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Calls to Action (CTAs)

  1. You are here:
  2. Customer Success
  3. Customer Success Management Handbook
  4. Using Gainsight as a CSM
  5. Calls to Action (CTAs)

A CTA is a call to action that is tied to a customer and appears in a CSM's cockpit, as well as the account cockpit. CTAs can be created manually at any time, but some will automatically be created for you based on certain events or data.

To create a new CTA, go to your cockpit and click "+ CTA", then fill out the appropriate information. If a CTA will consist of multiple tasks over a period of time, click CTA after saving it, then click the three dots on the top right of the new right sidebar, and click "Add Task". You can add as many as needed and track your progress in the milestone section.

Watch a quick video on Gainsight CTAs to learn how to use them, best practices, and tricks.

Cockpit

The Cockpit is the main place you'll go to manage CTAs, which can be opened from several methods. They can be automatically opened due to trigger points in a customer's lifecycle, a CSM can manually open them, or if a CSM logs a task in a Timeline event that task will populate in the Cockpit.

The main Cockpit is located by using the far left navigation panel (under "Home") and clicking "Cockpit" to see all CTAs for all customers (this can be customized and refined, discussed below).

There are also individual C360 Cockpits for each customer, which can be located by navigating to the Customer 360 and clicking "Cockpit" in the left sidebar. Please note that C360 Cockpits do not include success plan objectives, while the main Cockpit screen does.

The Cockpit can be customized for your needs so that you can see what data is most helpful to you and your workflows.

  1. Use the far left nav panel (under "Home") and click "Cockpit" to see all CTAs for all customers
  2. At the top right of the screen (below "Cockpit"), you'll typically want to looking at the dashboard called "My CTAs" as it is a comprehensive overview of all CTAs assigned to you (however, you can choose another default view from the list or create your own view with even further customized options)
  3. Click the "Due Date" dropdown button at the top right next to the search field to change the groupings of the CTAs as desired (you can group by Type, Company, Renewal Date, etc.)
  4. Click the "+" button at the right of the column names, which will take you to a list of all possible fields you can add to the column list
  5. Search and add any additional fields you want to see (a common column to add that is not included by default is "Next Task Due Date")
  6. Click "Apply" to save your changes to the view (you can do this as many times as you want to test out different column fields)

To create and save a customized CTA view for yourself beyond the defaults, use the filter button at the top right; you can later access these views in the dropdown at the top left.

Once you have your Cockpit customized to your needs, you can also sort the rows by a column field by clicking on the name of a column, e.g. "Due Date".

Please note that any customizations you do for a Cockpit view will be consistent between the main Cockpit and individual C360 Cockpits.

Types of CTAs

There are several "types" of CTAs, which will have different corresponding playbooks, so if you're looking for a particular playbook be sure to select the appropriate type. See below for each type and the corresponding playbooks for that type.

If the CTA you're opening does not fall into one of the playbook categories, choose the type that makes the most sense. If it's a common CTA, suggest creating a playbook for the it by opening an issue.

CTA Status

CTA statuses are defined below.

Available on All CTAs:

Available on Lifecycle CTAs only:

Available on Objective CTAs only (Success Plans):

Snoozing CTAs

In Gainsight, you are able to snooze a CTA in order to keep it open but remove it from your main Cockpit until a later date (it will still show up in the C360 Cockpit).

Reasons to snooze a CTA instead of closing it:

  1. The CTA isn't applicable at this point in time, but will be applicable in the foreseeable future. For example, if an account is newly CSM-qualifying and you receive a CTA to hold an EBR, use the snooze CTA functionality to push out the date within the next 3-6 months.
  2. Ensure a similar/related CTA isn't fired. For example, if a CTA fires when you haven't updated CSM Sentiment, but you have a cadence call scheduled for next week, you can snooze the CTA for a week from now and avoid getting another CTA before you can meet with the customer.

To snooze a CTA, follow these instructions:

  1. Open the CTA
  2. Click the three vertical dotes
  3. Click Snooze
  4. Select a date for the CTA snooze to end, and select a reason for snoozing
  5. Click Snooze

To update either Snooze Date or Snooze Reason, or to manually un-snooze the CTA, go to the CTA and click the three vertical dots again and change the details as required.

When a CTA is snoozed, it will not appear in the main Cockpit until the snooze ends or they are un-snoozed, but you can view snoozed CTAs by going to the C360 Cockpit which will show all CTAs. You can also update your main Cockpit filter to show snoozed CTAs by selecting the filter icon in the upper right corner and marking the Is Snoozed filter as true.

To request additional Snooze options, please open an issue in the Gainsight issue tracker.

For more information and illustrations, review Gainsight's documentation.

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