Customer Success executives are realizing a new need for Customer Success Operations as a role in their organizations. As Customer Success become more mature, measurable, and process driven, there needs to be someone who is accountable for administering the programs and playbooks. Customer Success Operations isn’t all that different from Sales Operations from a role perspective, but because CS Operations is an emerging role many teams are fighting an uphill battle to make the hire. Even after they secure the hire, a lot of teams struggle to hire the right candidate for the Customer Success Operations role. The Gainsight Customer Success team will walk you through the basics of Customer Success Operations and discuss why teams should consider hiring for this impactful role.

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Child-like Joy
FUEL REVENUE GROWTH WITH CUSTOMER SUCCESS
Customer Success Operations
David Knox (Dir. Client Strategy), Ganesh Subramanian (Client
Strategy Mgr.) and Barr Moses (Sr. Mgr. CS Ops)

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Agenda
• Defining Customer Success Operations
• Customer Success Operations in the industry today
• Customer Success Operations at Gainsight
• Where is Customer Success headed from here?

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Why CS Ops?
Interestingly, most CEOs don’t ask VPs of Sales to justify why they should
hire Sales Ops lead…
The same holds for CS Ops.
The question is “when” – not “whether” – the hire
should be made.

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CS Ops is analogous to sales ops
Responsibilities Sales operations CS operations
Data
Reporting • Share sales results and forecasts • Share renewals/upsell results, forecasts
Analysis • Analyze leading indicators for sales
• Analyze leading indicators for renewals
and upsell
Processes
Engagement process
• Determine timing and content of
meetings to optimize conversion
• Determine touchpoints for CSMs to drive
adoption and NPS
External communication • Coordinate with marketing • Coordinate with 1:M lead
Risk management • Provide visibility to at-risk deals
• Detect early warning signs for at-risk
customers
Opp. identification • Identify top accounts • Identify top customers for upsell
X-functional coordination
• Coordinate processes across teams to
help meet sales objectives
• Coordinate processes across teams to
help deliver on customer needs
People
Team structure
• Manage AE territories, account
segments and forecast hiring needs
• Tier customers, assign to CSMs, re-
distribute load and forecast hiring
Compensation • Determine structure and quotas • Determine metrics and targets
Enablement • Create collateral and data for AEs • Provide collateral and data for CSMs
Systems Technology systems • Implement and manage tools for sales • Implement and manage tools for CSMs
Defining CS Ops

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ROI framework: efficiency and outcomes Defining CS Ops
Improved CSM efficiency
Higher retention and cross-sell
New processes, better segmentation
and engagement, and better
management of technology
Saves time for each CSM
Leads to more accounts
managed per CSM
Improves CSM touchpoints
Leads to improved retention and
increased cross-sell opportunities
1
2

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CS Ops saves time and retains customers Defining CS Ops
Source: Gainsight
CS Ops survey

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Balanced skill set needed for CS Ops,
analytical and strong communicators
• Knowledge of customer success and
renewal business processes
• Enjoys building effective and efficient
processes
• Loves learning technology and new
applications
• Knowledge of Salesforce.com is a plus
• Comfortable in configuring and testing logic
rules to drive actions and workflows (ANDs
and ORs don’t scare you)
• Excellent communication skills to
communicate complex concepts to non-
technical users
Prior experience in ops, analytics or
customer facing role a plus
• Previous Gainsight experience
• Previous sales operations or a business
operations role
• Customer Success or Account Manager with
an affinity for technology, data and process
• Experience in building reports using
business applications or BI tools
• Familiar with reviewing and understanding
data used to build dashboards and reports
Skills and background of CS Ops managers CS Ops today

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Additional attributes to screen candidates
• Passion for designing processes that scale
• Ability to break down ambiguous problems into concrete, manageable
components and think through optimal solutions
• Enjoys “getting their hands dirty” by digging into complex operations
• Takes high degree of ownership over their work
• Clear communicator with professional presence
• Strong listening skills; open to input from other team members and departments
• Ability to lead through influence
Example job
description
CS Ops today

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Five takeaways from our research
1. Companies look to make their first customer success operations hire in a
period of high growth at ~5 CSMs as they try to increase scale and efficiency
2. The consensus view for CS Ops responsibilities falls into 3 main categories:
• Customer success enablement: processes and tools
• Strategy: segmentation, customer lifecycle mapping, engagement models
• Reporting and metrics: board decks, operational views, insights for CSMs
3. CS Ops managers come from diverse backgrounds, most came from sales
ops or were CSMs
4. The biggest challenges CS Ops managers face today are in change
management and benchmarking success for their industry
5. CS Ops is a very relevant topic, there are many questions left to be answered,
and the path forward is still being figured out
CS Ops today

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What we heard from you… CS Ops today
“Early on, we were laser focused on new business so the
attention was on sales. Even our first few CSMs were tasked with
helping sales close deals. As we’ve matured, we’ve shifted our
focus more towards renewals and achieving positive customer
outcomes. Having to do so in a scalable and effective way led to our
first CS Ops hire.” – Director Customer Success
“As a CSM in my former life, I was doing pricing and quoting
myself, for each of my new customers for each renewal. This was a
big time drag on me and my fellow CSMs. When I formally
switched to CS Ops, I had the prerogative to get this process
simplified and streamlined across CSMs.” – CS Ops Manager
“Our CSMs often see the benefits of the new processes. What we
struggle a lot with is getting other teams, our cross functional teams,
engineering, marketing, on board with our plan. Influencing without
authority has been a real learning for me.” – CS Ops Manager
When CS Ops
became a priority
Why former CSMs
are a good fit for
CS Ops
Change management is
the biggest challenge

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Key activities for our Sr. CS Ops manager CS Ops at Gainsight
Manage risk through x-functional meetings
• Monday morning GM meeting
• Support risk meeting
• Implementation risk meeting
• CSM risk meeting (e.g. Habits, Sentiment)
Develop processes that scale
• Coordinate with 1:Many CSM on customer
outreaches
• Metric tracking to improve retention, up-sell
and cross-sell
• Reports and dashboards by customer tiers for
VP Customer Success
Implement strategic frameworks
• Create risk framework CTAs and playbooks
• Develop lifecycle and opportunity CTAs by
customer segment
Improve efficiency using technologies
• Maintain and modify Gainsight to ensure
efficiencies across the company
• Develop processes for exec visibility, optimal
resource allocation, and CSM enablement

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CS Ops is here to stay…
what are your next steps?
Future of CS Ops
Stay in the loop: Take our survey and check back for the results
Source: Gainsight CS Ops survey

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Future of CS Ops
Gainsight will be hosting the first
CS Ops summit in the winter of this year.
Stay tuned for details!