Summary: This article explores the nuances of my role as a Gainsight Journey Orchestrator (JO) administrator, distinguishing it from a broader Gainsight CS Ops admin position and highlighting the skills, challenges, and future evolution of this critical function. Missed the first article in this series? View it here.
1. My Role vs. a "Whole Gainsight" CS Ops Admin
My role is more focused than that of a general Gainsight CS Ops admin. While a CS Ops admin handles a wide range of tasks, including data design, reporting, and surveys, I primarily concentrate on:
- JO-Specific Tasks: Email template creation, content creation for journeys, troubleshooting, and testing within the JO platform
- Data and Integration: Working with data designs, reports, and dashboards as they relate to JO programs, and coordinating with marketing counterparts on external communication flows
At the core, I specialize in the communication aspects of Gainsight, ensuring effective and targeted customer engagement through journeys.
2. Skills, Backgrounds, and Education
My career experience prior to landing in email operations was built upon hybrid marketing and communications skills including:
- Email Marketing: Experience with B2B or B2C email marketing strategies and best practices
- Communications: Strong communication skills, both written and verbal, are essential for crafting effective messaging
To enable me to manage the technical aspects of the platform and create compelling customer communications, the following have been instrumental in my success.
- Learning from the Global Gainsight Admin (GGA) Slack community and the Gainsight Gamechanger community
- Gainsight Certifications: Achieving Gainsight certifications (L1, L2 JO & Surveys) provides a solid foundation
- Technical Skills: Courses on Rules Engine, Data Designs, data manipulation, and VLookups are beneficial
3. My Partners, Support Network, and Stakeholders
I collaborate with various teams, including:
- CS Ops – working with the full Gainsight admin for broader system support
- Client Enablement: Coordinating on customer training and resources
- Data Teams: Ensuring data accuracy and integrity for JO programs
- Sales Ops/Rev Ops/Marketing Ops: Aligning on communication strategies and goals
- Key stakeholders: Onboarding, Training, CSMs, Product, and Research – essentially, any client-facing team that leverages JO for customer interaction
4. Challenges, Pitfalls, and the Future
Common challenges I face include:
- Data Hygiene: Maintaining clean and accurate data is crucial for effective targeting. This is often the biggest challenge.
- Stakeholder Management: Balancing competing and shifting requests from various teams can be demanding. Learning to say “No, but…” instead of “No” has been crucial.
The future of my role is evolving with:
- AI Integration: AI will play a significant role, particularly in content development and personalization
- Increased Importance of Scaling and Personalization: As customer expectations rise, the ability to scale and personalize communications will become even more critical.
- Expanding Responsibilities: My role is likely to expand beyond just JO to include other communication platforms and lifecycle communication flows used by stakeholder teams.
Conclusion
In looking back at my role over the past three years, and forward to the future, the need for a dedicated JO admin isn’t decreasing. Rather, this role is a key part of the Gainsight Ops team for organizations scaling the Digital Customer Journey (a fact highlighted in this Pulse 2024 Presentation by
