Customer Success Playbooks

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On this page

• Structure of Playbooks
• Types of Playbooks
• Catalog of Playbooks

View the Customer Success homepage for additional Customer Success handbook content.

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Customer Success playbooks assist in selling, driving adoption, and ultimately delivering more value to customers via GitLab's DevOps platform. The below playbooks will include original content as well as links to other parts of the handbook.

Structure of Playbooks

Procedure: Each Playbook contains the outline of steps to position, apply discovery questions, lead value discussions, and drive adoption (CSM only). The will be driven and tracked via Gainsight.

Positioning: Stage and use case value proposition and positioning with supporting collateral linked within Gainsight CTAs and Playbooks.

• Market requirements, personas, and differentiators
• Top features, stages, and categories
• Competitive assessments
• Customer slides
• Proof points, blogs, and customer success stories

Discovery: Discussion tools (e.g., discovery questions) using Command Plan approach.

Adoption: Adoption-related reference materials to accelerate adoption.

• Adoption map, noting recommend recommended features / use cases and sequence of adoption (where applicable)
• Analytics Instrumentation attributes to track adoption
• Product documentation (Content owner: Product and Engineering Teams)
• Enablement and training assets
• Paid services

Types of Playbooks

• Risk: Represents negative trends with customers. Examples include low license utilization, non-engaged customer and product risk.
• Event/Lifecycle: Lifecycle-based and typically scheduled events. Examples include onboarding, EBRs, and success planning.
• Opportunity/Expansion: Enablement/Expansion which is tied to revenue and/or product growth. Examples include stage adoption and uptiering.
• Objectives: Tied to Success Plans and can only be created in C360 > Success Plans section.
• Activity: Tied to 360 Timeline Activities. Activity is generally used as the default CTA type for CTAs created from the Timeline feature automatically. Users can also create CTAs of this type from the Cockpit page. Example includes account handoff.
• Digital Journey: Represents the Customer Digital Journey content. Examples include digital onboarding and adoption email series.

Catalog of Playbooks

The following playbooks are aligned to our customer adoption journey and support adoption of the related customer capability and GitLab stage. Within Gainsight, the CSM can manually add any Playbook (instructions) to a Customer.

Playbook Name	Automated/Manual	Type	Internal Reference Link
At-Risk	Automated	Risk
Low License Utilization	Automated	Risk
Non-Engaged Customer	Manual	Risk
Product Risk	Manual	Risk
Risk Escalation	Manual	Risk	Opening an At-Risk CTA
Create Success Plan	Automated	Lifecycle
Customer Offboarding	Automated	Lifecycle
Executive Business Review (EBR)	Automated	Lifecycle	EBR in a Box
High License Utilization: Growth Opportunity	Automated	Lifecycle
New Customer Digital Onboarding: SaaS Email Series	Manual	Lifecycle
New Customer Digital Onboarding: Self-Managed Email Series	Manual	Lifecycle
New Customer Onboarding	Automated	Lifecycle
Onboarding Pilot	Automated	Lifecycle
Usage Data Enablement	Manual	Lifecycle	Service Ping FAQ
Agile Enablement Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
Agile Expansion Stage Enablement	Manual	Objective
CD Enablement Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective	Continuous Delivery/Release
CD Expansion Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
CI Enablement Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective	Continuous Integration/Verify CSM CI Workshop
CI Expansion Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
Configure Enablement Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
Configure Expansion Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
Create Enablement Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective	Source Code Management (SCM)/Create Stage
Create Expansion Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
DevSecOps Enablement Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective	DevSecOps/Security
DevSecOps Expansion Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
Geo Implementation	Manual	Objective	Info Sheet Discovery Questions Implementation Tips and Tricks
Improve Cycle Time (Lead Time for Changes)	Manual	Objective
Increase Deployment Frequency	Manual	Objective
Manage Enablement Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
Manage Expansion Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
Monitor Enablement Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
Monitor Expansion Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
Package Enablement Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
Package Expansion Stage Adoption	Manual	Objective
Selling Ultimate to New Customers	Manual	Objective	Handbook link
Server Migration - On-Prem to On-Prem	Manual	Objective	GitLab Server Migrations Playbook
Server Migration - On-Prem to Self-Managed Cloud	Manual	Objective	GitLab Server Migrations Playbook
Server Migration - On-Prem/Cloud to K8S	Manual	Objective	GitLab Server Migrations Playbook
Server Migration - Self-Managed to GitLab SaaS	Manual	Objective	GitLab Server Migrations Playbook
Ultimate Uptier for Existing Customers	Manual	Objective	Handbook link
Account Handoff	Manual	Activity
Update Stale CSM Sentiment	Manual	Activity
Upcoming Renewal	Automated	Renewal
Digital Adoption - CI Enablement	Manual	Digital Journey
Digital Onboarding - SaaS Email Series	Manual	Digital Journey
Digital Onboarding - Self-Managed Alternative Backup Strategies	Manual	Digital Journey
Digital Onboarding - Self-Managed Email Series	Manual	Digital Journey
Digital Onboarding - Welcome Email	Manual	Digital Journey
CSM Account Transitions	Manual	Digital Journey
Find an Executive Sponsor	Manual	Objective
Engage an Executive Sponsor	Manual	Objective

CSMs create playbooks to provide a prescriptive methodology to help with customer discussions around certain aspects of GitLab. We currently have a Stage Adoption Guideline to assist with understanding where a customer stands, and we are working on merging adoption maps into the use case pages.