Customer Spotlight: Sarah Couch, CS Operations, Workday

We’re launching a new initiative called “Customer Spotlight” to feature Gainsight super users on our online Community. For our first spotlight, we’re featuring Sarah Couch from Workday. Thanks Sarah for your insights!



[i]What are you most passionate about in your role?



Just as our CSMs are passionate about our customers' success, I’m most passionate about ensuring the success of our CSMs. As Gainsight Administrator and a member of our Ops team, my passion lies in creating collaborative, effective, easy to use tools and programs which enable our CSMs to have meaningful, value-driven conversations with our customers.



[i]What advice would you give to leaders who have been tasked with driving CS at their organizations?



Leverage the relationships you have with leadership across your organization to create a cohesive service philosophy which puts your customers at its center. Define the roles and responsibilities of every member of every department in your organization in a way that can be clearly communicated to your customers and will enable them to grow and expand their relationship with you in the most streamlined way possible.



[i]What are some of the most important reports or data elements that your CS organization tracks?



Since our renewal cycle is a bit longer than most (typically 3 years, at minimum), we are laser focused on tracking the timing of defined touch points with our customers which we’ve created to align with various milestones in their lifecycle. We’ve automated these touch points via Calls to Action in Gainsight and we’ve created dashboards so our regions can track their progress, as well as forecasting their workloads. We report out information related to these touch points on a monthly basis to our regional leaders, in addition to also tracking and reporting elements of customer health. We track a whole lot more – but I’d say these metrics are most important as they help us identify opportunities to increase adoption as well as enabling us to track towards successful renewals.



[i]What key metrics should Customer Success be following?



Satisfaction, Adoption and Meaningful Interactions.



[i]Fun Question: Would you rather live for a week in the past or the future?



The future. Hopefully I’ve learned enough from the past that I could really have some fun and impact in the future. Plus I could see what my kids were up to ... and then come back and figure out if I need to change anything about my parenting habits now ;)



About Sarah

I’ve been in Services/Customer Success positions my entire career (which is too long for me to outline with dates). I learned a lot about the notion of keeping customers for life and what it means to build strong partnerships and set clear expectations with clients at a former employer, ProBusiness/ADP. Workday has an even stronger sense of partnership and collaboration with our customers and the four years I’ve spent here so far have been invaluable in terms of developing my Customer Success skills. I look forward to many more years of enriching not only my skills, but also the Customer Success role here at Workday.