison Pickens or by watching this recent webinar on the topic. Our team is thrilled to prioritize customer outcomes above everything else by aligning our teams around a new, customer-centric organization. [i]How has your company organized around the customer? [i]What strategies have you used to navigate a customer-focused reogranization? [i]What questions do you have about Gainsight's recent reorganization?

Hello! I wanted to see what thoughts people had on sending 1:Many outreaches out to customers that have chosen to 'opt out' of e-mail communications? I ask because these communications are going to provide valuable content around training and best practices, thus providing information that will not only benefit the customers' overall product experience but also their overall product/industry knowledge. Curious on what thoughts others had on this topic! Thanks, Melissa

We've just rolled out the Gainsight tool to our CSM team. We've instructed them to use CTAs to influence the health score card instead of manually adjusting the health score number themselves -- to prevent too much subjective override. If a CSM does happen to manually adjust the score, how long will this stick? And how do we change it back so that the score is calculated from rules and open risk/opp CTAs?  

I'm speaking with a company preparing for an internal workshop on how to improve their onboarding/implementation processes.  Beyond the three articles below, do you know of other great content related to 'best in class' onboarding/implementation?  Would love to hear how others have tackled stepping up their implementation game.  Thank you! User Onboarding that Improves Customer Success and Avoids Churn by Bill Cushard, Head of Training at ServiceRocket  Customer Onboarding is Hard - Avoid this 6 Pitfalls by Amy Clark, Editor of IWantItNow blog.   Onboarding at Gainsight - Making it happen using Gainsight by Allison Pickens, VP CS

Advocacy is an key part of Customer Success. It is important to retain customers and increase customer lifetime value. It is also a very powerful component of the sales cycle. How does your team encourage and track advocacy?  How does your Marketing team use Gainsight?  [i]We'll be continuing the conversation below! Additionally, tune in to hear our Customer Marketing Strategy Lead host a webinar on Wednesday June 29th @ 9am PST where we will be discussing this topic! Click here to register.

One of the challenges we're finding with Gainsight is building reports and rules for large teams. We don't have a field in Salesforce where we can easily say "Show me team = X". As a workaround we're having to individually add each account manager's name to reports and rules. As people leave and join the company it is going to be quite the task to update everything accordingly. Aside from creating a field in Salesforce for the individual team names, does anyone have any ideas or best practices for solving this problem? We tried something called "Team manager" creation where we assigned names to a "Team Manager" through a rule, but it did not have the expected behavior and only worked for accounts, not people. 

I am expanding our VoC program and attended a couple of great sessions at Pulse which provided good ideas.  I would love to get more information on Gainsight's VoC operations......what that looks like, who participates, what tools are used, best practices. 

Are you interested in learning best practices from other Customer Success teams? Our customer success showcase sessions have been aggregated together in a digital format! You can now view them as on-demand webinars. Webinars available now: Red Hat - Learn how and why Red Hat is investing in Customer Success and why the focus on a superior customer experience should be on the roadmap for other open source companies. GuideSpark - The GuideSpark team will go into the details of how they segmented their customer base, designed their customer health scorecard, and achieved +50% response rates for NPS surveys! Cisco - The Cisco team will take you through their strategy development, implementation of Gainsight, how they addressed data challenges, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. Apttus - View this webinar to understand how team members across Apttus use Gainsight to better understand key customer health metrics and holistically manage

We’re launching a new initiative called “Customer Spotlight” to feature Gainsight super users on our online Community. For our first spotlight, we’re featuring Sarah Couch from Workday. Thanks Sarah for your insights! [i]What are you most passionate about in your role? Just as our CSMs are passionate about our customers' success, I’m most passionate about ensuring the success of our CSMs. As Gainsight Administrator and a member of our Ops team, my passion lies in creating collaborative, effective, easy to use tools and programs which enable our CSMs to have meaningful, value-driven conversations with our customers. [i]What advice would you give to leaders who have been tasked with driving CS at their organizations? Leverage the relationships you have with leadership across your organization to create a cohesive service philosophy which puts your customers at its center. Define the roles and responsibilities of every member of every department in your organization in a way

Do your CSMs send out a notice in advance whenever they are going on vacation? If so, how have you managed to address the scale factor where CSMs manage 75-100 accounts or more? I would like to hear both from people who do send out advance notifications and those who don't. Trying to get a feel for what is common practice. Thanks in advance!

[i]Geologists from Stanford University recently made an astounding discovery. Drilling core samples in Palo Alto, a thousand feet below Sand Hill Road, they discovered the fossils of an ancient civilization. They're excitement grew as excavation revealed a Neanderthal community with complex tools, written language, and a primitive subscription economy. [i]A paleo-forensic team pieced together the daily life of one adult Neanderthal that lived there 40,000 years ago. They've published his narrative below, and titled their work the Tales of Groc, the Customer Success Caveman.[i] Previous chapter: Chapter 1: https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-the-customer-success-caveman Groc had been an early employee at StoneHenjj. When he joined, they had just a few dozen customers using a very early version of their product, Cart 1.0. Mobile platform technology was just gaining traction and the system architecture still needed a lot of work. Cart 1.0 was built

[i]Geologists from Stanford University recently made an astounding discovery. Drilling core samples in Palo Alto, a thousand feet below Sand Hill Road, they discovered the fossils of an ancient civilization. They're excitement grew as excavation revealed a Neanderthal community with complex tools, written language, and a primitive subscription economy. [i]A paleo-forensic team pieced together the daily life of one adult Neanderthal that lived there 40,000 years ago. They've published his narrative below, and titled their work the Tales of Groc, the Customer Success Caveman. Previous chapters: Chapter 1: [url=https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-the-customer-success-caveman]https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-the-customer-success-caveman Chapter 2: https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-chapter-2-early-adopters[/url] Every new customer at StoneHenjj went through onboarding. The Cart technolog

[i]Geologists from Stanford University recently made an astounding discovery. Drilling core samples in Palo Alto, a thousand feet below Sand Hill Road, they discovered the fossils of an ancient civilization. They're excitement grew as excavation revealed a Neanderthal community with complex tools, written language, and a primitive subscription economy. [i]A paleo-forensic team pieced together the daily life of one adult Neanderthal that lived there 40,000 years ago. They've published his narrative below, and titled their work the Tales of Groc, the Customer Success Caveman. Previous chapters: Chapter 1: [url=https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-the-customer-success-caveman]https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-the-customer-success-caveman Chapter 2: https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-chapter-2-early-adopters Chapter 3: https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-cha

[i]Geologists from Stanford University recently made an astounding discovery. Drilling core samples in Palo Alto, a thousand feet below Sand Hill Road, they discovered the fossils of an ancient civilization. They're excitement grew as excavation revealed a Neanderthal community with complex tools, written language, and a primitive subscription economy. [i]A paleo-forensic team pieced together the daily life of one adult Neanderthal that lived there 40,000 years ago. They've published his narrative below, and titled their work the Tales of Groc, the Customer Success Caveman. Previous chapters: Chapter 1: [url=https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-the-customer-success-caveman]https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-the-customer-success-caveman Chapter 2: https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-chapter-2-early-adopters Chapter 3: https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-chap

[i]Geologists from Stanford University recently made an astounding discovery. Drilling core samples in Palo Alto, a thousand feet below Sand Hill Road, they discovered the fossils of an ancient civilization. They're excitement grew as excavation revealed a Neanderthal community with complex tools, written language, and a primitive subscription economy. [i]A paleo-forensic team pieced together the daily life of one adult Neanderthal that lived there 40,000 years ago. They've published his narrative below, and titled their work the Tales of Groc, the Customer Success Caveman.[i] Previous chapters: Chapter 1: [url=https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-the-customer-success-caveman]https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-the-customer-success-caveman Chapter 2: https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-chapter-2-early-adopters Chapter 3: https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/tales-of-groc-c

Does the Training group have a filter  cheat sheet for rules?  As I'm creating more rules, I find that I'm not always totally sure what filters to use and what values to choose.   I met with Scott on Monday and he thought this would be a good idea and encouraged me to post.

As Customer Success teams look to demonstrate ROI, CSMs track new measures to demonstrate the value a Customer Success team creates. What measures are you currently tracking to demonstrate ROI? What challenges have you faced that you would like others' input and insight on? [i]We'll be continuing the conversation below! Additionally, tune in to our weekly CSM led webinar on Wednesday June 8th @ 9am PST where we will be discussing this topic! Click here to register.