How a Gainsight CSM uses Gainsight
Ever wonder how a Gainsight CSM uses Gainsight? Learn tips and tricks to get the most out of using Gainsight.
Check one two. How is everybody doing?
It's a tough question to answer at this point in time.
It was like we're all in between a lot of things.
Myself, jet lag, there was a party last night I think.
Something along those lines.
No, it's awesome to see everybody.
Thank you all so very much.
This means a ton to us as CSMs here at GainSight.
I mentioned before in my session yesterday,
but just a little backstory on this whole track.
We wanted to make something designed for CSMs, buy CSMs.
And I really think that what we're going to talk about today
answers a lot of questions, but hopefully we'll also facilitate
or rather kind of like elicit some great creative ideas
for you to be able to take back to your workflows.
Whether you're using GainSight or not, right?
I respect the fact that there's a lot of, you know, be at the end of the day,
our role exists, right?
Starts with the C, it's customer.
Whatever we're doing needs to benefit the customer.
So first and foremost, whatever we are doing,
hopefully what it is we share today,
it will be something we can translate back to what your workflows are on a day
to day.
But that's my brief unplanned monologue
as I'm allowing the rest of the folks to circle in here.
But no worries.
We're going to be a little casual about this today.
Actually, what we will do is we are the role that we have at GainSight,
kind of our account size or book sizes, things like that,
and really let you know some of the things that we on a day in and day out,
leverage within the GainSight UI that we feel to be very impactful.
Some of these things I know as well are going to be somewhat perceived as being
in this.
I'm just taking this not just as a wild guess,
but in conversations with my customers day in and day out,
there's this kind of assumption that we operate in this perfect universe
of an instance of GainSight.
I often make the joke that, you know, we kind of like live in a beta instance
and in some cases, which is exciting.
The Georgia's amazing presentation yesterday in the opening keynote,
walking through things like co-pilot, stuff that we do have beta access to
that we can speak from the heart and say, oh, my Lord,
like this is about to change some lives,
or some things that maybe perhaps get pushed earlier than whenever we go out
for our quarterly releases, however that may be.
But all that to say, it's not a, you know, Ricky D.
Hapaz or, you know, instance, it is fantastic.
Our administrators do a fantastic job.
Our CS ops personas do a wonderful job of putting these workflows in front of
us.
So all faith in that, but also as well.
So after we go through our introductions,
we would like this to be as engaging as possible.
I love that we could all probably sit here and explain a lot about what we do.
However, y'all have been talked at quite a bit.
Let's have a little bit of a conversation.
And so if there are things perhaps that you're coming in here already wanting
to know
around how we utilize GainSight or things that might perhaps be spawned based
on
how it is we explain that we do use the UI on a day in and day out through the
Q&A
after we go through our introduction.
But what I'll do is I'll go ahead and hand the floor over to Sohrish and
Georgia here.
My esteemed colleagues, Rish, where do you sit?
What's your book of business look like?
And I would love to know, and this could potentially be the same answer.
What part of the GainSight UI do you love the mother things?
Yeah.
Hello everyone.
I am Rishibha.
I'm one of the CSMs in the EMEA team at GainSight.
And I mostly handle all the mid-market segment of customers.
I have a good portfolio of 32, 34 customers and a lovely set of customers.
And yes, I work with the EMEA team and base.
As a CSM at GainSight is about ensuring that the customer experience is
fantastic.
But one thing that I really love about it is my customers, they are much
excited, much more excited
than I am to do more things in GainSight.
And that's like the best thing.
I need to put some extra effort.
That's fine.
But they are so much better than the ones who would not like to do anything.
So that's mostly about me as a CSM in EMEA.
And then my favorite feature with the in GainSight, I would say there's a lot,
but I would just point
out customer 360 or C360 getting a holistic view of all the things being able
to be well
prepared for the meetings.
And then seeing some of them at 360 would be for me.
Is there particularly something within the C360?
I agree with you.
And it's the premise of having all of the necessary information, need to know
information in one place for a lot of reasons, efficiency and everything.
Do you find yourself over or what's the draw for the C360?
Yes, two things there actually.
One of it would be the cheat sheets because it summarizes all of my
interactions till
late, not just mine, but other people interacting with that particular customer
at one place.
So whenever I'm going for a meeting, I exactly know what has been happening,
what's the background, what's going well, what's not.
And apart from that, a widely used feature for me would be success plans
because that is
a collaborative thing where I work with my customers to plan out their way for
success
for the next quarter or so.
So yeah, these would be the two features.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
Great use cases for those as well too.
Some of my favorites.
Georgia?
Just on my own.
I'm Georgia Peddensini.
I'm also part of the customer success team as an enterprise CSM.
So my book of business is a little bit less than Rish's than God because I don
't know
how she does it.
But I have around 10 accounts, enterprise accounts and a few more years in CS
and I'm
based out of London.
So for, I see some familiar faces in the audience, some customers and community
members that
we need in London as well.
So if you're in London and you want to connect, feel free to.
Going back to your questions, so what I like the most and what I use the most,
which
not necessarily the same, but also could be.
I would say two things that I use the most.
I stack my day in my dashboard, which could be controversial because sometimes
our best
is design your games at home page four.
I love that idea because I'm an enterprise CSM.
I kind of know the prioritization of my work.
I can do it out of my dashboard and it's well designed as if it were against at
home.
Time because calendar widget is also present.
So that's definitely something I live in.
And Rish is still my answer on success plan.
Success plan are key for me and if you sense it's going to be spaces because I
'm envisioning
spaces to be that sort of collaborative place where all the input on outcomes
and what actually
that customer cares about in their language, the material, you know, all the
progress because
value is not achieved in two months of cadence meetings.
It's built on time.
You have the quick wins, but really the value that makes a different, dangerous
words, it's built usually over a few months, if not a year or two.
So success plan helps understanding from the beginning, setting expectations,
defining
the language, challenging our customers.
I love that.
Let's challenge our customers.
What's actually important to you because even in games like sometimes you are
so much
into our bubble.
So speaking daily with customers and what's important for them, it really helps
me understand
different perspectives, different priorities.
Success plan is absolutely key.
I have to say though, that's the one I like the most because it's pure magic.
There's really no other way to put it.
I was talking to, I'm not sure if Russell's in here or who else was I talking
to about
this image, sessions, but I almost kind of sound a little salesy when I started
talking
about co-pile, like this is like, "Dear goodness, this is amazing."
I'm right there with things there too.
I'll go into a little bit on how I'll answer this as well too, but some of the
fun things
about being a CSM at GainSight, I'll often call it the act.
I should be setting a good example for the end users among my customers if I'm
doing my job correctly.
So theoretically, I shut this.
Go back to that beta instance I mentioned earlier, it doesn't necessarily
always go apples to
apples, but at the end of the day, sometimes it does get a little confusing
though sometimes
about my success plan, but the customer's success plans and then there is
effect can take hold
and it can get a little frustrating.
But once again, Nate Bartlett, senior CSM, I work out of the US out of North
Carolina
and I am predominantly working with enterprise clients.
I actually currently have 13.
There's 12 in my book and I have one now because one of my colleagues is a
pilot.
That has brought me up to speed like that.
It made not to quote our, actually exactly, to quote our AI playbook.
We get turned all of our teammates into our best teammates.
So very quickly, even though Alexandra, my teammate who's out on maternity
leave, owns
this account, knows this account, has forged these relationships, I was able to
get in those instances as well and these are things that you would all have or that
rather is
something you would have access to today in your UI.
So it's not all future speak in terms of don't wait or I can't wait until co-p
ilot comes
out.
But I will say that, let's see here, out of all of the UI, y'all touched on
some really
good ones.
So I was teetering back and forth on this and so my first inclination was to go
where
they're in between that and dashboards because largely operating in a strategic
segment. I mentioned even in my presentation yesterday what I do is typically not super
cookie cutter.
Now I have actually in other organizations prior to working at GEDD, the rig
idity, if you will. I needed that electronic to do list, those CTA's firing in my cockpit to remind
me not
just what to do that day but what account I had that day.
Sometimes it just becomes too much to handle.
In those instances that's where I as a CSM had to kind of give into, because I
was very
reluctant realistically to just give myself over to these workflows in a sense
and it's
a little bit of a contrarian adopter, kind of if you will.
But whenever I hit that aha moment of knowing that I was actually capable of
doing my job
because these CTA's were firing, it became less of that blood pressure spike, C
TA fatigue
type of effect.
And more of a yes, thank the Lord, I have a place to go to help direct my
activities for this day.
But as it relates to the way I utilize gain sites today, I like to go in there
and leverage
dashboards to have effective one on ones with my leadership.
One, we look at the same KPIs backwards from the KPIs that we're metriced on.
A lot of us potentially have a quarterly or an annual or some sort of variable
compensation
bonus that's tied to certain KPIs.
Leaders in the room, if you don't have a dashboard that exists, it helps you
make sure that your keeping your team on par with what's necessary for them to suffice for those KP
Is.
We're missing something really big and talk to your CSM, they'll be more than
happy to
help you get that set up.
All the reason being, we are incentivized, bless you, incentivized to do these
activities
for a reason, right?
And so that reason being the ultimate business goals, let's work backwards from
that and
formulate our activities.
But me like a year ago would laugh at me saying this right now.
But because of where we are today with technology, my favorite part, my
favorite place of the
tool is the timeline.
I absolutely hate taking notes.
Who hates taking notes?
Let's see those hands, come on, get them up, really?
But I can say that the living the day of a CSM right now is way different.
Obviously, I'm sure it's changing day over day, really.
But much different than it was a year ago.
Customers route directly into our timeline.
That timeline now comprises so much more of the truth than it ever has before.
To me as an individual contributor and someone who needs to understand my
accounts and my stakeholders and all the priorities and things or has before.
And it's only going to continue to get better as we start to talk about things
like staircase,
routing these types of signals into the reality of what we can understand as
our customers.
So facilitating workflows on a cockpit that's telling me every single day, go
and do these things.
I have CTAs.
However, my work being that I am strategic, I do have a lot of autonomy.
Sometimes my ADD takes over and I, you know, keep me on task.
The CTA still exists.
They're pertinent.
They're there.
But what I need is something for in speaking to all the strategic CSMs in the
room.
I need something that's going to allow me to be able to confidently navigate
something that I do have
autonomy to create in terms of a workflow that's going to get me back to suff
icing for that KPI
and solving for the ultimate business challenge that Nick made in the rest of.
Okay.
Awesome.
With that, I would like to see are any questions rolling through thus far?
Because we can pivot this.
If there are some, we can pivot this into a bit of Q&A.
And I'm sure you're a little expert by now, but it's on your pulse up main page
On the monitor, perhaps?
They can't be.
Okay.
No worries.
All right.
So, I like this.
All right.
What CTAs are triggered via automation?
Do you experience any CTA fatigue?
So not to giggle, but I mean, we probably hear that a lot, right?
Whenever it comes to trying to have our customers adopt the tool, whether it's
a nascent CS organization,
or something like that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
And then we're going to be able to do that.
However, whenever we start to think about the nuance and the truth of the
matter, if you will,
that fuels these risk signals or opportunity signals, whenever we start
thinking about what these CTA's are going to look like in the near term, in the near future,
it'll be less of a, again,
alluded to it as a blood pressure spike because that was my lived experience
for a long time.
Anytime I'm alone in fire, it's really, oh, Lord.
But knowing that whenever that CTA fires, that gets you as a CSM or leaders in
the room, gets your teams
closer to that next most valuable action that they can be performing.
So it's one thing to think about as well, too.
It's like, what specifically are the actions that they need to be taking?
And then let's build the process around that and with daily becoming more.
The more intuitive and the more nuanced these triggers can be.
So I see the value of the CTA overall becoming a little bit more, a little bit
more, if you will,
and a little bit less of a, you know, make people roll their eyes at all the
things they have to do.
Okay, let's see here. In terms of, ooh, I love this.
We are KPIs. What do we need to meet and what else could be added to existing
KPIs?
Either of you want to go on this one?
Yeah. So KPIs generally for a CSM rate, that's a surprise for everybody.
So retention rate, it's quarterly, yearly.
It's something that all our leaders, we're very just keeping track of it.
We do have visibility, which helps.
So there's a lot of transparency on how we're trending the type of targets.
But then CSM specifically, two North stars are, are we creating value for our
customers?
And are we aligning with the recommended cadence to the right people?
So in that sort of like keeping the relationship active, healthy, so that we
can bring value to it.
So we call verified outcomes the type of value that we deliver,
because you're not familiar with that. It's like the objectives that are part
of our success plans
with our customers are closed as success whenever that type of objective is
achieved.
So that's why it's called verified outcomes.
We do have a compliance rate for the verified outcomes that we only need to be
above and beyond
on a quarterly basis, which means we are delivering the objectives we shared
and agreed on
to our customers and their achieving value.
And they can be as long to be like that our customers achieve a GRA rate of
plus two points or whatever it is. But it could also be a quick win, like opening up visibility
to the CS leadership
in terms of creating a dashboard for them or increasing employee satisfaction
internally
because we are redesigning their experience in the tool.
So, strategic objectives, but there needs to be a bit of a balance there.
But this is probably another argument for another time.
And stakeholder alignment, I don't know if you want to cover that stakeholder
alignment piece.
Yeah, most certainly. So, in the two key elements that we are compensated on,
Georgia mentioned as far as the verified outcomes in stakeholder alignment,
this wasn't just a good idea that our executives had one day.
What we've done is a lot of analysis of our own business over several years.
Now, I don't want to say that and discourage anybody that's trying to establish
their own set of KPIs
to measure their teams. I know that sometimes the perfect, you know, quote un
quote,
you know, scenarios sometimes feels far off. I like to say to my customers,
we've done a lot of the work to prove that this model is relevant.
Now, is it a copy and paste? Is this going to drive the best results for your
business exactly?
No two businesses are the same, right? So, there's going to be some nuance and
things that need to be adjusted for.
But whenever it comes to, even harking it back to what I was talking about,
customers, two things need to be there, right?
We need to understand that we are driving the value for them to what Georgia
was alluding to as far as what we are
comped on, making sure our customers are seeing those outcomes. But then the
stakeholder alignment piece,
if we are not multi-threaded within our customers, and we are not making not
just the relationship successful at the end user level,
but making the decision maker, the technical, you know, personas, everyone in
between,
Georgia mentioned as well, you know, we do have personas named in our system.
Post sales leaders, Pam, you know, revenue leader, actually, Pam Sally is the
success leader,
and then also I like, shoot, I'm completely blanking on, sorry.
So, anyways, we've got this litany of persona names so that each individual who
represents that thread within that multi-threaded stakeholder alignment
is someone that's represented at the contact level in our system.
Now, whenever we log a meeting with an individual, that would then route to
that persona,
and then that would also then suffice within our system, folklore persona.
Now, we are metric, and this does change from segment to segment, right?
You would imagine that the stakeholder meetings that I'm having with 12
accounts can be a variance
in what can be expected of anyone human being to establish and maintain a cad
ence structure with that.
So, we are held to in the strategic segment a little bit higher of a compliance
in terms of which stakeholders we are meeting with
and what that cadence is.
If I'm not meeting with the CCOs of my customers every six months, then that's
something that shows in the data
and can very well route to a negative impact to my variable income.
But the idea here, though, going back to the model itself is, if we are not
ensuring that our teams are driving the outcomes our customers want,
and if we are not maintaining a multi-threaded stakeholder to remain clear
lines of communication,
then we're severely limiting the potential of the impact we could have and
highly risking the outright churn of an account.
With that, though, there was a piece of that question as well as far as what
else could be added.
So, the idea there, too, and Georgia touched on this momentarily, I think the
idea to go right to something very strict,
like a quantified outcome for a customer, I got to Gainsite, actually, we had
this same set of variable compensation metrics.
However, it was not diluted a little bit, but we were still testing the waters,
trying to figure out if this model worked
as a means to incentivize us as CSMs to drive the end results that we're
looking to achieve.
For our variable compensation, both qualitative and quantitative verified
outcomes.
So, to change, or just something that made a sentiment type of impact, those
could be things that would be both counted as verified outcomes early on.
And then as we started to understand as a business, yes, if we are metricing, I
guess, if we metric our workforce on completing these two hours,
to the tune of 20 plus points, to the retention rate of our customers, so now
we can start to fine tune that a little bit.
And that's where I think about, whenever I think about changes to the KPIs,
rather than changing the comp structure year over year,
which all of us have probably had that great experience, rather than that,
taking a model that works,
very simplified, something like a stakeholder alignment and verified outcomes,
and then adapting that over time, right?
You mentioned kind of the future-proof idea, foundationally establishing
something that you can kind of will accept qualitative and quantitative.
And then perhaps after a couple of quarters of that, you start to get the data
points to say perfect.
Now we can go in there and we can expect our CSMs, our customer-facing teams to
now come back with a quantified outcome.
This isn't just for our benefit, right? How often do we go back to our
customers with proof points in the value based on the verified outcomes?
That's the beauty of it, because we see the attention and then just the growth
of my customers.
That's what I'm most thrilled about, seeing them succeed.
But it's not a linear path there, so we need to start.
But it's also, in previous jobs as a CSM, I was at a common measure on adoption
of features,
where yes, of course, if a customer doesn't adopt, we're at risk.
But because it's not a holistic understanding of what a CSM should do at that
point.
So just thinking, as you said, is like, and I love this question because I keep
looking at it.
I'm like, well, what else could we have?
We have soft metrics, we have EBR compliance.
We have CSQL, so the customer success qualified leads in terms of not heart
targets,
but it's like all things that, if you look at it, they still drive the
important metrics that our business cares about,
which is expansion, which is revenue generation, which is revenue retention.
So anything that is aligned to your overall business metrics department,
just make it trickling down as a cascading, you know what I mean.
That's the important one. But I think it's a brilliant question.
I would say, I would ask the same question to you, you know, when you go back
on your flights on your train,
just make sure that you question, do we have the right metrics for our CSMs?
Do you derive the right behavior? Are they aligned within the business?
Slide that I love to, I love the one slide presentations, right, where you're
just like,
we're going to dance on this one for a while.
So there's, and it's pretty dated. A lot of you have probably seen this,
and it's undergone a number of iterations over the years, but it simply breaks
into three sections,
simply basically why CSMs exist, and honestly, the function that Gainsite as a
tool provides.
Basically, it breaks down into three pillars.
We as CSMs perform activities that lead to outcomes for our customers,
and in between that, we get leading indicators as to whether or not we are
heading towards that end objective,
or we need to course correct at some point. It's literally that simple.
So whenever we think about what are the activities that we need our teams to do
wonderful, focus on incentivize them to do these things,
and then there's knock on effects from there. But I'm a simpleton.
I need it broken down into like the three pillars sometimes, but that one's a
lot of fun.
If you all want to have a conversation around that or hit me up afterwards,
I love that slide. I would love to walk through any of that,
because I feel that both it fundamentally underlies A, Gainsite and the tooling
but B, CSS a profession and the jobs that we as CSMs do.
We do have a lot of questions. Should we do like?
We talk, obviously.
I'll never be to. So I'm saying it to myself.
So I think the next one is about other tool that we're using day to day,
and integration that we enabled and what we use day to day.
I'll go ahead.
Yeah. So there are different tools we are using, of course, Kinsite PX,
but apart from that, we do use Salesforce as the sales side of the tool.
And as a CSM, my only work or my only interaction of Salesforce comes in
when I have a CSQL to track or a potential expansion opportunities
within my existing customer base to track.
So that would be one. Apart from that, thanks to the flawless
bidirectional integration between Salesforce and Gainsite,
some of the contacts that I have been updating from Gainsite can count
executives,
whatever they're writing it there comes in here.
So that is my interaction with Salesforce per se.
Apart from that, we do have a supporting tool Sendisk,
which integrates very well yet again, because in customer 360, we have a case.
Of course, as a CSM, I don't have to go in depth all the time into these cases,
but just to know the overall pulse of how my customer has been doing on the
support side,
are they getting enough site, which it is also available on Sendisk.
So again, it's a two-way thing.
I think I interact mostly with these two tools apart from Gainsite PX and Stair
case. Anything else to add?
>> I was thinking about Sendisk, something, yeah, definitely the usage data.
These are the main ones really.
>> To the next question as well too, what features are you going to get?
Your ability to be efficient, how does your team leverage to work around?
Not so much attention things such as a risk escalation CTA,
but that begets ideally across functional resolution.
And so how do you go from a CTA to alerting product support,
executive leadership, all these things?
Now, we have a great process.
I would love for all of you to copy and paste this, because I think it works.
It's executive dashboards, it's cross-functional interaction.
However, we're all humans first, right?
So there's a huge problem with that in that, like, we kind of like go into our
own lanes. Slack is one of them where I love it.
However, oftentimes I'll raise a risk, and the resolution path goes outside of
Gainsite into Slack, and then over into Sendisk, and then it goes to product board,
and I'm like, what the crap?
Like, where is everything?
So sometimes having too much can be a bit just too much, just that's it.
But I don't know, I can't think of necessarily like a feature, however,
to answer that question, but I think about a well-intentioned feature that
sometimes goes straight.
Yeah, I agree.
And we do have an amazing customer success operations team.
Yeah, I can't praise enough.
So anything that is not completely smooth, we can go back, give them feedback
via Slack.
And it's going to be taken care of.
So we're trying to also be very proactive in something that we see is not
working well.
Yeah, Kendra, Steven, that whole crew, amazing.
How do you ensure, oh, yeah, how do you ensure you have a proactive approach
with clients?
Well, I'll send you all my key notes.
It's, it's, well, I'm thinking with the strategic, like, enterprise customer
success manager lens here.
As I want you to keep being...
Yeah, I do.
It's getting to know them well, like, what's important for them?
How do you know their priorities?
Maybe they want to follow up on 10 actions, but just do what's best in your
customer interest
in terms of prioritizing your work, in terms of featuring gainside.
How it helps, what we said is the success plan.
So I know what's important and why, like, what kind of impact that should lead
as a verified outcome eventually.
A good dashboard, what we basically just talked about, a good dashboard that
prompts me to have
the right actions at the right time, a good intelligence, rules, automation
running on the background.
I don't miss something that it comes out, either a schedule or a risk.
Planning, it's a team effort, guys, because I wouldn't be nowhere without my
team, without my manager,
my account owner is without product telling me that a new release has been
released and a customer wanted it.
So it's a team effort, make sure that there's collaboration, that there's
visibility, and that most of the functions.
And a good coffee.
Good coffee in the morning.
Totally, yes.
All right, so here, it's anonymous.
I'd love to give somebody a thumbs up for the ops team building really cool
stuff.
All right, so CS ops teams building really cool stuff for CSMs to adopt, CSMs
then don't adopt,
and we have an adoption problem.
From the CSM perspective, why would this be?
How can we better engage?
I got some thoughts, however, I'd love to hear, give some room for Rish or
anyone else to.
Yeah, I really need to understand what's in it for me for this new feature that
the CS Ops team has put in.
I think a lot of times whenever our CS Ops team is building something new,
they are very open to receive feedback from the CSM, that's one.
And they also explain what's it for, like who are going to utilize this thing.
So that's one thing that helps me to understand the back.
And the future, as a CSM if I wouldn't adopt a new feature, I think that would
be if I don't see the point of doing it,
like why am I doing it, how it will be utilized, is it going to help the
business over,
speak for the entire community because everyone here is to ensure customer
success.
So I don't think so, it should be a normal case, it's just that they don't
understand the point of having that information or feature at place.
Yeah, that's one of the problems with being so human first, we are humans,
and you can't get the human out of the human, and we don't adapt to a change
that we don't necessarily see the benefit for us.
So we incentivize the activities, like if that activity exists, it exists for a
reason.
Let's make sure that the CSM is whoever is responsible for pulling that through
understands how that benefits them.
You need sponsorship, it's a bit of a carrot and a stick.
So if it's something that sometimes we're humans or we resist a change, so even
if I see what's in it for me,
maybe I need a bit of a push which comes from, so it's a bit of both.
Okay.
So are you using set templates for success plans or are they all individual?
A mixture of both.
Personal experience within any of that?
I have to say I process behind to set the outcomes, and then I adjust the
description or the metrics.
So it's a bit of both for me.
I would say we were talking, I don't remember who today, but it is great.
Oh, actually, yeah, there you go, without me there.
We will do putting it into a framework and actually putting it into gain size
so that it saves time.
It standardize, it's add more color during the filling out of successful
objectives.
We do have a way to standardize that yes in gain size.
And it's advisable to a level to where you do have that standardization, right?
We definitely want to make sure that we can track, because again, go back to
the, you can have people do it,
and actually doing it.
But when you go back and look at the quality of that activity, is it actually
driving any value?
Oftentimes success plans, unfortunately, I've seen turn into a very much of a
check the box activity.
And I would say, templatizing that and standardizing that is a good way to at
least get the ball rolling on that.
But why I mention there's a mixture of both is I also like that we as an
organization set it's where we do have autonomy to be able to within a success
plan, create objectives that we know are specific and be very strategic to a specific
line of business that we're working with.
They're a separate objective, whether it's more of an operational or marketing
or whatever it may be.
So having autonomy in there, I would champion for, but yes.
And we do have some templates and I think two of the templates are triggered
automatically as well.
And that really works well for me when I can't just go and enter information
each time.
One of those templates is after onboarding when the account is transitioned to
CSM.
So an ROI success plan is created with all the information the account
executive and the onboarding team has captured
throughout their conversation with the customers.
So it is there along with I think we do ask our customers to fill a value map
plan,
which is what are the immediate next goals they would like to achieve with G
ainsite.
So in Gainsite there are, in generally we can do two things.
You run behind the feature and then you see the value out of it.
But here at Gainsite what we try to do is you tell us your metrics to achieve
and then we'll backtrack and come to you that let's do this in Gainsite to
achieve those features.
So I think all those information are captured in value plan and then as I go on
conversing with my customers I keep on editing and adding more information to
it.
So yes there are some templates that are automatically triggered.
>> Is Gainsite co-pilot related to Microsoft co-pilot? No it's not.
We didn't do ourselves any favor.
Actually I think we actually had the naming convention first didn't we?
I think so. I've heard some people say that and we're going to call me on that.
No however.
Up to what George had mentioned as far as her dashboard.
How does that work?
Thinking about the deep understanding of the data structure to be able to
create meaningful and accurate dashes?
Yes most certainly.
That too many cooks in the kitchen versus yes.
How do you want to go about answering that one?
I mean we're skilled.
We know how to.
However I'm just speaking for me personally.
I don't go in and build reports very often.
I trust the ones that are made for me.
>> Same.
I have to say I trust my ops team.
We ask for some visibility.
That's also I know that it's very very subjective in many cases but we do have
full transparency
on which accounts are in which book of business and how everybody's vio's and
metrics are going.
But definitely we're not creating reports.
I mean we could play around in our spare time but we do have really good
reporting or really at hand.
>> With the portfolio between 10 to 30 accounts and gainsite csm how often you
can dot customer calls and what proactive steps do you take to ensure customer success in
between calls?
>> It's a 4-10 account and then 4-30 account.
>> We covered me.
>> I'll do it.
>> I'll start with all of my customer once a month.
>> Depending on the need of some of the customers are on lower CS maturity and
on lower gain
site adoption maturity I would like to connect with them more as and when
required.
It takes a lot of time and efforts but in the end like the first statement I
mentioned I
love this about my customers that they try to channelize my most of the
energies to be
speaking with them.
So once I'm on definitely I try to but if not that once a quarter is like a
definitely
to do thing if it's not happening it's a red sign for me.
Why have I not connected in once a quarter?
Proactively what are the steps you take to ensure customer success in between
calls?
Two things here.
One is I have set up all my meetings prior.
That's a recurring schedule I have for all my customers to ensure that I'm not
leaving
anyone behind when some of my other customers are loud.
That is one thing to ensure that the pace is still we do have our technical
experts whom
we are collaborating on a daily basis with.
So whenever I see that we can help our customers with talking more to the
support or to the
technical folks or let's say account executives we do that in between the two
meetings that
are going to happen.
>> I would add just about the persona.
So we do have specifically NCS and then of course for other products let's say
three meetings we do have different cadences and they are expected to be different
for enterprise
CSM rather than a mid-market because of number of accounts but we do have a
best practice
of guidelines on how often we should interact with each persona.
So let's say with the what we call a PAM which is our executive stakeholder who
ever
signed for an or let's say on a twice a year or once a year doing an executive
business
or then let's have a monthly meeting which maybe is a bit shorter.
So it really depends on the type of persona there.
>> Thank you.
This would be actually a good one to end on because I think we will find a lot
of commonality in this.
So what are the biggest challenges when you interact with your customers?
What jumped out to me really quickly is the biggest challenges right now are
the things
that I see that are being presented to all of us equally in a sense in terms of
like macro economic situation where the equation that we can't control.
We have an amazing process.
We have an amazing tool.
We have an amazing thought leadership to help coach our customers along.
The things that we can't control make that ultimately really challenging
because then you're talking about doing more with less.
Of course the tools would like to do that however let's talk about reductions
in headcount. Let's talk about budget that doesn't exist to facilitate an ops function or
whatever that
might be.
The challenges that are bigger than what our tools can really touch.
Bless you.
To me, like these tools are -- the challenges are limited.
I think on my side it's like really understanding what my customers define as
value.
Even there you need more voices and more perspectives.
Definitely the market is tough now.
So a lot of layoffs, restructuring, complexity, economic difficulties that are
a bit ahead.
But it's always then a bit of a rallying together and find the best way to move
forward.
The moving target on those, what's important.
Thank you so much for the engagement.
Thank you so much for being the next session.
I'm not going to leave this room if you want to continue to talk and go through
any of these questions.
Let me know.
Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]
