What's the single biggest factor in whether or not a customer churns? Don't overthink it — it's whether or not the product is meeting their needs. But what's the biggest factor in whether or not your product is meeting your customers' needs? It's Customer Success. That means the relationship between Product and Customer Success is crucial for any recurring revenue business. This webinar will feature Rahul Jain, Founder and VP of Customer Success at Pendo, and Guarav Kotak, Senior Director of Product at Gainsight. Together, they'll explore how to create a positive feedback loop between Customer Success and Product to improve both teams' metrics.

1. Empowering Customer Success
Through Product Feedback
Rahul Jain
Founder & VP of
Customer Success
Pendo
Gaurav Kotak
Sr. Director, Products
Gainsight

2. The Role of the Product in Customer
Success
Rahul Jain
Founder & VP of Customer Success
Pendo

3. ©2016 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.

4. ©2016 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
SUCCESS IS ABOUT
ENSURING VALUE
EXCHANGE BETWEEN
THE CUSTOMERS AND
YOUR PRODUCT

5. ©2016 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
Framework to Get a View of Your Product Success
Breadth
How many active users do I
have across a customer?
Depth
How much of our key features
does a given customer use?
Frequency
How often does a given
customer access the product?

6. ©2016 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
How Do We Use This Framework?
Breadth Depth Frequency
High > 5 Active users
Usig all 5 features:
- Published Guides
- SFDC integration
- Segement used
- Features/Page tags
- Active polls
>10 active monthly across
the customer
Medium 2-5 Active users Using 2 features actively 2-10 monthly logins
Low < 2 active users Limited use of features <2 logins

7. ©2016 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
SEGMENTATION IS
POWERFUL
USE IT EARLY, AND
OFTEN

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Increase your Likelihood of Embeddedness
Different functionality matters to
different personas, and you need
to engage them differently
Disclosing
features/navigation/options as the
user advances to increase product
usage long term
Contextual help to meet the end
user’s need where they live in your
app

9. ©2016 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
Go Beyond the Data, and Get Human
Valuable for the product and
success teams – use multiple
channels
Level set new customers on the
goals they would like to achieve
during onboarding
Help your product team get
feedback from power users

10. ©2016 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
One to Many Communication is Key To Scaling
Explain features and offer how-
to guidance… right in the
interface
Walk users step-by-step
through key application tasks
Keep users engaged and show
them what’s new when they log-
in
Offer Help Improve Onboarding Announce Updates

11. ©2016 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
Prospects BUY on pain—but
they SUCCEED when
customer success focuses on
unlocking value that embeds
the product in their workflow.

12. The Role of Customer Success
Teams in Product
Gaurav Kotak
Sr. Director, Product
Gainsight

13. ©2016 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.

14. The Problem

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Customer demand > supply
Feature Requests by
Customers
Engineering
bandwidth
Product Risks, Unhappy Customers

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Total demand > customer demand
Customer Demand
Sales and
Marketplace
Demand
Tech (debt)
Demand
Engineering
bandwidth
Total Demand
Mortgaging your company’s future
Fortunately, some
overlap

17. The Product Funnel
‘Disruptive’ Product
Escalations
1000s of Feature
Requests or Ideas
Handful of
Strategic themes
‘Low-
hanging
fruit’
pebbles
Capabilities
shipped in a
Qtr

18. 1. Invest in Community
• Customer post on
community
• Zendesk tickets
• CSM emails /
conversation with
customers
• Product Analytics
• Survey Data
• Sales requests
• Internal strategy
• Performance and
tech upgrade
Customers and
employees active
Post requests, Vote
Discuss use case and
workarounds
PMs transparent about
roadmap, discuss
solutions
Multiple channels One source of truth,
democratized, transparent
Influence roadmap,
close the loop
• PMs identify / shape themes
• PMs groom backlog of
‘pebbles’
• Requests + JIRA tickets
imported in Gainsight
• CSMs track their customers’
top requests and follow up
as required
• 1:M Communications –
Leaderboards, Top requests
and status

19. 2. Tie Product Metrics to Customer / Health metrics
Account-level reporting; Understanding overall
health of accounts, leading indicators for
retention
• Click-level tracking, page
navigation, events
• MAUs, WAUs, DAUs
• Users Active / Licenses Sold
• Health score
• Revenue
• Time to Renewal
• DAU / MAU Trends
• IVM – Initial Value Moment
Product Metrics Customer Metrics
Product Success  Breadth, Depth, Frequency

20. Some examples

21. 3. Be Very Selective with Formal Product Escalation
Disruptive
• Inefficient on product / engineering teams
• Heavy ‘communication tax’ on all teams
• May result in ‘short-term band-aid’
Inevitable, but be very very selective
• VP CS/Products approval
• Enterprise / High Risk of Churn
• Make Product commitment
• Formal playbook
• Make the tough calls
‘Disruptive’
Product
Escalations
Requests
Themes Pebbles
Released

22. Key Takeaways
1. Invest in Community – One Source of Truth (internal and external);
transparent, influence roadmap, close the loop
2. Product Funnel – Ideas  Themes (80%) / Pebbles (20%). Product
escalations disrupt natural flow
1. Marry Product Metrics with Account / Health Metric to Help Make
Product Investment Decisions
2. Product escalations  Exceptions, follow formal process, over
communicate (internally and externally)

23. Questions?
Rahul Jain
Founder & VP of
Customer Success
Pendo
Gaurav Kotak
Sr. Director, Products
Gainsight