As a CSM / CS Leader, I want access to the new Simple Journeys feature for my book of business so that I can more easily communicate with my entire book of Customers.
Requirements
- Access would need to be limited to only the Companies and Contacts to which a user is associated as their [(CSM) - (CS Leader) - (AM - Sales) - (PM - Product)]
- Tokenized email capabilities (JO Simple Programs, essentially)
- Reporting interface accessible at a user level
- Opens
- Click throughs
- Bounces
- Check box field at a Contact level that designates a contact as Do Not Contact using mass communications.
- GS Admin ability to enable or disable the feature in the instance, by segment, by user type.
- Potential use case of only CS Leaders having access to the tool in an organization.
- 2.0: Ability to schedule recurring templates as a user for my customers.
- Use case: Usage reporting based on customer’s needs and priorities; better usage report = better visibility and better usage over time.
Context
- Currently, Simple Journeys is only available for certain admin level roles within Gainsight.
- A CSM has to be an effective communicator. Currently, I have to manage all of my customer communication at a 1:1 level using Gmail/Outlook
- I can use GS templates but it is still incredibly manual and tedious and all done outside of Gainsight.
- The goal of this feature is to truly make Gainsight the software users live out of to empower their customers.
Use Cases
- CSM
- Send content and communication out to my customers en masse; allowing me to share product insights, best practice content, and other important information to established personas and contacts efficiently across my customer base.
- Greatly improve both CSM efficiency and efficacy as they increase their ability to communicate and connect with customers.
- Include reporting capability into the body of the templates and CSMs could easily create a custom usage dashboard for
- CS Leader
- Regional communications about key initiatives, product updates, important/urgent company level comms.
- Particularly useful if CS Directors play a largely customer facing role (attending EBRs and other meetings, managing escalated risks, etc.) as it can keep them as a more regular face in the relationship.
- Thought Leadership communication with any customers of a certain type chosen with filterable fields.
- Renewal Sales
- Send reports / tables that house usage or renewal information to my customers with a renewal within xx amount of days; more easily automate this process
- Filter existing customers and contacts to a particular Product, use case, persona type, willingness for advocacy, etc. to find a connection for a potential prospect.
- Product Manager
- Filter existing customers and contacts to a particular Product, use case, persona type, willingness for advocacy, etc. to reach out to as a potential beta tester of a feature, and do so en masse.
Problems Improved/Solved
- Improve CSM efficacy by allowing them to think of and execute on how to to better help their customers at scale.
- Encourage frontline team members to create effective content that can be templatized and used at scale.
- Gather campaign data to determine which templates are working most effectively, allowing continued iteration on journeys and workflows to improve the customer experience.
- Contact cleanliness and management will happen naturally as a result of teammates communication efforts. The proper gathering of personas and needed contacts at a customer will be prioritized because it will be in view regularly.
- Possible PX integration to insert a pop-up for my customers into the product as a CSM.
Similar Product Feature Request:
I would have concerns about this, starting with:
I definitely see your points@alizee and agree that there would need to be a lot of permissions and restrictions settings for Admins. Some teams would want to choose to not enable this feature for any of their ICs if they have a robust communication system already setup. Others might want to enable it for certain individuals (ie: only the High-touch CSMs would have this access.. or only the Scaled team). For some, getting access to their entire team with some enablement would be a gamechanger to how they can support and empower their customer’s success.
All that said, there is a TON of power and potential with allowing this for CSMs. As a high-touch CSM myself, it would empower the way I work. One use case is to allow me to create an email that I can send to my primary contact across all of my customers with the things that need to be top of mind and to share the key learnings I’ve had in working with my customers each month. It would save me a massive amount of time and allow me to lead out with thought leadership that my customers should be aware of. Right now, I either have to send manual emails across my book, wait for my cadence calls and hope I convey things well 10+ times, or I simply don’t get them the information I would like to. None are ideal..
Another powerful aspect of this is that it would allow CSMs to build out email templates that they can use and/or that can be shared across teams. I know there is a lot of hesitancy from CSMs that emails are being sent out that are written by their Ops team because, in many cases, Ops team members have never been a CSM… the language they use can feel stale and a lot of CSMs don’t want emails going out to their customers because they simply don’t trust that it will be high quality. This would help resolve that by involving CSMs naturally in the process of building templates. They will craft them as they are doing their work to meet the needs that are coming up regularly. Then, the success of open and click rates could be measured and the emails that are most successful could end up being incorporated and General Templates that ALL CSMs would have access to. There is a lot of potential to improve the quality of the content by all working together in this way. I know I rarely use the email templates that I have available in our Gainsight instance, especially since they are locked down for use only within a playbook… thats a tiny use case compared to the way email is actually used in my day-to-day. Gainsight currently doesn’t help me much at all in drafting and communicating quickly and effectively with customers. In my mind, that is a huge missed opportunity.
All that to say… I agree with you in that this feature would need to be very well vetted and not rolled out half-baked. The right permissions and restrictions would need to be in place along with access only to the customers in a CSMs actual book of business (not able to email anyone other than their customers and key personas). But its potential for impact is massive for many, if not most, teams if it was built well and implemented well.