Customer Success Management Handbook
Mission Statement
Accelerate customer success by aligning passionate CSMs with customers to:
- Drive adoption aligned with business outcomes
- Enable customers in current and future GitLab use cases
- Expand ROI from GitLab
What is a Customer Success Manager (CSM) at GitLab?
CSMs are accountable for customer adoption, measurable outcomes, customer satisfaction, and creating true customer advocacy. We create successful customers by enabling, training, and nurturing them throughout their journey. The following areas incorporate the remit of a CSM:
- Customer Adoption - Ensure the customer is working towards or adopting their desired use cases to maturity. Ensure the successful onboarding of all intended users. Identify areas of adoption risk and establish mitigating plays and programs.
- Delivering Positive Business Outcomes - Ensure customers are meeting and exceeding their desired business outcomes so that customers can quantify and support their investment.
- Trusted Advisor - Establish “trusted advisor” relationships with the management and technical teams on the customer side while working seamlessly with our account team to deliver a best-in-class customer experience.
- Account Expansion - Lead adoption expansion beyond the customer’s desired use cases and further customer return on investment (ROI). Partner with Sales to identify expansion opportunities and ensure we realize the expansion potential of a customer account.
- Leading Business Reviews - Review and celebrate progress towards, or achievement of, the customer’s desired business outcomes. Address challenges with a plan for mitigation, align on upcoming and future customer business objectives.
High-Level Responsibilities of a CSM
Responsibility | Context | How We Measure | DCI Roles |
---|---|---|---|
Success Plans | Mutually agreed (Customer | GitLab) adoption plans that outline desired outcomes (e.g., improve cycle time), technical milestones required (e.g., migrate to GitLab, overcome constraints), timelines and DRIs.
These plans enable us to be proactive and ensure progress towards the customer's goals. As trusted advisors, we understand what drives value for our customers and help them achieve it. |
Every customer must have an active success plan | DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, SA, Customer Informed: Leadership |
Onboarding | There are several onboarding steps in both the new and existing customer onboarding playbooks. The CSM's role is to ensure all of these topics and enablements have been covered and documented. | All customers are to be taken through the appropriate playbook (New, Existing Customer) | DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, SA, Customer Informed: Leadership |
Cadence Calls | The cadence call is a proactive call. For this call to be proactive, the CSM's responsibility includes those listed in the linked cadence call page | Call frequency:
A CSM/CSE can expect to conduct a minimum number of calls as follows:
|
DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, Customer Informed: SA, Leadership |
Adoption & Expansion |
|
At any given time, a CSM will be actively driving expansion with half of their book (3-4 customers) | DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, Customer Informed: SA, Leadership |
Executive Business Reviews |
|
1 EBR per customer per year at a minimum | DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, Customer Informed: SA, Leadership |
Renewal |
|
Every customer regardless of segment or region | DRI: CSM, AE, Renewals team Consulted: Customer Informed: Leadership |
Managing Risk |
|
Risk is actively managed for all customers | DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, Leadership Informed: Renewals team |
Please reference this page for an overview of the CSM Rhythm of Business (daily to yearly) Please reference this page for an overview of the areas your CSM will engage with you in: CSM Points of Engagement
Customer Journey
Journey Stage | Activities |
---|---|
Pre-Sales & Alignment | |
Onboard | |
Enable | |
Expand | |
Optimize & Renew |
FY25 Vision & Strategy -3 Pillars
- Vision & Strategy Deck (Internal - GitLab Only)
- Success At Scale
- Use Case Adoption
- Success Plan Services
Big Rock (Annual Strategy) Archive
Handbook Directory
CSM Team Metrics Overview (VIDEO)
Changelog
CSM Learning & Development
- CSM Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
- Overview of available resources, training plans & career paths
- CSM Aspiring Leaders Program
CSM Activities
- CSM Onboarding
- CSM Rhythm of Business
- Using Gainsight
- CSM Responsibilities and Services
- CSM and Product Interaction
- CSM and Professional Services Interaction
- CSM and Support Interaction
- CSM and Partner Interaction
- Escalation Process
- CSM-to-CSM Account Handoff
- CSM Roleplay Scenarios
- CSM Retrospectives
- CSM PTO Guidelines
- CSM READMEs (Optional)
Driving Platform Adoption
Landing Zones
Customer Metrics
Platform Metrics
- Customer Use Case Adoption
- How To: DevSecOps Adoption Tracking in Gainsight
- Use Case Adoption Metrics
- The Customer Value Received with Service Ping
- Product Usage Data - Definitive Guide to Product Usage Data in Gainsight
- Metrics Based Product Usage Playbooks
Other Lifecycle Management Activities
- Transitioning a Customer from Pre-Sales to Post-Sales
- Account Engagement and Prioritization
- Account Onboarding
- Success Plans
- Cadence Calls
- Managing Executive Relationships
- Executive Business Reviews (EBRs)
- Customer Renewal Tracking
- Customer Health Assessment and Risk Triage
- Risk Types, Discovery & Mitigation
- Workshops and/or Lunch-and-Learns
Digital Customer Programs:
CSM Managers
- CSM Manager Processes and CSM Leadership Team
- CSM Manager QBR Template (GitLab Internal)
- CSM Promotion Template (GitLab Internal)
CSM Tools
The following articulates where collaboration and customer management is owned:
- Customer Collaboration Projects: Shared project between GitLab team members and customer. Used to prioritize/plan work with customer.
- Google Drive: Internal. Used to capture call notes and other customer related documents.
- Chorus: Internal. Used to record Zoom calls.
- Using Calendly with Chorus: Instructions on Calendly set up with Chorus.
- Gainsight: Internal. Used to track customer health score, logging customer activity (i.e. calls, emails, meetings)
- Issue Prioritization Dashboard: Internal. Used to track customer requested issues.
Education and Enablement
In Customer Success Management, it is important to be continuously learning more about our product and related industry topics. The education and enablement handbook page provides a dashboard of aggregated resources that we encourage you to use to get up to speed.
SFDC useful reports
Tracking opportunities for your assigned Strategic Account Executive (SAEs)
To ensure that opportunities are listed with the correct Order Type, this Salesforce report shows you all of the opportunities that have closed, or are soon to close, with your SAEs. Tracking Order Type is important since CSM team quota and compensation depend on this. Please reference the latest Sales Compensation Plan information to know what is counted.
Next steps for you:
- Customize this SFDC report where “Account Owner = your SAEs”; “CSM = You”
- Save report
- Subscribe to report when “Record Count Greater Than 0” and Frequency = Weekly (You’ll get a weekly email as a reminder to look at the report)
- If you find an opp that is tagged incorrectly, chatter (@Sales-Support) in the opportunity and let them know there is a mistake (example)
Related pages
- Dogfooding in Customer Success
- Customer Success & Market Segmentation
- Responsibility Matrix and Transitions
- Customer Success’ FAQ
- Using Salesforce within Customer Success
- Customer Success Vision
- GitLab Positioning
- Product Stages and the POCs for each
- How to Provide Feedback to Product
- Sales handbook
- Support handbook
- Workshops and Lunch-and-Learn slides
- Researching Customer Questions
Account Engagement
Account Handoff CSM-to-CSM Checklist
Aleesha Dawson's README
Cadence Calls
Christiaan Conover's README
CSM and Support Interaction
CSM Aspiring Leaders Program
CSM Development
CSM Executive Relationships
CSM FY23 Big Rocks
CSM Internship Program
CSM Manager Handbook
CSM November 2021 Engagement Survey
CSM OKRs
CSM Onboarding
CSM Paid Time Off
CSM Responsibilities and Services
CSM Retrospectives
CSM Rhythm of Business
CSM Segments
CSM Strategies for Mitigating Risk In Customer Accounts
Customer Health Assessment and Management
Customer Onboarding
Customer Renewal Tracking
Customer Success Escalations Process
DevSecOps Adoption Tracking in Gainsight
Digital Customer Programs
Engaging with Partners
Engaging with Professional Services
Executive Business Reviews (EBRs)
FY24 Big Rocks
Leadership Recurring Check-Ins
Oliver Falk's README
Researching Customer Questions
Roleplay Scenarios
Sander Brienen's README
Service Ping FAQ
Stage Adoption Metrics
Success Plans
Using Calendly as a CSM
Using Gainsight as a CSM
Using Issue Prioritization Dashboard as a CSM
Using the Customer Collaboration Project as a CSM
Workshops and Enablement Sessions
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