Steering Committee Has Proven Beneficial

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An idea and suggestion for others:   Gainsight Steering Committee





As soon as we went live with the tool, we established a Committee.   The general goal for the team was to review and discuss feedback, suggestions, change requests, and forward thinking improvements.  





We wanted to make sure we :  (listing a few reasons for the Committee)


- discussed and reviewed any changes


- had a home for the CSMs to vent, complain, and suggest


- had a group looking at unused features to see what might be good to utilize


- devised a way to track and manage changes and updates to our implementation


- documented and communicated updates to the implementation


- didnt just make a change for every email or verbal request, unless it was going to be a solid change for the entire team.


- provided a voice for the CSMs


- provided a place for a few CSMs to become a GS champion





The Committee meets twice a month.   The Committee has a few champion CSMs, the GS Admin, and the CSM Director.   A chat room is "open" for the committee to use in between meetings.   Action items are taken during the meeting and any GS updates or related process changes are communicated via email and/or the WW CSM team meeting.





Im glad to provide more details, but our GS Steerting Committee has provided us a good way to take a "simple and smart" approach to using GS and making the tool work the best for the CSM team.
That's so awesome, Tom! Thanks for sharing, and keep the feedback and suggestions coming!
Tom, thanks so much for sharing! We have a group that we created for the same purpose, but we hadn't necessarily laid out the charter as detailed as you did above, so it was great to see this and be able to re-establish the purpose of our group using some of your ideas above.





One additional item that we covered is to discuss upcoming releases, and we also make a point to spend some time with the group as well as the teams to close the feedback loop. So, if they provided a suggestion and either we (as the Admins) or GS implemented it, we reinforce that their feedback was heard and acted on to help encourage them to share more.
We call our steering committee "Gainsight Council."  Council meets twice a month for an hour.  We made lots of changes to Gainsight config/process last summer and found it necessary to meet every week for a while.  Attendees include Gainsight admin, regional heads of CS, and leaders representing each team/tier (ie: Commercial, SMB, Enterprise, etc).  





The meeting provides an opportunity to cover the following and gives each region/segment of the business a seat at the table when decisions are made:


 - give updates


 - discuss and review config/process changes or new features


 - check progress toward our organization's goals (tracked in Gainsight)





We've recently set up a monthly "Gainsight User's Council" that is made up of CSMs from each team.  This is mainly a place for CSMs to ask/suggest/complain.  It also helps me, as an admin, understand what is/isn't working in the field.  We've only met a few times, but so far feedback has been that this time is really helpful.