Customer Goals - Road Blocks to Switching from Success Plans

  • 10 February 2023
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andreammelde
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Want to start a thread on the road blocks of standing up customer goals in scalable way. Many of these were discussed in Beta but not updated in the GA release. Would like to know if anyone else is experiencing difficulties while trying to put together a POC for their leadership team

 

  • Limited to using APIs for updates and creations via rules engine. IE this means you need to have an admin that is comfortable enough with APIs to help your team maintain the Customer Goals. Would be better to have a rule action
  • Unable to limit display field editability
  • Cannot associate to a relationship from the C360 (like you can with other functions like Success Plans). Makes CSMs have multiple paths to create the same thing
  • Unable to require fields at “close” (see point below about “closed” identification”. Additionally, you can only require fields at the data management level which means if you add a field after records are created you cannot require that field. So flexibility to alter your layout is limited
  • Unable to distinguish a true “closed” status. OOTB contains “acheived”, but would be better to have status reporting categories (which is aligned with the design of the rest of the system anyways - CTAs, Success Plans)
  • Some fields you cannot remove from the layout IE objective. Objective is visible for AEs to attach during the sales process, however that will only work if you send prospects to GS. This is not a usable association for us and I would like to remove it
  • No timeline or comments
  • Unable to display fields from a lookup (only usable in reports, not in the actual customer goal)

Can we have beta posts opened to the rest of community? @bradley 

 

Andrea Carroll

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bradley
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Love this! I’ve had similar conversations about this with product, and @minh_phan happy to have that call on Goals blockers whenever you’re free 🙂 Maybe we can include @andreammelde in it? @anirbandutta 

darkknight
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Pretty much why I don’t adopt GA features ever.  They are rarely usable right out of the gate.  

I’ve said it before and I will say it again - GS really needs people on staff who have worked in CS Ops and used platforms like GS in the real world to advise on design. 

Jeff Kirkpatrick
anirbandutta
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Thanks for the round up.

@sshroff and I are bringing this up internally. cc @jake_ellis 

It's an opportunity for engagement
heather_hansen
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I have a few additions that we are experiencing as well:

  • Inability to associate Customer Goals with Objectives.
    • Use case: We are a multi-product org, and each product family has its own set of Desired Customer Outcomes that ideally, we’d like to make Customer Goals.  We definitely like being able to associate them with a Success Plan, but don’t want our teams to have to create multiple Success Plans to be able to indicate the objectives under that Success Plan are for a specific DCO.  So for example, a customer might have DCOs: 1. Consolidate MarTech stack and 2. Decrease the risk of data breaches.  Ideally, we’d associate both of those with the Success Plan, and then, have a specific objectives that we would tie to either Customer Goal 1 or 2.
  • Lack of respect for multi-select picklist dependencies.
    • Use Case: For each Customer Goal, we’d like to be able to specify the products that it relates to (could be multiple), and then, have a filtered multi-select dropdown for the benefits expected from it based on the product(s) chosen in the first dropdown
andreammelde
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Pretty much why I don’t adopt GA features ever.  They are rarely usable right out of the gate.  

I’ve said it before and I will say it again - GS really needs people on staff who have worked in CS Ops and used platforms like GS in the real world to advise on design. 

Agreed, which is why the GA release in the fall we didn’t adopt but I had hoped there would be more progress in the Feb release other than just APIs

Andrea Carroll
sarahmiracle
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Great post. Some of the feedback you’ve provided are in direct relation to Gainsight’s attempt at simplifying and improving the admin experience. ie, if you’re going to build a new feature, you need to ensure it’s supported by your existing functionality (rule actions instead of API). Gainsight team, here’s a well laid-out way of setting up Customer Goals to make admins happier!

Customer Success Systems Admin @ Amplitude, 2x Gainsight CS Ops Product Council Member
andreammelde
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Great post. Some of the feedback you’ve provided are in direct relation to Gainsight’s attempt at simplifying and improving the admin experience. ie, if you’re going to build a new feature, you need to ensure it’s supported by your existing functionality (rule actions instead of API). Gainsight team, here’s a well laid-out way of setting up Customer Goals to make admins happier!

I appreciate it being simpler than Success Plan/ Objectives! less layers and CSMs can more quickly identify what their customer goals are when purchasing our products. However, it became so simple, it made it difficult to scale and report on. Reports are especially important with customer goals bc this info is something top level management wants to keep track we are supporting our customers needs

Andrea Carroll
bradley
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If only there was a way to put it in front of users for feedback before it goes live 🤔 :D

andreammelde
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Adoption wise for CSMs, it would also be helpful to have “Customer Goals” in the global nav like Success Plans. GS has historically used Success Plans and Objectives to track goals, so to help CSM mentally shift where they click, having it directly on the navigation would help with rewiring than having to go to C360. Additionally, CSM could then see their whole book of business in one spot.

Andrea Carroll
andreammelde
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Would like to add permissions as to who can delete as well.

 

Rather than delete something, we want to enforce tracking if the items was not done/ changed part way through and only delete if it was truly created in error. In order to do so, we would want CSMs to request to delete. This will help us maintain historical context

Andrea Carroll
andreammelde
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Would also be great to have a widget in the C360. Right now we can display widgets for Success Plans and CTAs.

 

Andrea Carroll
heather_hansen
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Would also be great to have a widget in the C360. Right now we can display widgets for Success Plans and CTAs.

 

Just mentioned this to my CSM yesterday.  Would love to be able to display them in the Summary section as a quick reference instead of them living in a different tab.

andreammelde
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Found an issue trying to use dependent dropdowns:

 

Andrea Carroll
andreammelde
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Found an issue trying to use dependent dropdowns:

 

According to support, this is INTENTIONAL. Mind blowing that dependent drop downs work everywhere else in data management but not a brand new feature. Seems more like a miss in development to me

 

Andrea Carroll
heather_hansen
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Also, just posted this:

Seems like a miss.

heather_hansen
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Found an issue trying to use dependent dropdowns:

 

According to support, this is INTENTIONAL. Mind blowing that dependent drop downs work everywhere else in data management but not a brand new feature. Seems more like a miss in development to me

 

I have a Support ticket open about this as well.

andreammelde
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Disappointed that it seems the only thing coming in the new release for Customer Goals is dependent drop downs will be added.

 

 

Andrea Carroll
andreammelde
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Breaking out some items for their own upvotes, especially seemingly low hanging fruit, geared towards adoption:

 

Andrea Carroll
heather_hansen
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@bradybluhm

gunjanm
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Just dropping in here to say this collection of ideas and feedback is amazing, AND I have already seen significant changes from the GS product team related to a lot of the ideas shared here, e.g. Rules Engine action type for Customer Goals. 

Gunjan
bradley
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Just dropping in here to say this collection of ideas and feedback is amazing, AND I have already seen significant changes from the GS product team related to a lot of the ideas shared here, e.g. Rules Engine action type for Customer Goals. 

You may not be surprised to learn much of this feedback was given in the beta :)

Waiting for the holy grail of the ability to associate to objectives (and via rule!).

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