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649 Posts

seth
Gainsight Employee: ACE
sethGainsight Employee: ACE
posted in Customer Success Inspiration

How Anyone Can Become a Gainsight Admin

Latest Update: Sept 13, 2022 //Gainsight Administrator is a creative, powerful role. It drives career development, it lives in the cutting-edge world of Customer Success Operations, and it’s both a new challenge to a systems administrator veteran and an entry-point for someone looking for a first ‘technical’ role.I know, because I’ve lived it and I’ve seen it. I became a Gainsight Admin in 2015, and earned my Level 3 Certification when it first became available. After transitioning from ‘Gainsight customer’ to ‘Gainsight employee,’ I ran Gainsight’s CS Ops team for 2 years, which included experienced Admins who have since grown into leadership, and first-time Admins who had never configured a piece of software before. In my newest role, I see the experiences of Admins with all levels of experience, plus their managers, on a daily basis. I hear about what they need and what has worked well for them.And I hear how out-of-reach the role can feel for newcomers. It’s intimidating, or confus

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A
23 days ago
seth
Gainsight Employee: ACE
sethGainsight Employee: ACE
posted in Customer Success Inspiration

CS Ops Compensation Benchmark Survey Results

 Compensation data has not existed specifically for Customer Success Operations. In January 2022, Gainsight and the customer-run Gainsight Global Admins community collaborated to gather the first set of benchmarks.Our anonymous survey received 296 responses. Gainsight customers likely represent a significant portion, but the survey was also publicized broadly. Responses were encouraged from all types of CS Ops professionals.See the ResultsPDF attached belowReactions? Questions? Post them below!

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jessica_keenan_palmer
1 year ago
spencer_engel
Golden Ruler
spencer_engelGolden Ruler
published in Product Experience Best Practices

CSM Pooled Model Documentation

Hi everyone! CSM pooled models (a.k.a. round robin CTA assignments) have been quite the hot topic lately with more and more customers looking for scalable ways to manage their long tail of customers.  I know @jean.nairon  and others have posted about this concept previously, and so I wanted to share a detailed solution, complete with thorough documentation and a video example from a dev org. Please note that this is meant to be a base foundation for a CSM pooled model, so you may well need to add more nuanced configuration to your own. I’m here to help with any questions or feedback!  First, let’s start with the prerequisites.   Queue CSM (string) - Purpose is to denote whether a CSM belongs in the pooled model. Manually update from Administration > User Management, and enter “Yes” if they are a Queue CSM. Otherwise leave blank.   Queue Next Up Number (number) - This is updated via rule(s) that you have in place for pooled CSM CTAs. In addition to the action of creating a CTA, there

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R
Shoshin
1 year ago
tara
taraRegistered User
posted in Customer Success Inspiration

Pooled CSM Model

We are looking at instrumenting a Pooled CSM Model where a team of CSMs can respond to customers without being assigned to their account specifically. We are familiar with how to do this using Salesforce and creating a ticket queue with email integration, but want to know if we can do something like this in Gainsight. Has anyone done this before and/or explored this option?

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thunziker
5 months ago
michael_phelan
michael_phelanRegistered User
asked in Customer Success Inspiration

Downloadable CSM Account-Specific Planning Template

Does anyone have a downloadable word template that a Customer Success Manager could use to plan for account level Customer Success on an annual or quarterly basis?

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dan_ahrens
ACE
6 years ago
bill_davis
bill_davisRegistered User
asked in Customer Success Inspiration

Success Plan Template Ideas

I am creating a couple of Success Plan Templates that my team can use to get a quick start. I created one Called First Win, which captures some key objectives that we identify when a new customer goes live.  This template shows Key Players, Risks, Reason they bought our product, and timelines to First win. I am looking for a few idea for other 'LifeCycle' Success Plan Templates and their associated objectives.

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darkknight
Grand Slammer
5 years ago
J
jhc2020Registered User
asked in Customer Success Inspiration

Success Plan Example

We have used Gainsight for a few months primarily focusing on Timeline and our CSM dashboard. We are now creating our approach for success planning. Prior to finalizing our template and having CSMs leverage this functionality, we want to have a success plan example to share with CSMs that demonstrates a focus on a customer’s time-based goals and measurable outcomes. Does anyone have a success plan example they are willing to share? Thanks!!

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roja_kode
Shoshin
2 years ago
C
ChristyRaeHRegistered User
asked in Customer Success Inspiration

CSM vs CSA?

For thise of you that have both Customer Success Managers (CSM) and Customer Success Architects (CSA) how do you describe the distinctions? What are the swimlanes of each? How do you describe the different value adds internally and to the customer?Any and all insight here would be greatly appreciated!*May be relevant to note that we also have Education and Professional Services team members.

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lane_h
Gainsight Employee: MVP
2 years ago
seth
Gainsight Employee: ACE
sethGainsight Employee: ACE
posted in Customer Success Inspiration

Recording: Proactive Pooled CSMs (CS Ops Meetup Presentation)

In our monthly meetup group about the CS Ops of Digital-Led Customer Success, we spoke in February 2022 about pooled CSMs being proactive instead of only being able to react to incoming customer questions. Brian LaFaille of Google kicked us off with a presentation and Q&A session.🎞️️ Here’s the recording! And here is the slide deck. Brian mentioned additional slides about how to actually execute the transition to a pooled CS model, which you can see here.Plus, participants shared some of their takeaways from their breakout room conversations:Working with customer data, and having reliable data, getting it right is often difficult We discussed leveraging a ticketing system (similar to support) to help with client experience in a pooled CSM model. Where some have the intention of getting off the phone and solving issues as quickly as possible, others are using the time on the phone for land and expand opportunities. A question to guide your efforts: is this scalable? Internal alignm

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seth
Gainsight Employee: ACE
8 months ago
Carapeterson
Shoshin
CarapetersonShoshin
published in All About Pulse

In Person Networking at Pulse!

Can you believe we are just over a week away from Pulse? Not sure about you, but I’m FIRED UP for thousands of professionals in Customer Success, Product, and Community from across the world to learn, celebrate, share, and have fun in our own unique way.It’s been a popular request to meet other customers just like you and we wanted to create a space for you to set up some in person networking opportunities!  Comment on this post with your interest area (Example; Digital lead CS, Community management. etc.) to meet folks who are trying to solve a problem just like you! If you have any questions, please reach out! CaraCustomer Advocacy Manager @ Gainsight  P.s. Comment on post to continue to meet in person after Pulse. Let's form local user groups from your area if there are enough people interested.

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anirbandutta
7 months ago
tom_wix
tom_wixRegistered User
published in Customer Success Inspiration

What Makes A Good CTA ?

A new system Gainsight, wonderful.   A new way to work proactively, instead of reactively.  What are these Call To Actions (CTAs)?   Within the tool, there is an easy way to create an action (task) based on some activity that has occurred or some situation that exists or perhaps there is just some periodic task that should be scheduled. The next bit of information is going to assume the reader is aware of the CTA feature, in general.So what makes a “good CTA?”  Without using the canned answer of “it depends”, let me share a couple suggestions around a few specific pieces of a CTA;  title, status, priority, type, etc. First of all, don’t just create a CTA because you can.   CTAs are easy to create, but one should make sure the CTA has an action that can be taken – hence the name “call to action”. Make sure you are creating a CTA, that has a task or set of tasks that should be completed by the assignee. Creating a CTA, just for awareness, can be valuable, but may end up being clutter in

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I
Shoshin
9 months ago
john_apple
Golden Ruler
john_appleGolden Ruler
asked in Customer Success Inspiration

Cleaning Up Email Bounce list and Email Validator

As we continue to use Gainsight for Outreaches/Programs and Cockpit/Email Assist, we are running into a frequent situation where a participant has been added to the bounce list and then cannot be sent further emails through Gainsight - Journey Orchestrator or Email Assist. However, using the Email Validator under Administration > Email Configuration, we can typically find the email domain as blocking, reporting our sends as spam, or other errors that aren't indicative of an email address that no longer exists. As an Admin, I have permissions to view results of the Email Validator and remove emails from the bounce list one at a time. Our CSMs do not have this permission so they encounter a roadblock when trying to send an email in Email Assist or determine why a contact did not receive an email from one of our Programs (typically an operational notification). I can/have created a report of Hard Bounces and the message that was received (similar to email validator) but I can&#

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kelly
All Star
2 years ago
nicole_alrubaiy
nicole_alrubaiyRegistered User
asked in Customer Success Inspiration

Pre-Renewal Survey

Does anyone use a customer survey before a renewal to understand propensity to renew or to get a pulse on customer sentiment? If so, what are you asking and when? We've heard of some doing the NPS survey at some # of months before renewal, but what other questions help you gauge risk?

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cnichols
Team Captain
2 years ago
ed_bazel
ed_bazelRegistered User
asked in Customer Success Inspiration

Elevator Pitch for Customer Success To Interal Team?

Checking to see if any of our Customer Success professionals here have an elevator speech about Customer Success that you deliver to your internal IT team?   We have developed one, but our internal team - still seem a bit confused and reluctant about what we do.   Churn hasn't been an issue, but they wonder if we are stepping on their territory.  Has anyone experienced this and do you have a winning elevator speech that we can explain to IT - so they can explain to the people they face on our Customers team?

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darkknight
Grand Slammer
7 years ago
hpinaud
hpinaudRegistered User
posted in Customer Success Inspiration

Beta Program Opportunity: help build the ultimate solution exchange for Gainsight users!

Calling all admins! We’re looking for Gainsight game changers with big ideas to contribute to the newly announced Sightline Vault.   Sightline Vault is all about harnessing the power of our admin community to make your best practices available to all -- in just a click. Think: NPS JO templates, your favorite playbooks, healthscore configurations, and other Gainsight best practices you can’t live without and want to share with the world.    What’s in it for you:  Your name in lights! (...almost!) You’ll be credited on any of the solutions you suggest that we publish and we'd love to further showcase you as an admin! Your favorite template or configuration, built to help thousands of future admins The opportunity to influence an amazing program for customer success technologists   What we need from you: Share suggestions - favorite templates, configurations, dashboards - let us know what you think other admins would benefit from if they could just click “go!” Permission to showc

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gunjanm
ACE
2 years ago
seth
Gainsight Employee: ACE
sethGainsight Employee: ACE
published in All About Pulse

TRACK: TURNING CS OPS INTO A STRATEGIC ADVANTAGEBlog

Please use this blog post as a place to discuss your thoughts on the sessions and topics covered in the track 'Turning CS Ops into a Strategic Advantage'. What did you find the most inspiring?DescriptionHear from CS Operations experts as they share best practices on a range of topics including building a CS Operations function, developing your post-sales operations strategy and roadmap, maturing and scaling your CS strategy to drive efficient growth.

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kendra_mcclanahan
Gainsight Employee: Team Captain
7 months ago
lane_h
Gainsight Employee: MVP
lane_hGainsight Employee: MVP
published in Customer Success Inspiration

Building a Tech Touch/Digital Led Segment

Over the last year, the most common topic I’ve heard from other CS Leaders is how to build a Tech Touch or Low Touch CS team/motions.  Through all my conversations, there two most common approaches:Pooled Model Designated Program ManagersIn the Pooled Model, there are a few CSMs who managed a “queue” of customer inquiries as well as manage proactive events such as webinars and round tables. With a Program Manager model, someone manages the programs for a different stages in a customers life. For example, one program manager might specialize in Onboarding, another Adoption, and another in Renewal management.  I would not argue that these two are mutual exclusive. In fact I would argue combining these two models begins to bridge the gap for a high touch model to a low/no touch as it allows customers to still have “someone” to reach out to through the pool. One thing to also consider is the shift in getting information to customers. Moving to a tech touch or digital led model puts the own

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N
1 year ago
seth
Gainsight Employee: ACE
sethGainsight Employee: ACE
posted in Customer Success Inspiration

Org Structure for Digital-Led/Tech-Touch

What’s the org structure for your teammates who work on digital-led customer success?Here’s how it’s broken down at Gainsight:1 Director of Digital-Led Programs 1 teammate who develops always-on programs for key customer moments 1 teammate who develops customer communications (emails, virtual events, etc.) 2 teammates who develop in-app messaging 2 CSMs who used a pooled model to assist customers who don’t have a named CSM 1 teammate who manages our customer advocates and orchestrates ‘match’ requests from Sales and CS 1 teammate who provides logistical support for all of the above You could also consider community to be part of the digital/scaled support we offer to customers, and various pieces of community are owned by different teamsWhat does your digital-led team structure look like??(Credit to Emily McGrath, Director of CX @ Drift for bringing up this topic!)

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tyler_mcnally
Gainsight Employee: Veteran Rookie
4 months ago
anirbandutta
anirbanduttaGainsight Community Manager
published in All About Pulse

Pulse is a Community, and here is the landing pageBlog

Hello and welcome to the online community for Pulse⚜️ All About Pulse ⚜️ 🎫 Everybody’s got a seat here, Subscribe to this Pulse sub-community and let’s get started! How Pulse startedThe very roots of the industry’s biggest Customer Success conference has always been this idea of nurturing and bringing up a global CS Community.In @nick_mehta’s own wordsPulse grew up not as a “user conference” or a “product event” but as some mix of reunion / revival / therapy session for all of the people in customer success who could, once a year, finally have someone to sit with at lunch.  So here we are to:Meet who else is attending PULSE this year with us? What have they been talking about on the Gamechangers community? Maybe we could try to make sense of Track discussions together? Maybe we could sync right here to grab some lunch in the session-breaks?This is the place for all of that to happen. 

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revathimenon
7 months ago
revathimenon
revathimenonGainsight Community Manager
published in All About Pulse

Pulse 2022 Social Rockstars

#Pulse2022 Get creative on social✅ You Need to be Registered on this Community to participate So who’s the most social of us all? Share your #Pulse2022 moments on your social channels & the user with the highest social activity wins! Some clues to getting ahead in the game like @Revant_Amingad on LinkedIn & @Alex Farmer on Twitter 🔥: Share your thoughts, insights & takeaways! Take us on your Pulse peak moments!   Rules for participation:You must be a registered user on this community Share a quick Quote from the sessions, post a selfie or a screenshot of a slide that rings a bell on any of your fav social platform and don’t forget to tag it with #Pulse2022 Bonus for those who participate in any of the All About Pulse conversations and then share 🙌🏼💥 We will be featuring our #Pulse2022 Social Rockstars after Pulse 💥 🔇In-person or virtual, you can continue to be a part of Pulse conversations everywhere!

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anirbandutta
6 months ago
seth
Gainsight Employee: ACE
sethGainsight Employee: ACE
posted in Customer Success Inspiration

How to Measure CS Ops

These are the core tenets that I’ve picked up about how to measure the effectiveness of a CS Ops team. How do you measure your CS Ops team’s success?Team ThroughputIt starts with tracking simple CS Ops activity. You can use some metric like features deployed. Since a large portion of our CS Ops team uses sprints, we can show "points delivered". @kendra_mcclanahan (Gainsight’s Director of CS Ops) has even built mechanisms in Monday.com so that those points are compared against expected vs. actual, and are reported broken down by high-level strategic initiatives and major areas of run-the-business responsibilities.Leading Indicators of ImpactYou’ll then want to start to collect signs that your CS Ops team is actually starting to make a difference. For example, @jennifer_bruno (Gainsight’s leader of CS Enablement & Transformation) runs a survey of our CSMs about how enabled they feel, how useful our health scores are, and so on. She coordinates with the rest of CS Ops about what areas

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emily.wright
Gainsight Employee: Shoshin
12 days ago
jean.nairon
All Star
jean.naironAll Star
published in Customer Success Inspiration

Productivity Hacks with Chrome Extensions for Gainsight Administrators

It’s been said many times before that Chrome is the best browser to use now days for its security, ease of use, and speed. But the real reason I love Gainsight on Chrome is because of the extensions!The most interesting admin in the world!Chrome extensions are small apps that are built to sit on top of Chrome and extend its functionality. They typically serve a small single purpose like ad blocking, password protection, or to easily schedule a Zoom meeting within Google Calendar. They are distributed through the Chrome Web Store and all go through a full review process by Google.Why I love extensions is because you can customize Chrome to better suit your needs in administering Gainsight. And best of all, you never have to leave Chrome and open another app. Here’s my favorite Chrome extensions that I hope will make your life as a Gainsight admin easier as well.  Salesforce Colored FaviconsIf you work in Gainsight on SFDC and/or work in multiple Salesforce environments because you also

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kyle_handley
Shoshin
2 years ago
seth
Gainsight Employee: ACE
sethGainsight Employee: ACE
posted in All About Pulse

CS Ops & Gainsight Admins at Pulse: Know-Before-You-Go!

If you’re in CS Ops or are a Gainsight Admin, here’s how to get the most out of Pulse!MEET VIRTUALLY, TO RAMP UP TO MEETING LIVEThe “All About Pulse” area is live for the ramp-up to Pulse. Speakers got things started by posting about their sessions, including in the CS Ops track. During Pulse, we’ll be directing attendees here to post their questions, reactions, and  ‘aha moments’. So, to get ready, create an account, put a pic and info in your profile, and post a comment about the one thing you most want to learn about this year. (This is the one area of Pulse that is open to people who have not purchased tickets.)TUESDAYPulse Academy Live (registration required) Gainsight 101: Gainsight Admin Foundations Gainsight Admin 200 Series Gainsight Admin Happy Hour 🍻 We’re thrilled to get admins together with the only other people in the world who can appreciate an elegant Bionic Query! Gainsight is providing drinks and appetizers. 5:30-8:30pm No registration required Black Hammer Brew

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seth
Gainsight Employee: ACE
4 months ago
J
Shoshin
JyothsnaShoshin
posted in Customer Success Inspiration

How to calculate anniversary dates(half-yearly)

Hello, in this post I am explaining how to calculate the anniversary dates based on existing date field in an object using Rules Engine.Here is the link to the document  Below are the few use cases where this might be helpful. To follow-up on account’s renewal. To send NPS surveys every 6 months to customers. To create CTA for EBR set-up every 6 months To send customers a survey after 6 months of onboarding to know customer feedback.  

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J
Veteran Rookie
4 months ago
seth
Gainsight Employee: ACE
sethGainsight Employee: ACE
posted in Customer Success Inspiration

Recording: Blending Digital and Human Touchpoints in the Customer Journey

In our monthly meetup group about the CS Ops of Digital-Led Customer Success, we spoke in March 2022 about how to blend digital and human touchpoints in the customer journey. Here’s what we learned!🎞️️️️ Recording of key takeaways from each breakout room 📝 Note-taking slides from the breakout roomsLearn about these meetups in the future by signing up for the monthly CS Ops Newsletter.

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seth
Gainsight Employee: ACE
11 months ago

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