As Customer Success enters its second decade, the industry has never been hotter. Organizations are seeing how the efforts of Customer Success professionals have a direct impact on a business’s bottom line.
Katy Filley, Senior Customer Success Manager (CSM) at FloQast, is a great example of this new breed of Customer Success pro. She jumped into Customer Success from the world of Finance, and she has brought her unique perspective to bear in helping FloQast’s clients achieve their goals.
Now that she’s officially a Customer Success veteran, Filley’s frontline experience has left her with key insights and strategies to succeed as a CSM. In a recent webinar, Unleash the Full Potential of CS for CSMs: Getting the Most of Gainsight, we sat down with Filley to find out how she approaches Customer Success, how she goes about her day, and what amazing results look like for her.
Three Big Things: Lessons From the Field
Filley realized early on that having a dedicated Customer Success Management Platform created a lot of advantages for CSMs like her. At FloQast, her team uses Gainsight to establish a central source of truth around customer health, track adoption and progress along the customer journey, and keep customers aligned on important outcomes for their business.
Filley’s first priority was understanding the health of the customers in her book of business. There are many different ways to measure customer health, and many disparate sources of information. Gainsight helped her consolidate all the customer data into a quick and easy overview.
While customer health is a snapshot in time, adoption and progress are always in motion, tracing the trajectory of Customer Success. Tracking usage and other metrics with Gainsight has helped Filley help clients when and where they need it—while keeping an eye out for risk.
Finally, Filley has used Gainsight to document outcomes and develop success plans. These tools helped her gain alignment with customers—then demonstrate value at touchpoints like Quarterly Business Reviews.
Making the Most of Every Day
“I use Gainsight on a daily basis. It has been one of the keys to my success and I honestly don’t know what I would do without it,” Filley says. She starts her day with Dashboards, which gives her a quick overview of important insights and metrics for each client at a glance.
The FloQast CS Ops team custom built their dashboards in collaboration with Gainsight.
Filley also loves Gainsight Timeline; in fact, she uses it for every client call. “It’s a really great way to document every client interaction, whether it’s a training or a business review,” Filley says. “One best practice I love is leaving a reminder at the bottom of the Timeline, so things don’t fall by the wayside.” Filley also uses Timeline to help FloQast’s account managers prep for renewal discussions with customers.
Overall, Gainsight helps Filley stay organized and in control and even enables her to set key reminders for herself to take action. “I’m giving myself a gift by giving myself a reminder for future Katy to contact a client, or dig back into this or that project,” she says.
Achieving Real Wins
Filley has been pleased with the results of using Gainsight. One major win has been more effective and valuable client calls. The transparency and documentation provided by Gainsight have helped her keep both herself and her clients aware of any progress.
Gainsight has also helped Filley get ahead of risk. For example, she recently lost the product champion at one of her more important clients. Using Gainsight, she identified the issue immediately and was able to start identifying a new contact the very next day.
Success at Scale
Customer Success scalability has been a big driver for the FloQast team. “We want to grow, but keep a quality customer experience top of mind,” Filley explains. To that end, they have leveraged Gainsight automation to manage their NPS survey program. “With Gainsight, we have email templates generated to quickly send to the client, so we can get on top of any negative feedback.”
Unleashing the Power of People
Ultimately, Customer Success is about putting customers at the center of the customer experience, and Gainsight is helping Filley do just that. “I love interacting with people. I love helping people and making their lives better,” she says. “It’s been such a fun industry to be a part of over the last few years, and it truly has blown up.”
Learn more
Are you ready to unleash the full potential of customer success for your organization? Check out the full webinar, Unleash the Full Potential of CS for CSMs: Getting the Most of Gainsight
