Customer Success Organizational Structure
June 23, 2016

Before we begin…
We will be recording today’s webinar and will email you the
slides within 24 hours after the webinar concludes.
If you have questions about today’s content, feel free to ask
them in the question box on the right hand side of your screen.
We will answer them live in our Q & A session

Objectives of Today’s Webinar
1. Share the story of Gainsight’s recent re-organization in
post-sales
2. Share a re-usable methodology for defining your
organizational structure
Caveat: May not be universally applicable

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What is Gainsight’s new organizational structure?
What’s the ROI of this Customer Success Organization?
How do you define its organizational charter?
What are some examples of charters?
Agenda

What is Gainsight’s new organizational structure?
What’s the ROI of this Customer Success Organization?
How do you define its organizational charter?
What are some examples of charters?
Agenda

Gainsight Customer Success Organization
Customer
Success
Services Support
CEO
Client
Outcomes
Customer
Success
Technical
Success
CEO
Onboard-
ing

Principles for New Organizational Structure
1. Customer Success comes first
2. Design the organization around customer needs
3. Ensure autonomy
4. Clarify for our customers who to go to for what
5. Maximize coordination among post-sales teams
6. Give more responsibility to high-potential leaders

Map to 3 Customer Needs
Outcomes Management Fast Time-to-Value Solutions On Demand
Translate business
objectives into ROI
Lead a structured
process to achieve
quickly a set of initial
business objectives
Tackle inbound
customer challenges
Client Outcomes Onboarding Technical Success

Functions by Department
Client
Outcomes
Onboarding
Technical
Success
Internal
Training &
Enablement
• CSMs
• CS Sales
• Project
Managers
• Solutions
Architects
• Training
• Support
• Customer
Success
Architects
• Community
• Training on
the product +
other skills
• Skills
assessment +
certification
Customer
Success
Operations
• Cross-functional
process design
• Gainsight
administration,
analytics, +
reporting
• Maintenance
operations
Customer Success

What is Gainsight’s new organizational structure?
What’s the ROI of this Customer Success Organization?
How do you define its organizational charter?
What are some examples of charters?
Agenda

Revenue Attributable to Client Outcomes
1. CSM “Save”
• Red to Yellow
2. CSM “Win”
• Yellow to Green
1. CSM “Win”
2. CSM-qualified leads
(CSQL) for Sales
3. CSM closes upsell
4. Conversion of POC
1. CSM Qualified
Advocacy (CSQA)
2. Sales References
3. Referrals
4. Repeat Purchaser
5. Advisory Services
Retain Expand Land+ +

Revenue Attributable to Onboarding
1. Onboarding “Save”
• Red to Yellow
2. Onboarding “Win”
• Yellow to Green
1. Onboarding “Win”
2. Onboarding-qualified
lead (e.g. product add-
on)
1. Onboarding
Qualified Advocacy
(CSQA)
2. Services Revenue
Retain Expand Land+ +

Revenue Attributable to Technical Success
1. TS “Save”
• Red to Yellow
2. TS “Win”
• Yellow to Green
1. Services Revenue
Retain Expand Land+ +
1. TS “Win”
2. TS-qualified lead (e.g.
Managed Services,
product add-on)

What is Gainsight’s new organizational structure?
What’s the ROI of this Customer Success Organization?
How do you define its organizational charter?
What are some examples of charters?
Agenda

Critical Components of a Charter
1. Mission of the function in 1 sentence
2. Operating metrics that define success for this function
3. Cost metric that determines how to budget for this
function
4. Activities that allow the function to achieve its mission
5. Risks to the mission that the function needs to manage
6. Dependencies on other teams

Mission
1. Address a need that the customer has -- not a need that
your company has
2. If you can’t clarify the mission in 1 sentence…

Operating Metrics
1. The vast majority = not financial metrics
2. Not enough to track activities
3. Choose operational metrics that:
1. Are predictive of the ultimate financial outcomes
2. Help measure the success of day-to-day activities
3. Are important from the perspective of your CEO...with a little
education from you :)

Cost Metric
1. Help determine whether your current investment in this
function is reasonable
2. Caveat #1: Allocate cost flexibly (talk to your finance
team)
3. Caveat #2: Some teams don’t lend themselves to cost
metrics – e.g. Customer Success Operations = more like a
capital expenditure
1. How much are you’re willing to invest for the long-term?
2. Consider your first CS Ops hire once you have ~5 CSMs

Activities
1. Document exactly what you expect each role to do
2. Do a time analysis of each role – shows overlaps and
gaps

Risks
1. All the things that can go wrong as you try to achieve your
mission
2. Non-CSM departments manage risks, too

Dependencies
1. Ask each function: What do you expect other functions to
do in order to help you achieve your own mission?
2. Add Function A’s “approved” Dependencies to Function
B’s list of Activities

Charter Template per Function
Mission
Operating Metrics
Cost Metric
Activities
Risks
Dependencies

Tips for the Charter Definition Process
1. Analysis
1. Ask “why?” 5 times
2. Rigorously eliminate areas of overlap
2. Implementation
1. Decide what’s best for your customers and your company, then
figure out how to optimize careers for individuals
2. “Pre-wire” group meetings by meeting with individuals for whom
the topic may be sensitive
3. Share a function’s charter with the corresponding team before
sharing it with everyone else

What is Gainsight’s new organizational structure?
What’s the ROI of this Customer Success Organization?
How do you define its organizational charter?
What are some examples of charters?
Agenda

Mission Translate business objectives into real change and ROI for the client
Operating
Metrics
Renewal:
- Habits Scorecard Measure: Net # of clients moved into Green
- Executive Adoption Scorecard Measure: Net # of clients moved into Green
- CSAT
- # of Success Plan Objectives Closed
- Movement to higher Value Stages
- # of Saves
Expansion:
- Deployment Scorecard: Net # of clients moved into Green
- CSM-qualified upsell opportunities
- # of POCs converted
New Business:
- # of Sales References
- # of Case Studies
- # of Events as speaker
- # of Prospect Meetings that the CSM joined and after which the prospect signed a deal with us
- # of Opportunities generated through Referrals
- # of Opportunities where a stakeholder came from a current (happy) customer
CSMs

Cost Metric $ of fully loaded CSM cost / $ ARR managed
Activities - Align with Executive Decision-maker and conduct activities to drive that relationship
- Strategy Sessions: kick-off meetings for new customers where we identify the customer’s
business objectives and "success criteria" for onboarding
- Drive to alignment across multiple stakeholders at the client
- Use Success Plans to define, drive, and demonstrate value to the customer
- Conduct Train the Trainer Sessions
- Conduct Best-Practice Workshops
- Quarterback cross-functionally within Gainsight, on behalf of the customer
- Executive Business Reviews
Risks - Renewal Risk
- Habits Risk
- Deployment Risk: the risk of downsell because a small percentage of licenses have been
deployed
- Sentiment Risk
- Company Risk
- Requests from the customer for contract extension, breakage, other alteration
CSMs

Dependencies • On the Onboarding department, for ensuring the customer’s Gainsight administrator is 100%
ready to own their Gainsight configuration after onboarding. Specifically:
• Onboarding Solutions Architecture, for providing documentation of the customer’s
instance for the Gainsight administrator
• Onboarding Training, for providing Admin 101 training
• On Onboarding Project Management, specifically, for:
• Fleshing out detailed use cases for the customer and ensuring that these align with the
customer’s expectations
• Delivering a detailed project plan that the customer has agreed to
• Providing weekly updates to the Decision Maker and Adoption Champion (mid-level
manager) at the customer on project status
• Leading technical implementation meetings with the customer
• Running internal meetings to prepare for customer conversations about onboarding
• Escalating risks to project timelines internally and to the customer as soon as the Project
Manager identifies an issue
• Providing information about the ways in which the customer’s business objectives were
addressed during onboarding
CSMs

Dependencies
(continued)
• On Onboarding Training, for:
• Providing instructors to lead Gainsight administrator and end-user training programs
• Providing training materials and leave-behind job aids for end users and their managers
(Adoption Champions)
• On Customer Success Architects, for helping customers with additional configuration of
Gainsight after onboarding (assuming there is no statement of work, in which case our
Onboarding organization handles the new project)
• On Support, for handling break-fix and how-to questions
CSMs

Mission Help customers with new configuration after onboarding, quickly and to customers’ satisfaction.
Operating
Metrics
• Time to resolution
• % of tickets resolved in < 8 biz hours
• % of tickets resolved in < 5 business days
• % of tickets resolved in < 10 business days
• % of tickets with SLA breaches
• Average time to resolution
• CSAT
• # of Knowledge Base articles published
Cost Metrics • Gross margin for managed services (when the customer outsources administration of their
Gainsight instance to us)
• Leading metrics for gross margin:
• Billable Utilization per person: % of hours spent on billable activities
• Productive utilization per person: % of hours spent on productive activities (including improving
our processes or content)
Activities • Provide net-new configuration post-Onboarding -- either configure it for the customer or show
them how to configure
• Execute statements of work after onboarding that require less than 50 hours. (SOWs with more
than 50 hours are handled by the Onboarding team.)
• Provide managed services
Customer Success Architects

Risks • Configuration Risk: when configuration is taking longer than expected or is bumpy
• Data Risk after onboarding
• Requests to alter the Managed Services contract
Dependencies • Onboarding department, for setting up a proper configuration and training the Gainsight
administrator on their instance
Customer Success Architects

Child-like Joy
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
Allison Pickens
VP of Customer Success &
Business Operations,
Gainsight
apickens@gainsight.com
@PickensAllison
Weekly Blog:
http://www.gainsight.com/customer-
success-best-practices/