PulseCheck is the largest live streaming event in the Customer Success community, delivered right to your screen -- free of charge. We’ll cut out everything but the most actionable real-world applications for you and your entire customer-facing team. What’s left are eight 40-minute sessions from some of the most elite minds in Customer Success.

1. ©2016 Gainsight.
HOW WE INTEGRATE
CUSTOMER SUCCESS IN OUR
PRODUCT PLANNING
PROCESS
MARA LISING
Manager, Customer Success
Box
GAURAV KOTAK
Sr. Director, Products
Gainsight
®2016 Gainsight.

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Agenda
The Challenge
The Solution
5 Key Takeaways
Questions

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The Challenge

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Challenge #1 – Customer Demand > Supply
Feature Requests by
Customers
Engineering
bandwidth
Product Risks, Unhappy Customers

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Challenge #1 – 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

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Challenge #2 - The Customers' Perspective
• Product limitations can be a large barrier
• Limits adoption
• Customer satisfaction often = product satisfaction
• Product limitations become ‘top-of-mind’
• Less focus on other customer success parameters
• Less receptive to workarounds over time
• Depends on type of workaround, but can have general erosion of trust in the product
• Risk of over-promising, if changes in roadmap

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The Solution

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The Solution
Collaboration. Data-driven. Empathy.

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The Product Funnel
‘Disruptive’ Product
Escalations
1000s of feature
requests and ideas
Handful of strategic
themes
‘Low-
hanging
fruit’
pebbles
Capabilities
shipped in a
Qtr

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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 into Gainsight
• CSMs track their
customers’ top requests
and follow up as required
• 1:M Communications –
Leaderboards, Top
requests and status

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How CSMs Help Deepen the Community
Qualification
• Discovery, discovery, discovery
• How, what, when, where, why?
Submission
• Ensure CSMs have done the initial legwork prior to submission
• Can the customer’s request be fulfilled with an existing feature?
• Requests are entered into a streamlined internal submission process
that is the single source of truth for customer product feedback
• Process allows for company wide visibility and engagement
Action
• Ensure closure of the feedback loop with internal teams and customer

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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

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Some Examples

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From Data to Value
• Your treasure map
• Usage data, activity metrics, health scores are great guides to:
• Curate customer conversations
• Build QBR decks
• Look for additional value add and upsell opportunities
• Learn all the rules and then break them
• Have a standard QBR format but push your teams to curate their
approach
• Does this help answer the customer's key strategy objectives?
• How does your main POC's role play a part?
• Be inclusive
• Ensure your entire account team (from Sales to CS) understands the
message you will convey in your QBRs

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Be Very Selective with Formal Product Escalation
‘Disruptive’
Product
Escalations
Requests
themes pebbles
Released
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
• Require CS/Product leadership’s approval
• Enterprise / High Risk of Churn
• Be explicit about consequences of not doing
• Make the tough calls
• Does this request make sense for the
customer’s business AND yours?
• If you’re escalating, do it well!
• Make Product commitment
• Formal playbook
• Close the internal/external feedback loops

16. ©2016 Gainsight.
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
• Require CS/Product leadership’s approval
• Enterprise / High Risk of Churn
• Be explicit about consequences of not doing
• Make the tough calls
• Does this request make sense for the
customer’s business AND yours?
• If you’re escalating, do it well!
• Make Product commitment
• Formal playbook
• Close the internal/external feedback loops

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Be on the Offense
• Take the time to understand how this request relates to the customer’s goals
• Tough messages are easier to deliver as a partner vs. a vendor
• Product commitment should be about communication, not necessarily resolution
• Protective transparency: customers can often relate to prioritization challenges, be
honest but protect your IP
• People like to work (and relate) to people, not robots
• Examples
• Customer/Product Advisory Boards
• Customer On-sites and Roadshows
• Hosting Customers at your HQ
• Taking advantage of customers’ tech/vendor tours

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Key Takeaways
1. Recognizing competing challenges. Be empathetic of other functions
challenges.
• On aggregate, demand > supply. But for individual customer, their unmet
product need is a major barrier.
2. Invest in Community – One Source of Truth (internal and external); transparent,
influence roadmap. CSMs can enhance experience
3. From data to value - Marry Product Metrics with Account / Health Metric to Help
Make Product Investment Decisions. Share information with customer
4. People > Robots, get personal!
5. Product Funnel – Ideas  Themes (80%) / Pebbles (20%). Product escalations
disrupt natural flow. But if you have to escalate, go all the way!

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Questions?

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THANK YOU
®2016 Gainsight.