Share and Learn 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. 

Hi all, I have a question. I am looking into upsells and trying to come up with some metrics to start to predict this for example in days. Like 'when a company signs, the implementation should ideally take 90 days for phase 1 and the first upsell can be expected after a xxx amount of days after signing the contract' . Now I am wondering what a good average amount of days is from the closing of the sale to the first upsell or cross sell,. Can anyone advice me or share best practices for them? Would be super appreciated. Thanks in advance! Best Martine 

Anyone a customer or prospect of UserIQ? Looking for feedback on potential integration points. Thank you!

From time to time, the response time of our Gainsight instance/solution is slow to respond.   I dont have anything specific.  But I was wondering if there are any best practices or guidance around the configuration of the Gainsight features and functions so that the general performance is at its best. For instance, we know not to search with more than 2 filters.

Hi All, I'm a new GS Admin, who has completed our implementation in the Sandbox. I'm now getting ready to implement in Production and wanted to see if anyone had any documentation that could help act as a checklist in order complete appropriate steps. Thanks.

Hey CS ops peeps, We run a series of networks which clients use to build their system on (we're DNS geeks... ::pushes up glasses::). Usage is almost always pretty flat, so people set it and forget it. Subsequently, virtually nobody logs in on a daily basis, a major break from a lot of companies I see on here (Gainsight included) and I don't see a lot of examples of non-license based setups. What I was wondering, was if any of you are in the same boat from a business standpoint and how you architected your health scores and CTAs. Would love to have a conversation here/offline to swap ideas.

Hi I'm wondering if anyone captures data at the end of a stage and how this is done? As an example I'd like to know what a customer's health score was when they were done with on-boarding.  Is this data persisted anywhere?

We have a field that we're using to fire a CTA when the client doesn't hit a usage benchmark. That field is only populated for accounts where the benchmark isn't reached. I'm trying to write the CTA so that the CSM only gets the alert one time in a 30 day period. So, how do I prevent the CTA from firing again for an account where the CTA has been closed in the 30 day period?

We are trying to determine how to best connect social media advocates to the customer accounts in Gainsight. We have a few social tools right now, but they are not integrated into Gainsight. We'd prefer to have this closer to real time which would mean we most likely wouldn't be able to do uploads to MDA via the API.  Has anyone leveraged Hootsuite or Spredfast or another social tool to integrate it into Gainsight? Or has suggestions on the best way to do this?

Hi team,  Does anyone know of a way we can freeze a churned/will churn customer's health scorecard in Gainsight so that we can start reporting on trends? When a customer churns, we move them to the "Churned" Stage and our CSMs will close out the CTAs as Closed Risk to clear out the noise in their cockpit. Since our scorecard colors are driven by specific reason codes, once the CTA is closed, each measure will turn green the next day. This causes a problem for our churn analysis downstream. Any tips on how you can keep the cockpit clear but also keep a record of all of the risks identified in the customer account? BONUS question: We were also thinking of trying to find a way to operationalize "If a customer is in Churned Stage, then the Overall Health Score = RED (or black) or some really obvious color" Any tips on this? Thanks! Linda

Tales of Groc: the Customer Success Caveman Installations of Tales of Groc will be released bi-weekly [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. Chapter 1: Blindside Churns Groc arrived at the office bleary-eyed. His 6-month old cavebaby had been crying all night. He’d had a thin breakfast of squirrel and pine nuts and he had a mountain of EBR prep to get done. As he approached his desk, he could see a stone tablet with writing on it. Groc’s

Has anyone successfully written a report or built a CTA to fire when the Number of Contacts tracked in Sponsor Tracking is 0? We haven't solved for this one yet, mainly because Gainsight (and a lot of force.com, for that matter) cannot detect the absence of something. My leadership team wants to see how many customers have 0 tracked contacts, and then to fire a CTA when this occurs so it can be remediated.

We are going through the process of re-evaluating our NPS Program. I would love to hear how others here do NPS.  Some of the areas I'm specifically looking for input on are: How do you create buy-in across your company to empower others to followup and create change for responses? How many questions are on your NPS survey? What processes do you have in place to ensure timely followup and follow-through on responses? How do you increase your response rate?

Hi Anyone have any idea how chart colors can be changed when charts are created in Reports 2.0 using MDA data? More like is this even possible? Mainly because below you can see the two Green colors are almost so similar its confusing to which metrics this is referring to.

Hi, I am new to Gainsight and looking to get some information on how Customer Marketing teams can leverage the tool to keep the customers engaged and enhance the customer experience. We are using Marketo to run our Marketing initiatives and have it integrated with Gainsight. It would be helpful for us to know the best practices of using the integration and the value it provides. Any inputs on how you're using these tools together would be very helpful. We thought of running some campaigns like Client Onboarding, Cross-sell, Up-sell, product usage related, etc. from Marketo. Thanks, Shashank Sharma

I am curious if anyone can share models that they have used for understanding the loads of their CSMs and hiring models as it relates to sales pipeline. I am working on some of this internally and would love to learn from what others have already done.