playbook triggering

Dickey Singh

I am looking for sample and sharable playbooks triggered by an identified risk, identified opportunity, anomaly detected, CSM-initiated, or significant change in components that make up customer health score.  It could be automated or CSM-led or hybrid.  

Where are such playbooks usually documented? In the CS platform? In a CS journey map? LMS?

Thanks in advance

Daryl Colborne

Hi Dickey!
I just started at Aqua Security and we are leveraging PlanHat as our CRM. We are in the process of building out Playbooks within the CRM and having those playbook trigger based on certain criteria (low/no adoption after a period of time, low health score, at-risk account, etc.)

Dave Epperly

Hybrid here: 

Documented within our CMS (big picture) and within the CS Platform (detailed instructions for each step).

Katie Baker

We utilize Gainsight and have a combination of automated risk playbooks for situations like a drop in usage, poor NPS/CSAT response, or significant price increase at renewal. We also just rolled out a pretty elaborate set of manual risk playbooks covering all major situations where our CSMs may be asked to guide their customer through a risky situation. The full document isn't something I can share, but for those playbooks, our team created a presentation slide for each playbook that outlines the following: category (company, product, service/support, sales, sentiment or value risk), playbook name, purpose and expected outcome. It then details each task within the playbook, the responsible party, timeline/due date, and task details/instructions/links to any other relevant resources for what we're asking them to do. This is available for our team in a wiki outlining our risk process so they can see the full playbook if they are unsure of what to apply for a specific situation. A summarized example playbook would be:

Company Change - Merger/Acquisition with Existing Customer

1. Create Timeline entry - research any press releases or news articles for details, create timeline activity in B.L.U.F. format, and @ mention key Workiva stakeholders 
2. Meet with customer to discuss impending change
3. Align internally with stakeholders to execute on customers desired transition plans
4. Execute plan to help drive value and follow up as needed - edit/transition any existing desired outcomes

Our biggest lessons so far are to have the full playbook available somewhere for CSMs to view (they want to see the details, not just a playbook name) and to be super consistent with your playbook naming conventions so things are easy to find.

Tanya Strauss

@Katie Baker that's great. Do you have others for different scenarios? Anything you can share on product issues?

Katie Baker

We have a few different playbooks for specific product situations, but here's the general idea:

1. Gather information from the customer including issue recreation steps, troubleshooting steps taken, document in a support/SEV ticket
2. Update stakeholders via timeline - include sales if there are any open opportunities or upcoming renewals on the account
3. Communicate updates/resolution with customer throughout the process
4. Once resolved, call customer to share details from the customer technical brief
5. For additional customer questions/concerns escalate to appropriate internal stakeholder (CS Director, Engineering, etc.)
6. Follow up with customer to determine if resolution is satisfactory

Dickey Singh

Thank you @Daryl Colborne - Planhat is great. Doing a webinar with @Christian Jakenfelds this coming week.  

Is the plan to automate a portion of these playbooks? Or are most handled by CSMs.  

And, looking at health score to trigger is great if you have high confidence in how it was built, otherwise I rather look at the components used to build the heart score.  :)  

Dickey Singh

Hybrid makes so much sense.  Use tech where possible and humans where tech is too dumb.  I'd love to see a template if are able to share.

Dickey Singh

@Katie Baker - Thank you for this.  So much information in this post.  And Gainsight is great — we work with them and have several common customers. 

• "poor NPS/CSAT" is after-the-fact trigger. "CSM sentiment of customer" could possibly be leading?
• "drop in usage" can be handled as it is happening because you have access to analytics. 
• "significant price increase at renewal" can be handled before communicating the renewal to the customer. 

Some playbooks should not be automated, like the "manual risk playbooks" identified by a customer facing employee can be handled by the assigned CSM or an expert borrowed to handle the risky situation.

Interesting your team documented the playbook summary as a presentation slide with a link to details in a wiki.  I guess presentations are the key way to communicate complex topics succinctly and accurately. 

I was not aware of the BLUF acronym but very familiar with the format.  It is the recommended way to raise venture and the total opposite of some marketing tactics. Click on this subject line to change your life! 

Thanks for taking the time to write this. - learnt a lot.  Plagiarizing several things from here

1. Create Timeline entry - research any press releases or news articles for details, create timeline activity in B.L.U.F. format, and @ mention key Workiva stakeholders 
2. Meet with customer to discuss impending change
3. Align internally with stakeholders to execute on customers desired transition plans
4. Execute plan to help drive value and follow up as needed - edit/transition any existing desired outcomes

Our biggest lessons so far are to have the full playbook available somewhere for CSMs to view (they want to see the details, not just a playbook name) and to be super consistent with your playbook naming conventions so things are easy to find.

Dickey Singh

One more question.  Unrelated.

Do you have different playbooks for where the customer (or more accurately a user at your customer account) is in their journey with your product? Or same playbook handles the journey stage with conditional content?

For instance, drop in support usage during onboarding or adoption is different from drop in support usage from a mature customer in the post adoption retention phase.

Katie Baker

@Dickey Singh We don't currently have different situational playbooks based on stage, but I'd agree the point where we would consider a drop in usage or other situation a risk would definitely vary by stage.

Erika Villarreal

@Katie Baker Hi!! Thanks for sharing this information. I'd love to learn more about the automated playbook for accounts who have had a drop in usage. Do you also have anyhting on accounts who don't have a CSM assigned? I'm trying to create a workflow for customers who are completely inactive. We're just starting our Digital strategy.