If you had a magic button to automate any part of your role....

Matt Vadala

We got to discussing this in GGR Office Hours today, and I wanted to poll the community here:

If you could have any part of your role automated, what would it be? How is this "manual" process blocking you now and what would automating it help you to do throughout your role?

Patricia Awan

Hi @Matt Vadala, for me would be data gathering. As others mentioned in the call, when creating reports or EBR decks, this is quite a time consuming action, as there are multiple sources I need to get data from in order to paint a full picture.  Interpreting all the data is also quite time-consuming, so if both those tasks could be automated I would have a LOT of time back in my diary. What would your choice be?

Jeremy Donaldson

Administration - logging calls, entering notes, updating relationship scores, customer contacts. AKA everything that is really important for remembering and tracking a customer, but it SUPER boring for someone like me who dislikes repetitive tasks. 

Dave Epperly

+ 10 for this. The more of this admin I can take off the team the more time they have to think and talk with their customers.

Matt Vadala

@Patricia Awan how would you like your data to be auto gathered if you don't mind me asking? What is your means of input at this time?

I'll hold my cards up on what I'm looking for this early in the game. I'm hoping to drive this conversation so I can collaborate with the collective and try and come up with a "most-encompassing" solution that can serve as many as possible!

Matt Vadala

@Jeremy Donaldson very interesting! Who owns the task of contact management at your org at this time? I'll address your points below, if I may:

-How would you see notes being entered? By an auto transcriber or some interpretive tool? If so, how would you like said tool to interpret to take notes?

-Does your org have a formula for relationship scores at this time? Do you believe that formula could act as an algorithm/mathematical rule to generate scores for accounts?

Totally hear you that these admin tasks can be repetitive! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the above so we can possibly hash out how to get something like what you're talking about materialized.

Matt Vadala

@Dave Epperly totally hear and agree with this point. Having conversations is a CSMs bread and butter. May I ask you the same as I did with Jeremy? Who owns contact maintenance at RC? From experience, I know how arduous that can be. 

Maddie Blumenthal

I totally agree with Patricia here!  We seem to have so many "sources of truth" that trying to consolidate is an all day affair.  We are working through combining our data into one single place - but with so many channels, that is almost more work than the system(s) we use today!

Matt Vadala

Hey @Maddie Blumenthal is FP working with multiple tools keeping the data? Do you have one CRM where you're trying to keep your ultimate truth? I've been there myself, and it sure is frustrating! If the above is true, would you seek out a consolidation tool? Or some means to gather the data? If so, how would you envision it?

To maybe help this conversation along... @Jeremy Donaldson @Patricia Awan @Maddie Blumenthal have you considered some mechanism to have your customers own data upkeep? My old org gives customers access to a community which is tied to our internal CRM. When customers log in and update their data our internal system would get updated. Certain teams like Sales had override access on our side to update info for customers if they were unable to do it themselves.

Kevin Mitchell Leonor

I mentioned in fhe CSMOH that I wish EBR data extraction automatically populated all my data and talking points into my EBR deck.

but I also wish I had an EBR dashboard that is custoner facing that the customer would be able to see as their first window daily that reminds them how valuable we are to their work

Dave Epperly

CSMs own the entire thing from contact to contract maintenance. Currently, we're working on building out the relationship score keeping it as automated as possible. While I believe a relationship score formula could help trigger actions for CSM, I think we'll always count on the CSM to rate the quality of that relationship. Quantitative + Qualitative = best

WRT data gathering - we've put big emphasis on putting this data (reports) directly within our portals for easy customer access. In this case, the data becomes the foundation for a cleaner and deeper discussion during EBR. Basically, EBR level - decks are always available to the customer.

------------------------------
Dave Epperly
Customer Success Operations @ Red Canary
------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 11-11-2020 11:44
From: Matt Vadala
Subject: If you had a magic button to automate any part of your role....

@Dave Epperly totally hear and agree with this point. Having conversations is a CSMs bread and butter. May I ask you the same as I did with Jeremy? Who owns contact maintenance at RC? From experience, I know how arduous that can be. 

------------------------------
Matt Vadala
Seeking CSM opportunities
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 11-11-2020 10:14
From: Dave Epperly
Subject: If you had a magic button to automate any part of your role....

+ 10 for this. The more of this admin I can take off the team the more time they have to think and talk with their customers.

------------------------------
Dave Epperly
Customer Success Operations @ Red Canary

Original Message:
Sent: 11-11-2020 09:24
From: Jeremy Donaldson
Subject: If you had a magic button to automate any part of your role....

Administration - logging calls, entering notes, updating relationship scores, customer contacts. AKA everything that is really important for remembering and tracking a customer, but it SUPER boring for someone like me who dislikes repetitive tasks. 

------------------------------
Humbly,
Jeremy Donaldson
Sr. Customer Success Manager

Original Message:
Sent: 11-10-2020 14:30
From: Matt Vadala
Subject: If you had a magic button to automate any part of your role....

We got to discussing this in GGR Office Hours today, and I wanted to poll the community here:

If you could have any part of your role automated, what would it be? How is this "manual" process blocking you now and what would automating it help you to do throughout your role?






------------------------------
Matt Vadala
Seeking CSM opportunities
------------------------------

Jeremy Donaldson

@Matt Vadala - We don't do this today. We have long term goals for a true community platform approach, but we don't have the resources to support that effort at this time.

Jeremy Donaldson

@Matt Vadala - 1000% Yes to a transcriber service!  Although we are not at a point were we could purchase let alone implement such a tool.

Another item would be tighter integration between Outlook/365 integration and a CS software like Gainsight. Lots and lots of duplicated work.

We use automate as many of the relationship scores as possible - utilization, support, time to renewal, and stage of renewal. The ones that are manual are - Covid impact and people / sponsor / champion relationship scores (updated quarterly).

------------------------------
Humbly,
Jeremy Donaldson
Sr. Customer Success Manager
------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 11-11-2020 11:39
From: Matt Vadala
Subject: If you had a magic button to automate any part of your role....

@Jeremy Donaldson very interesting! Who owns the task of contact management at your org at this time? I'll address your points below, if I may:

-How would you see notes being entered? By an auto transcriber or some interpretive tool? If so, how would you like said tool to interpret to take notes?

-Does your org have a formula for relationship scores at this time? Do you believe that formula could act as an algorithm/mathematical rule to generate scores for accounts?

Totally hear you that these admin tasks can be repetitive! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the above so we can possibly hash out how to get something like what you're talking about materialized.

------------------------------
Matt Vadala
Seeking CSM opportunities
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 11-11-2020 09:24
From: Jeremy Donaldson
Subject: If you had a magic button to automate any part of your role....

Administration - logging calls, entering notes, updating relationship scores, customer contacts. AKA everything that is really important for remembering and tracking a customer, but it SUPER boring for someone like me who dislikes repetitive tasks. 

------------------------------
Humbly,
Jeremy Donaldson
Sr. Customer Success Manager

Original Message:
Sent: 11-10-2020 14:30
From: Matt Vadala
Subject: If you had a magic button to automate any part of your role....

We got to discussing this in GGR Office Hours today, and I wanted to poll the community here:

If you could have any part of your role automated, what would it be? How is this "manual" process blocking you now and what would automating it help you to do throughout your role?






------------------------------
Matt Vadala
Seeking CSM opportunities
------------------------------

Matt Vadala

@Kevin Mitchell Leonor yes, I was waiting for you to find this thread!  So would you envision a fully living dashboard constantly updating KPIs for the EBR deck for periodic discussion? Even further, how do you think this would impact the traditional EBR, if such a dashboard were in place? What would this enable for you in your role? 

Kevin Mitchell Leonor

It would be informative, but will not normally foster a conversation and that would be saved for the actual EBR which would also include feature release info, etc.

yet it will remind the customer of ROI if they begin making budgetary decisions before our next EBR

Toby Lucich

Love the idea of a 'magic, auto-populating dashboard' that could be available to customers whenever they were curious.

What are the most important metrics that communicate ROI to CSM customers?

Matt Vadala

@Toby Lucich I like what @Kevin Mitchell Leonor has brought up in the past: how much money that you would have spent on other tools/staff hours OR time has our relationship saved you? That's a constant reminder of why the relationship and utilization is important.

Another point is learning about your connections personally, a point brought up in conversation by @Diana De Jesus during a talk where the CSM can ask "What drives you getting a raise?" This helps the importance of the relationship really hit home for your contacts. At this point its about yourself and the business...you have your own chips in the pot at that point.

Any thoughts on the magic button besides a dashboard, Toby?                     

Patricia Awan

@Matt Vadala that wouldn't work for us due to our diverse client size. I would really like to be able to see all my customer data usage in the same dashboard or portal for example, which is not possible at the moment.

Jenni Washington

We are in the process of implementing our purchased CS tool and I couldn't be more ecstatic. There are promises of being able to add automation into the construction of an EBR email or view that can be customer facing. We're facing hurdles with getting usage data piped-in, but we already have an analytics dashboard available within our product for self-consumption of actionable data (anonymous and aggregated) which not all customers purchase and of those who do, some don't take advantage of the insights.

In preparation for calls with my clients in the onboarding phase, I must spend an appreciable chunk of time looking at Tableau and Pendo to prepare an overall view of usage and health that I then synthesize into talking points.

I am hopeful for a day that much of that is more easily available!

Matt Vadala

That's wonderful to hear @Jenni Washington, congratulations on your new implementation. Beyond the capabilities you're predicting to get from your CST, is there anything else hampering your days that you wish you could just push a button and have automated for you?

Pam Micznik

I understand that CSMs can use tools like Gong for both clients and prospects. They said that it eliminates the need for note taking. Has anyone here used it or something like it?