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How resolved does a Risk need to be, before you close the CTA?

  • 25 April 2018
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  • Gainsight Employee: ACE
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A question for the whole Gainsight customer community, since we're working to get better with CSM adoption of Cockpit...



When your CSMs get a Risk CTA, do they [i]resolve the customer issue completely before you "allow" them to close the CTA?



Or, is it fair for them to close the CTA as soon as they've [i]acknowledged the concern and started working on it.



For example, it might take months and months to turn around an NPS Detractor, and it might be entirely impossible if that person won't take your call. I could see either closing the CTA to keep the CSM working with a Cockpit that cleanly prioritizes what's most likely to actually make a difference with their account base, or keeping the CTA open since, honestly, there is still a risk at that customer.



What works for you and your team?
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Best answer by darkknight 25 April 2018, 17:48

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Hey Seth!  



We utilize the flagged CTA feature at Gainsight to track these CTAs through to risk mitigation.  This includes a dashboard and governance process that allows managers to see when risks are identified, ensure risks are being worked on a weekly basis and allowing managers to escalate to senior leadership.



https://www.gainsight.com/customer-success-best-practices/our-escalation-process-executive-sponsor-p...



Let me know if you'd like to chat and/or see a demo of this?  Thanks!



Tim
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Your NPS example is a good one Seth. It's not always possible to resolve the risk completely. 



I've used "Closed Incomplete" status to indicate that a CTA was not able to be completed successfully and capture notes in the CTA outlining why.  Then surface Risk/Closed Incomplete on reports for review between Manager and CSM.



We use the flagged CTA feature as a mechanism for the CSM to indicate (any) CTAs they are struggling with or where guidance may be needed or  put a report on Manager dashboard that highlights flagged CTAs so they can discuss, advise and coach during 1 on 1 with CSM.
Userlevel 6
Great question, Seth.  I agree with Tim's suggestion -- if it's a nontrivial situation then most of the companies I've spoken to are leaving the risk open to full resolution.  It can provide a critical level of visibility to anyone looking at the C360 for that customer. 



One additional thought for consideration --  I also like the idea of having "closed - success" and "closed - risk" CTA status options (maybe even "closed - non responsive") so you quickly & easily know the outcome of the CTA. 



If you've got a non-responsive NPS detractor & you've run the playbook & they're not a decision maker & there's nothing else to be done, the "closed-non-responsive" status would help.  This approach prevents something that you can't influence from cluttering up your Cockpit for too long. 



Then you'd want to build separate reports, update a health score measure, or fire a different CTA when a customer has too many "closed-risk" or "closed-non responsive" CTAs which can be very insightful. 
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Yes Closed Risk... I misspoke (mistyped?) when I wrote Closed Incomplete (that is one of our task statuses). 



We use a "Closed Risk" status on CTAs as Elaine suggests here.  That is intended to be used if the CSM - after exhaustive efforts - has just been unable to correct the situation, rather than just leaving it open perpetually.
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Thanks a ton for the thoughts, folks! We still have to figure out exactly what we're going to do given the particulars of our team, but the more flavors we have to use as inspiration, the better.

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