Using Gainsight as a CSM

The key aspects of how Customer Success Managers use Gainsight to drive success for customers.

For an overview of Gainsight, and information about how to login, please refer to the Gainsight Overview Page.

Gainsight for Customer Success Managers

CSMs use Gainsight for a multitude of purposes, including logging their customer calls, updating their call-to-actions (CTAs), updating success plans, and gaining insights on their customer’s product usage data.

One of our CSMs created an 8 minute video (internal-only) of her workflow and how she integrates Gainsight into her day to day tasks to reduce the lift and ensure her accounts stay up to date.

The table below represents the steps a CSM would typically take in Gainsight. Please reference each handbook page for further information.

Overview

C360

Timeline

Calls to Action

Renewals

Success Plans

Health Score

Adoption Score

Product Usage Data

Dashboard Metrics

Time to Value Metrics

Digital Customer Success Programs

Technical Documentation

Gainsight University

Gainsight End Users eLearning path - Gainsight University

Video enablement

The videos listed here are internal to GitLab only. You will need to be logged in to the “GitLab Unfiltered” YouTube channel to access them.

Gainsight Overview and Demo
Gainsight Foundations
Gainsight Enablement 1: health score, call logging, and creating a success plan
Gainsight CTAs
Gainsight CSM Dashboard and Customer 360
Gainsight Assist Gmail Plugin
Gainsight Account Triage
Executive Business Reviews with Gainsight
Sally Slackbot
How a Gainsight CSM Uses Gainsight
Using Gainsight in Account Team Meetings
License Usage in Gainsight
Product Usage Data - Overview
At Risk Customer Video

Sally the Slack bot

Sally is an AI powered Slack bot that allows you to log customer calls, update customer data, provide information on health scoring, current risks, and opportunities.

While only Gainsight users can make inquiries with Sally, if she is in a channel and requested for information, her response will be visible to everyone in the channel. As a result, unless you want everyone in the channel to see the information, it’s recommended to chat with Sally in a direct message.

To get started with Sally, send her a message that says “help” and she’ll let you know what she can do. For more information, see Gainsight’s suggested queries and other Sally user guides.

When updating account information, be sure that you select the correct account. Some larger organizations can have multiple entries in Salesforce. Requested updates should be available immediately in Gainsight.

Emails

Gainsight offers a semi-automated email feature called Email Assist, which is accessible to CSMs using Calls to action in the Cockpit. We recommend using Email Assist tasks when CSMs need more control over the scheduling and content of the email. A CSM will select the individual contacts to send the email to, and the email contents can be customized as needed.

A full list of available emails can be found in a GitLab-only Google Doc. In the future, we’ll move this information to a GitLab project.

CSMs can send these emails to customers in one of two ways:

1. Directly in Gainsight: To send an email directly from Gainsight, create a basic CTA for the customer with the email subject/purpose. Once it’s opened, click on the CTA, click the three vertical dots at the top right, then click “Send Email”. Then choose the appropriate email template from the dropdown and fill in the recipient’s email address and send.

2. In Gmail through a Chrome extension: Add the Gainsight extension to your Google Chrome browser. Once added, to apply a template, open a blank email and click the “G” icon on the right sidebar, choose the template, and click “Apply template”. Complete the email as normal. If a recipient’s email address is in Gainsight under their account, it will auto-link any emails and update the account’s timeline. See Gainsight’s support article on Email Assist for more details.

Please note we recommend BCCing Salesforce on all emails rather than syncing every email to Gainsight, although it is also possible to BCC Gainsight.

Salesforce and Zendesk syncing

Gainsight is synched with Salesforce so that everything that happens in Gainsight is pulled into Salesforce, allowing Salesforce to remain our SSOT but also allowing us to not have to duplicate information. Gainsight is also integrated and syncs with Zendesk so CSMs can view customer support tickets within Gainsight.

Salesforce syncs are queued at 12AM Pacific Time (7AM UTC). The full sync typically is completed by 4AM PT (11AM UTC). Note that “Last Activity Date” field syncs every two hours (based on “Call” or “Meeting” activity type).

Zendesk syncs are queued to run every day at 12AM Pacific Time (7AM UTC).

If you see a data issue (e.g. account hierarchy, ARR, etc.), check if this is the same information that’s in Salesforce. If so, use Salesforce chatter and at-mention sales-support with the items that need to be updated and/or reviewed. If the issue is specifically Gainsight and not sourced from Salesforce, pull in CS Ops.

For information on how we manage the backend data for Gainsight, please see our Go-To-Market technical documentation handbook page.

Updating fields

The CSM Name field in Gainsight indicates which CSM owns a specific account, and determines which accounts will appear for a CSM on dashboards, etc. This field syncs to the Customer Success Manager field in Salesforce. It can only be edited in Gainsight, and any changes to the field in Gainsight will sync over to Salesforce within one minute. If you see any discrepancies between these two fields in the two systems, please report to the CS Ops team.

Account Owner, Solutions Architect, Renewal Date, ARR, subscription and opportunity info, etc. are all updated in Salesforce and synced to Gainsight on a daily basis.

Customer contacts

To add customer contacts to an account, you can add them in either Salesforce or Gainsight, as we utilize a bi-directional sync. It is good practice is to check that any customer contacts we engage with are in Gainsight for the following reasons:

When scheduling a meeting, they can be logged in the meeting.
If any of these contacts open a Support Ticket, we want it assigned to the account. The contact must be in SFDC for that to work.
When we send emails to contacts (monthly release, marketing, etc.), the contact needs to be loaded into Gainsight.
To share a Success Plan, they need to be a contact in Gainsight.
Sponsor Tracking component requires the contact to be in Gainsight.

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