Power of One: Weaving the Red Thread with Gainsight Throughout the Post-Sales Customer Lifecycle
Explore the remarkable journey of 2024 GameChanger award winner, Harri, and their partner, Wigmore IT, as they demonstrate the "Power of One" principle using the Gainsight Platform to seamlessly integrate customer success throughout the post-sales lifecycle. This session will delve into how Harri optimized key performance indicators, refined customer health frameworks, and identified churn triggers to transform clients into raving fans, significantly boosting Global Dollar Retention.
Good morning, everyone.
How are we doing?
After that opening keynote, it's hard not to be in great shape.
I know some of us might be struggling a little bit, not me.
And I'm the American in the room.
My biological clock actually just caught up to the time change.
So I'm in great shape right now.
So I just wanted to welcome everybody back to this track.
Obviously, one of the most important things
we're talking about in this industry right now
is how to scale CS.
Getting to hear some of the wisdom from Dan Peter
and Mark here in a moment is going to be phenomenal.
Join me in welcoming them to the stage
as they bring to us the power of one weaving the red thread
with gain sight throughout the post sales customer life
cycle, Dan, Peter, and Mark.
Thanks, Lenny.
You.
Have to, sir.
Thank you very much.
Morning, everyone.
So we're hopefully going to take you on somewhat of a journey.
And Dan and Mark, so I've got the privilege here
of being a moderator.
So what this is going to be a hybrid of a presentation,
moderation, I would really encourage everyone
to use the slider to ask questions
because we want to really get to that place as well,
where you guys can ask questions.
And that's what we're here to do,
is try and share this experience as best we can.
So we've obviously been rehearsing all week on this.
So apologies if this comes across a little bit to two stage
because it won't be.
So we start off with Dan, who's going to paint that sort of where
Harry was.
What was the challenge?
What they did about it?
And then how they worked, how we all worked as a team
to actually get Harry to that next place.
What were the lessons learned?
And what are the key takeaways?
So I think it's a fascinating journey.
So without further ado.
And I'm the slide clicker.
So you just ask me to click this last night.
- The worst bit, so good.
OK, why don't you start off by sort of just maybe giving everyone
just a quick sense as to the bottom.
- Yeah, introduction.
So Dan, you may know me from keynote speaker this morning
or crowd surfer from last night,
depending on where you saw me last.
Hope everyone had a great night last night, full of fun.
No, hope you've still got some energy left in you this morning.
But yeah, background CS Ops at Harry.
Ahead, the global team, say global team
is quite a small CS Ops structure
as we work with these incredible partners.
Been there for five years.
Looked over CS from very much of startup,
where CS did all the implementation, training, support,
chased billing with finance.
Like, there's very hybrid, even down to support at harry.com
for support cases.
So been there from the very start of Harry
and kind of transitioned through.
My background's not in tech.
It's in hospitality, so work with Starbucks,
franchising, and Jamie Oliver, restaurant group
before joining Harry.
So it's been quite nice transition from hospitality
to HR, hospitality tech.
So that's my background.
As a company, we have four products.
We do applicant tracking systems, workforce management,
payroll, and then learning management system as well.
So different personas are quite challenging
to engage with different people at all times.
And also quite challenging from a CS perspective
to know so much about a product as well.
For a business, it says 300, but we're up to 500 people
in the team, so we're not huge.
But from a logo perspective, we work with McDonald's in the US.
So when you go through a drive-through,
it's us saying who's where when you're going through
and what skilled person is in what station.
And if the weather changes, we're saying
who's doing muck flurries now
and who's doing fry.
So that's the sort of stuff that we do.
So hopefully that resonates a little bit with you.
And then from an applicant tracking system,
we give general managers and Harry managers the ability
to kind of use a tinder-esque process
for the application process for the swipe and left,
swipe and write.
So it's really gamified and a bit of fun
for the GMs in the Boris recruitment process.
And then we've got payroll in the UK as well.
So hopefully that touches the fun where we were
and what we do as well.
From a CS team perspective, it's quite high touch.
Hospitality Industries, I don't know if anyone works
in hospitality or HR Tech, is quite a high touch piece
when you're doing payroll.
And if there's any issue, it's obviously an escalation
straight away, someone gets paid on Friday.
And we don't help ourselves by doing payroll cycles
in two days.
It's amazing, there's so much automation,
but quite a lot of pressure as well.
So escalation is quite challenging.
And then also the perception of what CSM is.
It's quite difficult, internal and external.
That's the reality of it.
And then quick background, we brought
GainSight CS and PX in five years ago with Wigmore.
Actually, they did our implementation.
Anyone who's gone through an implementation,
it's like a 12-week window and then you're left alone.
Do your own devices.
So yeah, we brought it in five years ago.
And then three years ago, we brought in North Pass,
which GainSight acquired last year or year before now.
So that was good.
I felt quite exciting that we're going to get integrations
and bring it all into one roof.
And then we brought the communities on board
this year as well.
So we've got four products at Harry.
I'm saying I'm in CS, I'm not a salesperson,
so I'm not trying to push the incredible tech
that they've got.
But yeah, it's quite powerful when you go out
for all four together, we can't see.
I probably should have said who Wigmorer.
Hence, I'm following the script.
So Mark, maybe just before we move on to the next Harry slide.
Maybe just give a quick introduction to yourself.
Yes, sorry.
My name is Mark Deagan.
I'm the CEO of Wigmorer.
But if you ask what you see,
I was probably not necessarily the best job title for me.
Previous to actually, I suppose owning the company,
I was essentially the principal consultants for Wigmore.
And as part of that, I'd done maybe 120, 130 implementations,
numerous professional services gigs and a bit of advisory.
So I'm not going to lie, I'm a exceedingly technical person,
which means I sometimes speak a language
that a lot of business people don't understand.
Which probably brings me to the man sitting to the right
with me, which he was Peter Lyon, who came on board
Wigmorer as our chief customer officer about four months ago.
And I suppose Peter's job in a nutshell,
if I was going to be quite blunt about it,
I suppose some of the ways some of my hard edges
have to speak a language that I'm not particularly comfortable with.
So that'll work?
It is a lot of work, sorry Peter, but we've
been enjoying the engagements that we've had with games
like customers for the best part of six years now.
I think Ari would have been probably maybe my fifth or sixth
engagement at that stage.
But we've had the privilege of working with Gainside as a partner
and also Gainside customers for the best part of five years.
And I've enjoyed pretty much every second of it.
Still enjoying it.
Still enjoying it, yeah.
Excellent.
Exactly.
Something that doesn't seem to be getting old,
which is the first time I can ever say that of a job.
So let's move on to the challenge that you had done in terms of--
I think it's the challenge that most of us
are facing in the SaaS world at the moment is growth.
Particularly when we're all seeing a drop in new sales growth.
We're seeing obviously churn, but we're
seeing a lot more pressure coming down from the exec team
to keep on growing that business.
So if you're not getting new sales,
then the obvious place to look is your existing customer base.
And then how can you then drive, expand and cross-sell,
up-sell motion?
So maybe just take the audience through that challenge.
Yeah.
So two years ago, we went through a big funding round.
And maybe three years ago, we started the process
to go through big funding.
But with funding comes with no more expenditure.
Use what you've got.
Try and retain the team.
The everyone's been through that challenge, right?
But the funding process took along.
We had an incredible funding process,
but it took a long time to get there.
So beginning of last year, we did a huge efficiency project
within the CS org.
Working in hospitality, we had the same challenges back
in the day where many of the price increases go.
There was a labric expenditure.
It goes up, how can you drive efficiency?
So it felt quite natural to do this sort of exercise.
Lenny, who's middle on front here,
you'll give you a little wave.
But he works in my CS ops team.
And we started a project called Project Lander,
anyone who's an F1 fan in here.
We're big McLaren F1 fans.
So we decided to kick our project around driving efficiencies
and getting a bit more speed in what we're doing in CS.
So we kicked off Project Lander, which
was put upon in a second to really give CSM's time back
and then put metrics in place around how much time they spend
with customers versus internal rubbish
that we did one of those times.
Retention focus.
Being in hospitality as well has been quite challenging
because restaurants are closing down left, right and center.
Then they'll pop up the new territories.
Businesses are getting acquired, left, right and center
constantly.
So retention is quite challenging.
But we've managed to achieve 95% gross dollar attention,
which is pretty incredible.
And their net dollar is 112 currently.
It peaked at 122 last year.
We have two new products coming out.
So there's a big focus on the revenue side of customer
success over the next six months as well.
And another challenge as well with fundraising,
with the market, just retaining our own talent
was a huge challenge.
We lost like 80% of our staff in 12 months
and been a high touch model with everyone looking
after the same product that takes so long to get people
trained up.
And that included my CS admin person as well.
We hired someone.
They got promoted internally, which is great for them
into the product team.
And then we'd lost someone as well in our team in India.
So we were a bit stuck.
So how did we get the best out of our systems
when we don't have anyone managing the system as well?
So that was quite challenging.
We knew we had an incredible tech on board with us,
but we just couldn't use it.
And it was just sitting there.
And we'd come up for a renewal of a game site.
We're like, what are we going to do?
And how do we make this work?
We're doing pressures from the exec board on what we're doing
and how we're getting value up the system.
And the reality was we were focusing on getting
our new CSMs trained up and those sort of things.
And then scalability concerns.
We've been in huge growth for a couple of years,
and then it was stop recruiting.
You can no longer use bodies to fill the gaps that you had.
And it now stops here.
We've got the same CSM count now than what we did two years ago.
And we have about 50% more revenue.
So that's been a challenge.
But overall, we're going to the results later on, I guess,
where we are.
So just before we get into the next stage,
which was the deep dive into some of the internal reviews,
I think a lot of people would probably
want to know the answer to this question, which is--
because it might be in similar positions--
which is the business clearly recognize
what the challenge was.
But as the CS leader, how did you
go about convincing the exec team?
How did you bring them on that journey?
Because I think that's one of the things I think
about a lot of us are struggling with.
How do we convince the exec team that let's continue
to invest in cost per success?
Let's continue to review the post-sales life cycle.
How difficult was that or how easy was it?
It was quite difficult because we've
gone through change in our senior leadership team as well.
So we've brought our new people to head up implementation,
new people to head up support.
So our whole ops structure overall
was changing quite quickly.
And they come in with their new ideas and their technology.
But the best way that I managed to do this
is that I became part of the PMO at Harry.
So internal projects, driving efficiencies
across the business.
So I had a voice in that stakeholder.
So when people were talking about driving efficiencies,
I can get CS forefront of all of this
and showcase what we can do and then expand that
across the company.
So that helped.
It took a lot of time, though, for that kind of alignment.
And to get those projects as a key priority for the business
as well, because all the money gets spent on new sales,
sales deals, marketing teams.
And then we talk about efficiencies,
from a company perspective, wherever we get more money in,
then all those go away.
But on the flip side, it's retain our talent.
And the good thing as well is that we try and replicate
this retention message to our customers.
So retain your talent.
So hey, we need to retain our talent as well.
So what we do about it and replicate
the external message internal helped quite a bit on that front.
So the next step then was you then
went about a deep dive in looking at your internal structure,
internal processes and efficiencies.
Maybe just bring us through those four different steps.
Yeah.
So again, then you led on a lot of this.
But we-- spending no money.
You had to do this.
So before GONG had their transcripts go in live last year,
we were using a Briefly AI, which
is a free Google Chrome plugin.
Our privacy policy teams were having a great time
when we tried to launch that.
But we managed to get signed off, which is great.
But it meant that we started leveraging some transcript
technology and automating email follow-ups
about two and a half years ago, which is quite impressive.
And the reason why we did that is because Lenny
led on a time in motion study with the team.
And we tried to do this without some micromanaging,
because if you're asking your team to track everything
that they're doing and log everything through a sheet,
or there's a little clock we had in Google plugin
to say what they were doing, how to get that buy-in with them.
But we did this time in motion study
to be like, we want to give you more time back.
We need to understand where you're spending all of your time
today to make it--
So you spent a lot of time communicating very clearly
that this is what's in it for you?
Yeah, we started with just two people in the team, initially,
with the CSM, just to get that CSM buy-in,
and then expanded it out throughout the team.
So that worked quite well.
So that was the first start.
The second part was employee sentiment analysis.
At Harry, we do annual pulse surveys with the team,
which is never enough, right?
When people are leaving, if turnover in your company is 60%,
you do an annual surveys, like what are they giving you?
So we did a CS-specific employee satisfaction
survey around how they're feeling, around career progression,
internal meetings, client facing, how empowered are you.
It took me a bit of time to complete,
but everyone completed it because it felt like the value was
coming, especially alongside of the time in motion piece.
And then also CS metrics, evaluation.
We were all about client health and retaining our customers.
We knew we had to change the mindset to revenue growth.
So we put a new-- to reward the team,
the feedback was, hey, pay's not that great,
is one of the feedbacks on that front.
So we put together an incentive around rewarding our team
on revenue, which we'll go through in a second,
but ultimately just scrapping everything
that we did previously around bonuses and incentivize growth
across the business and portfolio as well.
And that directly impacts them.
It's quite nice seeing the commissions that come out.
So I'll go throughout in a second.
And technology stack assessment.
We spent a lot of money on tech.
And we had some incredible tech, but it was all siloed.
We were using Salesforce cases, moved to Zendesk,
whichever one was excited about.
But again, it was on its own and just fed some information
to Salesforce.
And that was it.
Using Slack, Google, we were using Zoom,
but part of the efficiency piece,
we killed it off and used Google Meets, which I hate.
But kind of getting used to it now.
Yeah.
I can't share screen and see my own faces really frustrating.
But we had some great tech behind the scenes.
And then for our own product, we had Snowflake
and other things as well.
So behind the scenes, we had this massive, incredible landscape.
But none of it was really connected for CSMs.
It was connected for certain workflows.
Yeah.
And that was it.
So yeah, the assessment resulted in spend less.
So it obviously dropped Zoom and other things as well.
OK.
Now, the next slide is not a sales pitch for Big More.
But--
Such a customer successing to say.
Not in sales, but--
Yes, indeed.
However, would you like to buy something?
So talk us through about--
it was not too much that it was Big More.
But it was what you recognized that you were missing inside your org.
Because I think that's important as well, that with layoffs,
with changes in structure, and so on, what we're seeing anyway,
particularly in the mid-range SaaS world,
is where there is a gap.
And so without-- if you can't fill that gap,
it can limit your ability to execute on strategy
and to leverage the most you have out of your tech stack.
So maybe just to talk through.
Yeah.
So as I mentioned, Tener was a challenge.
And we quite a small business in Headcount.
I don't know.
Maybe we look big to some of you.
But talk to the SAP guys with a little.
But overall, we were challenging.
We had one CS admin trying to retain that talent.
It was quite difficult, especially when they were remote as well.
I tried to say, of course, we had the team in Hyderabad managing it
and managing them remotely is quite challenging as well.
And the thing about our CS admin is that they only did what they knew
and only did what we asked them to do, I guess.
The skill level wasn't that great.
So to get the best out of it, we went back to Big More, ultimately.
And said, look, I know you guys are implementing this.
But what else do you kind of offer?
Like, what can you bring?
So we showcased our strategy and where we wanted to go.
And got them quite excited around, there's so much you can do.
And then when they started reading off half the stuff,
I couldn't understand.
I got quite excited.
So we kicked off the process of kind of a--
you can talk about what we did.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I was actually quite fortunate to a certain extent
because I was the individual actually implemented
hurry back in the day.
So I kind of had an understanding about the business
to begin with, which I suppose was a bit of a leg up.
But it wasn't that there was much that there was wrong in there.
There's one thing that I would say.
But it was definitely not a case where it was set up
for a growth mindset.
And with Harry's kind of reasonably aggressive,
I suppose, targets as well.
It wasn't necessarily that we wanted to go quick.
But we wanted to build a framework that was scalable.
And essentially, ultimately, I always think
what strategy is always planned for change.
So we implemented something called our universal data model,
which essentially is kind of a scalable data model
that we employ on top of game site.
But we looked firstly at, I suppose,
getting the integrations right was kind of the first key
things because we still had a couple of challenges there
in terms of getting data in and developing insights of it.
So we refined the PX integration.
We refined the Salesforce integration.
We got some insights out of GONG.
So we started running sentiment analysis against the GONG AI
Health Scores, compared with other AI tools.
We actually noticed there was a little bit of a differentiation
in terms of the sentiment analysis between AI providers.
But the important one was trying to get in place
kind of a reasonably robust health score framework, I think,
as part of day one, because realistically,
if you're bringing data in just for the sake of bringing data,
you're kind of asking the wrong questions.
We started working on a correlation analysis
between, I suppose, it was the sticky features,
as you call them, inside games, inside your products.
- Yeah, golden features, McDonald's, golden arches.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- But we started doing correlation analysis
between usage and retention rates.
And we noticed some very key patterns,
which also informed our health score framework.
I think your CSMs were tracking against a health score
framework quite robustly up to that point.
But what I really liked in terms of what Dan's vision was,
was that he was tracking outcomes from day one
against his customer base.
Measureable outcomes as well, which, you know,
in terms of a technologist was key,
because we did tell that there was a massive correlation
between a customer meeting their goals
and the reasons why you purchase your product
and their attention and the expansion rates.
So because we were able to surface this as well
in the platform, it did drive the CSMs
to start thinking this mindset as well.
So we were almost doing change management in the back door,
rather than actually focusing on it from day one.
It was something that I suppose natively grew
with the competence and the insight
that gamesite was providing you guys.
- But it wouldn't be, just in,
'cause the next slide is where we're gonna
get into some depth here in terms of weaving the red thread.
We have to mention that word 'cause it's in the title.
But weaving that red thread to all the different parts of
the gamesite architecture and also other parts
of your enterprise architecture.
We do have a nice slide that shows text acts and so on,
which I'm sure, Mark, we love to talk to that.
- Indeed.
- Through all that.
But in terms of maybe, would it be fair to say
that that was what was critical about engaging
with our whomever it is, right?
That you had a plan, and that was key.
That when you're working with a partner,
we're working with somebody that's outside of your org.
They're not inside, they don't have a sense,
don't have that tacit sort of understanding.
But it was critical for you to have that plan
and to say, this is what I wanna build.
But that'd be fair.
And is that a piece of advice?
This is such a leading question,
but is that a piece of advice that you would give people?
Make sure you have a plan because there are so many people
who don't necessarily have that detailed plan.
- Yeah, it is crucial.
And your plans change all the time.
Like, that's quite a challenge as well.
But when we got a good framework for decide outcomes
internally with our customers,
we'd try and apply the same then we'll work
and we'll be more as well.
Like, what does great look like in three months' time
for ourselves?
And like, we've visiting that has been quite important.
But ultimately, yeah, the plan is crucial.
I think we've always been quite aligned in our KPIs
internally and rolling all that internally as well.
So it has been a top down from the company perspective
around where we're achieving it.
And yeah.
- Okay.
So now we get into the project Lando.
- Is anyone like Formula One?
Or, well, that should we call it something else?
We've got one hand, great.
Oh, I've got some, fantastic.
So yeah, outcome driven success planning.
We mentioned it this morning,
but ultimately we did with the reconfiguration
with GainSight, CS and PX.
We started using like user level data
rather than company level data
because in our use case, it's great that a company
has published a schedule last week,
which we'd hope they do publish their rotor,
but which user has done that
and what persona has done that
and how frequently they've done it.
It's very important for us to get quite granular
on usage data in a business unit itself.
But what I'm able to do then is be able to track
desired outcomes down to our user level
as well as an admin level, which is quite important.
So part of that configuration
sport us in doing that as well.
And then by capturing that data in PX
around their desired outcome,
we can then track in sales force
and push out to HubSpot
and the other tools that we're using
for automation around communication.
So if Lenny on the front row here
is trying to reduce his labor cost as a user,
because that's what it's putting PX,
let's tailor the messaging and comms
that's going out to him around
how we can help him to do that.
So that was really important in the implementation.
But then also if we're seeing satisfaction
coming back in, how to then trigger a G2 review
to go to that user who's really happy
and getting their outcomes and their seat there.
CSAT score is a great, MPS is great.
And then getting an incredible G2 campaign on the back of that,
which is, that framework helps just do things a lot easier
and just a two minute conversation with Mark
and it enables us to then just act upon it.
- Yeah, I think the G2,
one of the most impressive one
in terms of the airy quick wins as well.
I mean, that was something that had
exceedingly high levels of visibility
inside the organization.
- Yeah, and it gets a lot of eyes.
So G2 was ran by marketing historically
and they'd never got a lot of traction
because they're just, "Hey Dan,
who's our advocates?"
And then, "Oh, he has our advocates,
don't send the email."
Then they're following up.
And then, so all we do is put automation in place
using data designer and--
- The journey orchestrator essentially talked about it.
- Yeah, so it's quite easy,
but we went from like a 2.7 to a 4.4 in like six months.
And we got like 72 new badges,
so it was a huge success for us.
And it's easy then to go,
the sales team, "Hey, we're looking for advocates."
And I'm like, "Just show the G2 page."
Like, that's the honest, brutal truth,
which our customers are saying
and it's no longer a customer for a customer.
It's like, "Wow, they look solid here."
So--
- And this process was pretty much fully automated as well.
- Yeah.
- So we actually didn't even need hands on this
from the marketing or even to see it.
- We did have a little bit of incentive,
marketing like here's a thousand pounds for vouchers.
- So we did incentivize.
It's like, "Hey, leave a review."
Not a good review, but leave a review,
get a funny mid voucher or whatever it was.
So I had lots of thank yous back from customers as well,
which is like--
- Really?
- Yeah, it's my cue.
Anyway.
- But as you were building this out, right,
it's the area that I don't have enough strength in,
but in terms of how you were then throttling
and leveraging the four aspects of the Gainsite platform.
What was your approach and what can you share here
in terms of how people should begin,
if I have these four different parts of Gainsite,
what's the best advice, what was the approach
that you took to sort of architect that, the leverage it?
- Personally, it was actually the other persona level.
So we knew that people were using multiple different channels
and interacting in different channels in different ways,
depending on their user profile
and I suppose the role inside the organization.
But we actually set health scores at a user level,
was kind of one of the key things.
So we could look at telemetry coming in from products,
coming in from an education engagement.
We're gonna start adding the community engagements
and the community sentiment health scores in as well.
But it meant that in terms of our targeting,
the targeting thing is key
because we don't wanna send garbage messages out to people
when they really don't want it.
We kind of knew the flavor of communications
based on the type of user was based on behavior,
which means we could treat everyone essentially
as a segment of one.
I think one of the first ones that we did
that actually had a major financial impact
was the new product launch.
We did that multi-channel, so we did a VE model.
We also did it and ended up message via PX.
But there was a consistency of messages
across the channels and the consistency of timing.
And because we were able to monetize it as well,
I think it was quite a nice little,
I wouldn't even say bonus,
but it had a financial value to it,
which also increased curiosity in the platform as well.
For a bit of context, we started talking about
team commissions, so we put a commission structure
in place that rewarded CSMs on net new growth.
So the team get 3% of the first year revenue
back in commission every quarter.
So that's just for generating leads.
But as a leader in the team,
I was like, how can I make them get more leads easier
to get more commission in if they're gonna get closing?
So what we did is really simple,
but in product engagement around a new
analytics tool that we bought in,
it's called Hari IQ.
And then the month later, we did one around Carrie,
which was a chat bot.
But basically, the IQ product,
anyone who's selling AI in the business,
you get a great return net new spend.
So we pushed that out.
And then Carrie our chat bot was about 20% extra
additional spend if someone committed to it.
So what we did was just simple in PX.
Hey, this is our new product feature.
Click here to find out more.
We would then trigger an email automatically from the CSM
to showcase a little demo built in within the email itself.
And then once that had done,
it automatically generate a lead in Salesforce
because they've acquired interest as well.
So that was pretty powerful.
And then, 'cause we had no CSQLs historically,
it was easy to say, hey, we had 100 times more CSQLs
this month than we did last month and that, those sort of things.
Quick question then, like over the last few years,
there's always been a high degree of narrative.
You can't get CSMs to be upsetting.
You can't get CSMs to be selling and all this.
When you introduce these new incentive programs
and you're asking your team to do something slightly different,
that didn't involve some form of commission.
Did you see any noticeable change
in how they were talking to customers or as I deal with them?
Did they certainly turn into hunters
and not really care about the value?
- No, the persona of CSM,
we got a very nurturing bunch.
And a lot of them really struggled
to have that conversation with people.
Gongs help in quite a lot as well.
So we use Gongs for core transcripts
and not sure how many people in the room are,
but basically we get a report that we generate every,
this is outside of the game site.
So thumbs up if you're not using the insight,
you've got something else here,
but we get a weekly report
and it's automatically tag in if CSMs
have had a discussion around commercials.
So maybe they haven't generated a lead,
but on a Friday I get a report to say,
"Hey, these are the desired outcomes discussed this week
that may not be in game site yet."
And then also these are the potential
upside conversations that have happened
because they've spoke about labor percentage challenges
or frustrations with their current product
to be listed all their competitors in Gong ready.
So the CSM may not notice
that there's a commercial conversation happening,
but we get this data in the back.
So in the back end to say, "Hey, AE,
there's an opportunity,
'cause they're frustrated with their current system."
And then pulling that into Salesforce
has been quite useful as well.
- We touched on change management just there.
I think we also touched on the tech stack.
The last point there,
I was keen just to try and tease out a bit
because I'm sure there's a lot of people here
who have got multiple products.
And we're certainly seeing this
where a lot of PE backed SaaS companies,
one of the playbooks for a PE company
is to grow and acquire more and more companies
and bolt all these products together,
which puts more pressure on the CS team,
not only in terms of enablement and learning
about the new product,
but about then building that into the workflows.
And then understanding that different products
might have slightly different nuances.
So it's slightly different playbook.
Maybe just mark our data,
don't mind which, talk us through how you begin
to sort of weave that thread again
into having different workflows for different products.
- I think we were actually blessed
by having a reasonably strong PX implementation from day one.
I mean, everything was essentially tags
pretty much perfectly.
So we could actually quantify user behavior
and how they transition between products as well.
And I think the additional complexity here
was the simple scale of everything as well.
I mean, we were tracking 1.2, 1.3 million users
at one stage, I think.
It's probably growing.
But because we knew essentially what the features
where the people should be using
to get value across the entire product cohort,
we could actually,
we could go back to the red thread, I suppose,
is that the red thread was,
- Well, there you go.
- Well, the red thread we could actually see, you know.
So we could actually see which users on which role
we're using, which part of the products
that were deriving value for the customers.
And actually the one thing that I really liked
what they were doing from a product perspective as well
is they were tracking the features
that they didn't provide that much value as well.
So say, for example, if we were sunsetting a feature
and putting in a new one,
we understood the users who are using the old feature
essentially and we could target them accordingly
and saying, have you seen the latest and greatest?
What it was essentially was it was not necessarily
pushing people in the right direction.
There was gentle guidance and more than anything else.
As the problem was shared and as we knew features
that derived a different value proposition were released.
We always had the ability to be able to say,
well, this is how you should be using it.
And we did it at a massive scale through automation.
- Yeah, the final piece that we're doing around the product
is the white space.
Internally, we've got terrible bundles.
I feel like it's not that bad.
It's not that bad.
End of last year, you know,
sales are trying to push as much as they can.
They put a new bundle together.
We've got a polite experience bundle,
which basically you get everything, which sounds great.
But when you go live and you didn't want everything,
it's quite difficult then to showcase value
and what they really wanted.
So yeah, that's been quite challenging.
But the biggest thing we do now is round white space
through Gainsite and saying what bundles they've got,
where we can upgrade for next year.
We're mapping that out currently.
We've got aggressive targets coming up
where we want an extra 20% in the NDR space.
So we're being quite confident
because we have the model set ready to go.
- And this is the one that fascinated me
because it's not just necessarily
just one customer you're dealing with.
I mean, with some of your larger organizations,
they've got 40,000 branches.
- Yeah, subware US.
- Exactly.
So it's actually being able to track
at a branch and a user level.
They purchase these features.
They're not using these ones
and either take corrective action
or if they are using an existing feature
and if they are receiving value,
it's being able to flag, well, you know,
these are the guys that we really should be targeting.
- I just want to chop through.
Could they go and get Q&A missed out otherwise?
- Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so we've got about 10, 10,
and I've know with you how many questions
there are.
(laughing)
So I think you touched on some of this.
So if I could be so bold as to maybe just read very quick,
but people can actually see it by now.
So clearly there was a shift before and after.
So there was cause and effect to the work
that was being done.
And I am certainly in my experience
is that you started achieving these results
and then the exact team want more.
Because well, if that's what you've done
with what we've given you,
which wasn't an awful lot,
imagine what you could achieve, right?
So maybe just to, when we think about the key lessons
and reflections done,
maybe just could just quickly walk through these.
- Yeah, start the in-app notifications and generally,
to leads is one of the biggest and easiest wins out there.
And like the framework obviously has to be there to do it,
but that's such an easy win to showcase
what we can do within our function.
And then you can scale up and make it as complex as you want.
But customers don't want complex journey
and complex click-throughs.
We tried different things.
In PX we did an initial pop-up
and then click here to find out more.
But the initial one we did was,
"Hey, here's a new product.
Click Next to find out more."
And we could see the funnel just dropping off massively.
And no one was actually watching the demo video
we were putting on screen four of this pop-up.
So like, it starts more,
tear it apart, rebuild what was successful
and go from there.
It was key.
When the key metrics and the last slide we missed out,
we only lost two CSMs last year in our team,
which is a huge beneficial for us to forward.
And obviously, you guys doing our CS admin,
you haven't left us yet, which is good.
You're a 10. - Yes.
- Yes.
(laughing)
- You have it too much fun.
- You have left me, but yeah, that's important as well.
- Data driven decision making,
it's easy for us to talk about that.
- Oh, yeah.
- It's more of internal conversations
because when my FD is doing budgets for next year,
it's like, well, for every EBR my CSMs have,
we generate 0.8 leads on the back of that
for an additional new product, which is incredible.
So when I'm talking to revenue leaders in our team,
they're like, what can I do to help to get more CSMs
in front of customers to get those leads?
Because I can't get that lead through marketing,
expenditure events that we spend money on.
Like, that's the best performing metric
that we have in the business.
So how can I help you get there as well?
So those conversations help because between ops
and revenue talking up, it becomes a lot
of an easier conversation as well.
Holistic approach, don't want to talk about this.
Just read the slide, I think.
- Yeah. (laughing)
- And then continuous improvement,
me and Mark, it doesn't seem like I said,
but we get along quite well.
- Yeah, as much as we have a strategy in place
and a playbook for ourselves and how do we make ourselves better
and how do we help, Big Mom come better as well,
have relationships helped on both sides.
And also, Big Mom have helped me.
I'm on stage today, I think that would have been possible
without working with professionals in this space as well.
So just, if you're a CS ops person in this room,
my advice is reach out to other people and networks.
I know games have got the community where you can chat
and things, but you only know what you know
and what I thought I knew is 5% of what professionals
in this space that have implemented to 100 customers
really know about, so that would be my.
- Okay.
We've got one more slide, but which was to talk about
what's next, but in contrast to that,
there are six minutes left.
So from what you've outlined to me
and what people can now read on that slide
is that there's still more challenges.
There's more challenges.
Like most SaaS orgs, it's just continual growth, growth, growth.
- Yeah, the biggest thing this year,
70% of our revenue in our company
has come from current customers.
So there's like, we want more money,
but there's no like, hey, we need to cut back anymore.
That's stable, so that's good.
We have more products coming out soon,
which is quite exciting for the CSM teams
to start talking about.
They're hounding me when things are going live,
which is normally like, we're not go live yet,
'cause I don't want them to deal with,
so that's quite exciting as well.
And the community, we had a product ideation platform
that was siloed to everything else.
As part of our tech stack review,
we decided to go with the gain site community
'cause we could pull that data into CS
to understand what customers have requested,
when they're up for renewal,
what should we prioritize in the next quarterly cycle?
So leveraging the gain site community
is gonna be quite important for us,
for efficiencies across the company as well.
But yeah, let's do the Q&A.
- Okay, at the risk of not knowing
if there's any questions at all,
somebody press the button to see
if there are any questions on Slider?
Oh, okay.
- Ooh.
Poor data from sales, I can take that one.
- Yeah, you're asking the question.
- No, no, it's one, one, three, you pick one.
- So poor data from sales, everyone has it, all right?
Full stop, end of discussion.
Sales be selling, you know,
customers are successfully delivering and getting value.
Don't necessarily work in the sales data alone.
You can also enrich it.
I mean, the product catalog issue that you're facing,
essentially we solved as we essentially
overrode the product catalog and gain site.
So we knew exactly which feature,
because we knew which feature they were using,
we actually linked that to the PX data.
So we get a linked PX usage and adoption
back to sales data as well,
but don't necessarily just wait for sales
because you'd be waiting all your life for them.
- Yeah, and there's two things on this.
So we put together framework on the opportunity level
in Salesforce to say, hey, what's the desired outcome?
We did the drop downs.
- Yes.
- You select those drop downs.
And also PX, like we tried to simplify
as much as possible for them and we still won't get in it.
So then I flipped it around to them reaching out to me,
saying, hey, we really need a referenceable client
for this use case.
I'd be like, tell me last time you gave me
desired outcome for a customer
and I'll give you the reference.
So it came back to reverse management.
But actually at the stage now we were mandating that
in Salesforce, which is another layer of frustration
for the sales team, but they get the benefit
of getting a case study within 90 days
of customer going to life now.
So two things.
- There's a question here about, can you share more
about your health score framework, what metrics
would you recommend to track?
Now, I suppose I understand the question.
It's a very broad question because every company's different,
but maybe speak a little bit about
what were the unique metrics that you identified?
How did you go about that?
- I think I can challenge this one as well.
If you want me to go.
So every organization will have a different health score.
By even organizations in the same vertical,
pretty much with identical products,
you'd be surprised the amount of variations.
Do not just work off a V1 health score
and think it's going to be suitable.
And don't spend too much time kind of worrying
about your health score weightings or your RAG statuses.
Gain site's got a remarkably useful feature
at the moment called scorecard optimizer.
You just need to feed it with enough information
around retention, adoption, and the rest of it.
And not that make the decision for you.
Because what you'd end up with is the perpetual guessing game
of what good, bad, and ugly looks like.
So we did a lot of regression analysis with your data
and we identified key data points.
But, and this is more conceptual than anything else.
If a customer has purchased your product for a reason,
if you're not tracking that reason,
throughout any stage of the customer journey,
you're wasting your time.
And it has to be based on the reasons
why a customer purchased your product.
And also the reasons why they're going to renew
once that first value is being achieved.
And that's what I really, really was impressed
with product land that was mapped out
on a product-by-product basis.
Yeah.
And also the scorecard needs to have some human element
in there as well.
Like we have a CSM risk rating.
And like, yeah.
So when I'm doing my one-to-ones with the team
or on portfolio management,
like we have conversations around how they're feeling
about the account because there's much data in there.
Like this I can tell you the full story.
So every month, every month we update those scores
for our enterprise accounts just to keep updated.
Because no matter how much data you've got,
you've got that personal connection of,
hey, this guy was--
So that's not right.
And trust your
[INAUDIBLE]
So maybe quickly talk through what was our process
of establishing them.
And then maybe to some extent, if it's time to weave in,
what have you taken from the digital strategy
and use that in your high touch?
Yeah.
The digital strategy for kind of upsell across--
we did across the board.
Apart from two brands which we knew from discussions
they didn't want to have apps in their system.
So we did email push through our main personas
from that front.
But we did that strategy across all customers, which
worked quite beneficial.
Then also we had so many CSQLs, our sales team,
couldn't keep up to demos over the next two weeks.
So then it's like, how can we do videos now instead of an A,
doing this demo?
So that was beneficial as well.
So that was positive.
KPR is-- we've got a digital touch across all segments.
So we don't just have a digital segment
at all in our business.
We do have an SMB team that's based out of Hyderabad.
But the KPR is very different from an engagement perspective.
We don't expect EBRs every six months with our SMB team.
We expect kind of email updates and things like that instead.
OK.
That's probably the last question.
But do you use gains of the track or your measurable outcomes
if so how I can direct that towards Mark?
Because you often talk about gainside being--
gainside CS being the brain and everything else
feeding into it.
Yeah, and actually, unfortunately, we
didn't have to go full credit to Harry and to Dan in particular
because he developed a goal framework inside gainside.
So this is actually something that came out that completely
slipped by me the first time around.
And then Dan showed me what he built.
And it was like, oh Christ, that's brilliant.
And then suddenly it was just a case of scaling it.
But this is the great thing about working, I suppose,
with a large customer set.
The teachings come both ways.
Dan knew his business inside and out to put it mildly.
You know, the reasons why people purchased the product,
it was up to us to scale it.
But goals inside gainside was something
that I wasn't familiar with until you showed something.
I know we've run out of time, but quickly, we
killed Success Plans in CS.
We found it too much of a high friction point
for CSMs to keep updated.
So we retired Success Plans, just moved to goals.
So every customer has a goal.
And then we discussed those.
Yeah.
And sometimes it's getting to the goal rather than
the path to it.
You give the CSMs enough agency and enough skill sets
to be able to do it and trust them.
But it worked brilliantly.
Yeah, that's it.
OK.
Well, at the time, I think we probably
could have gone out for that long or what we won't be allowed.
But thank you, Dan.
Thank you, Mark.
I know.
It's pretty dark in here, I know.
So go and get some light and stretch your legs.
Yes, indeed.
Thanks everyone.
Thanks so much.
Appreciate it guys.
[APPLAUSE]
