Provide admins with control over in-app messages or the ability to disable them

100% agree here. In fact, the TLS messaging that went out to our 1,000+ users flooded our IT department with calls about getting systems updated even though we are already on TLS 1.3. These types of messages should be sent to Admins only. Then we can work directly w/ IT on an Enterprise-wide system update.

I’m really disappointed with Gainsight right now.

The in-app message below was received by my end users this morning.  This is inappropriate and misleading to target end users on several levels:
 

This isn’t just something the ‘Admin can turn on.’  For one thing, in my case don’t use Gong and surveys are sent through other means, so the first two items aren’t even relevant to us currently.

Secondly, our Gainsight CSM told me that our legal and security teams did in fact “opt out” of this feature (which appears confirmed by the message in the Horizon AI tab “Gainsight has received communication from your legal team requesting that we refrain from using Microsoft Azure to process your company data in relation to our Generative AI features. To ensure compliance with your company's data security and privacy policies, these features are unavailable,” in my instance).  If this is true,  then why are you advertising this to our end users?

Lastly, there is no indication here that these are paid add-on services. It’s inappropriate to be pitching paid services to our end users and just telling them to ask their admin to turn them on.

@anirbandutta not sure who needs to read the above but may you direct to the right person? Thanks

Done @darkknight 

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for flagging this and sharing your feedback. I’m going to break my response out into a few parts to address the different points you have raised.  

I also want to acknowledge that any approach we take to announcing new features may not work for every stakeholder. We appreciate the feedback to help us find a balanced approach now and in the future.  And we’ve updated our policies due to this experience. Details are below.

Summarizing first:

1. We did make a decision to share these new Generative AI features across digital channels including In-App, Email and Community.  But, we missed an opportunity to note that these specific features will be paid features after a free trial period from now through Jan 31, 2024.

2. We also made a mistake with some of the In-App targeting which led to showing the notification to a very small group of customers who opt-ed out of Gen AI releases for security reasons. 

3. Finally, while we will continue to share key announcements to end users via digital channels including Community, In-App and Email, we’ve updated our overall policy guidelines for In-App communications to end-users based on this experience and your feedback.

4. We have also planned for an in-depth webinar on Nov 29, 2023 at 8am PT. We'll cover how Gainsight is approaching AI and the security and privacy standards in place, what these new features can do for CS teams and CSMs, and how to activate and start using these new productivity tools. Register here.

We did make a decision to share these new Generative AI features across digital channels including In-App, Email and Community.  We have updated the communication to clearly note these features are free for a set amount of time and will require an additional cost when the trial ends on Jan 1, 2024.

Today we released three new Generative AI features in our Gainsight CS Platform.  It is an exciting day as this is the start of more things to come. Some of the AI features (Meeting Assist) are currently only available to those using Gong.io. However, if there is significant interest to be able to use this with other platforms, we’d like to hear what you use to help us prioritize what is next.

An important part of releasing new capabilities is ensuring our users (end users, execs, and admins) are aware of them.  This awareness also guides future product development. For users/companies who would benefit from using a new enhancement of a feature, they can only advocate for improvements when they know it exists. 

With Product Announcements, the engagements only show once to end users. This is to ensure it’s not intrusive to their workflows.

We also made a mistake with some of the In-App targeting which led to showing the In-App notification to end users at a very small group of customers who opt-ed out of Gen AI releases for security reasons.

Recognizing that some organizations have or will have blanket “no-AI” policies in the short-to-medium term, we meant to exclude any customers who completed an opt-out form for Gen AI releases.  More information about how Gainsight uses Gen AI technology and opting out can be found here.

Due to human error, we did not exclude customers who had opted out (< 1% of all customers).  We have fixed the issue for future Gen AI specific release communications.

Finally, while we will continue to share key announcements to end users via digital channels including Community, In-App and Email, we’ve updated our overall policy guidelines for In-App communications to end-users based on this experience and your feedback

Our updated policy for announcements In-App to end users:

• Announcements will show once to users
• Types of announcements that will show to all users:
  • Net new functionality
  • Company acquisitions
  • Pulse date announcements
• For features that have an additional fee, we will note the potential cost and any free trial information

We have also planned for an in-depth webinar on Nov 29, 2023 at 8am PT. 

We'll cover how Gainsight is approaching AI and the security and privacy standards in place, what these new features can do for CS teams and CSMs, and how to activate and start using these new productivity tools. Register here.

@tyler_mcnally  Our jobs are to marry business needs with functionality. We advocate for the use of features when they align with the needs of the business and when they are appropriate. When you communicate new features out to end users (especially with a message that says “ask your admin to turn this on!”) you increase the burden on already overloaded admins. Just because a feature is available doesn’t mean it’s something the business can use. Not to mention the fact that new Gainsight features are rarely ready for primetime when they are first released as they are frequently buggy.

You’re just making the lives of admins harder and generating ill will in the process. I know I am not alone in this sentiment - I just tend to be one of the more vocal ones. Have you considering surveying admins to ask whether or not they are ok with you spamming our end users with new feature announcements?

It is already a battle for our org to introduce new features and processes to CSMs in such a cadence and way that they will actually be adopted. We carefully choose features to communicate and features to hide until we are ready and it makes sense.

Please consider against advertising niche/optional/paid features to end-users in such invasive ways. Not everyone is a power user. Most at best will disregard it, at medium will get hyped for a feature they will not get anytime soon, and at worst will be strained by Gainsight news so much will pay less attention to items that we as admins want to accentuate at this time.

Myself I would be extremely excited for a way to control these in-app notifications, even customize them. Banners and/or popups - that would be a great way for me to reach users about new features or process reminders.

I’ll add my name to the list that this has caused challenges for. We are down a person, so we’re covering for that role until backfilled, finalizing a Gainsight launch to a new user team this month, answering questions about gong integration issues and Gainsight Assist issues, all the regular management of requests, questions and issues. NOW, on top of that I am fielding questions from people asking why AI isn’t enabled yet, so that takes me away from everything else. Please reconsider your approach to this. Gainsight admins can be your biggest advocates, but I agree will all the comments above as this causes disruption and ill will. Thank you

I agree with the Gainsight Admins above and also advocate for more control over in-app messaging moving forward. While I applaud the continuous improvements, it became apparent that the additional cost associated with the AI release wasn't clearly communicated in the announcement. The excitement generated among end users wasn't aligned with our business procedures, creating an inconvenience, especially during our renewal cycle where cost savings is critical. I also agree that the statement “ask your admin to turn this on” implies access to all the features mentioned in the announcement and that’s simply not the case and is misleading. 

@tyler_mcnally As you can see from some of the other comments in this thread, this does create challenges and problems for customers who have dedicated admins. I understand that you’re a SaaS business trying to drive adoption and how especially critical that is in the current climate. I also get that not all of your customers have dedicated admins that own the strategy, design and communication stream (tho I’m willing to bet that most of your larger customers do, and I wouldn’t think you’d want to do anything irritate them).

In your opening statements, you said Gainsight intends to find a “balanced” approach to announcing new features, but the rest of the message seemed to double down on the one-sided notion that “For users/companies who would benefit from using a new enhancement of a feature, they can only advocate for improvements when they know it exists.”

May you understand and acknowledge that a more nuanced approach may be needed?  Is there not a way to filter these in-app messages for customers that have a dedicated admin vs. not? At an extreme minimum, would it be possible to notify customer admins of the intent to notify end users and the targeted messaging so we can at least be prepared and try to get ahead of it? 

Appreciate the response from Gainsight here as to their acknowledgement of how this specific announcement wasn’t rolled out well, and their plan forward. But it seems like they’re not listening to the primary complaint of their admins - their core users and biggest advocates. 

Several people have responded with how much of a headache this presents to admins who typically support several 100s of CSMs, when Gainsight makes the decision to push new *paid* feature announcements in app to end users. I can’t think of any other platform - not even Salesforce - that I, as an end user - get product and feature announcements for, because I’m not the person that has the relationship with the solution - the administrators are, and trust that our administrators are staying on top of new features and functionality given our business goals and objectives. 

It’s one thing to announce features that get rolled out to all users without admin configuration, but anything that an admin has to turn off to enable should be limited as there’s likely a reason an admin has or has not decided to, and to bypass them straight to the end user only worsens the admin experience.

I don’t think anyone is arguing that communication shouldn’t be sent out. I think the core issue here is “right message, right place, right time” as well as understanding the relationship that Gainsight Admins have to their business and to Gainsight itself. The approach of spamming all users at every business falls flat demonstrating a good understanding of these areas.

An admins sole job isn’t just to turn features on when they launch, nor are they ignorant of what the product does. We have our own roamaps, teams asking things of us, and hurdles we have to go through to get something out the door.

Sending an alert to users to ask admins to turn a feature on is no different than the Gainsight CSM sending an email copying our CS org saying “hey why haven’t you turned this on? Did you even know about it here’s a link for more!” (which is a real thing that has happened). All it does is send a message to our users that their Admin isn’t doing their job, and that the job they should be doing is trivial at best.

We all want the same thing: the best experience for our end users. But we aren’t all going to get there the same way at the same time. All we’re asking for is some flexibility and input into messaging so the vendor and business partner whose product we enable at our companies doesn’t kneecap us from doing our job effectively, and subsequently eroding the trust of our users in us. Does that sound like a reasonable ask?

I’d like to add my voice to the chorus of frustrated GS Admins here.

The decision to send a message out that tells our CSMs to “Tell your admin to turn this on!” resulted in several questions that we were not prepared to answer - painting us in a negative light. 

We reached out to our GS CSM and got a quick response, but ‘one possibility’ was to ask our users to turn off notifications in settings. She was trying to assist, so this is not a dig on her, but that doesn’t make us look any better - in fact, it makes us look as if we are hiding things from our end users. 

This isn’t the way to gain favor with the people who champion your product. 

 

we need this feature too

Not sure when this got set to “Not Feasible” but you’re going to have some perpetually irritated admins out here if things like this continue to intrude on our workflows and processes, and I don’t think you want to alienate your admin base.