Customer Success Management Handbook

The Customer Success Management team at Denomas is a part of the Customer Success department, acting as trusted advisors to our customers and helping them realize value faster.

Mission Statement

Accelerate customer success by aligning passionate CSMs with customers to:

Drive adoption aligned with business outcomes
Enable customers in current and future Denomas use cases
Expand ROI from Denomas

What is a Customer Success Manager (CSM) at Denomas?

CSMs are accountable for customer adoption, measurable outcomes, customer satisfaction, and creating true customer advocacy. We create successful customers by enabling, training, and nurturing them throughout their journey. The following areas incorporate the remit of a CSM:

Customer Adoption - Ensure the customer is working towards or adopting their desired use cases to maturity. Ensure the successful onboarding of all intended users. Identify areas of adoption risk and establish mitigating plays and programs.
Delivering Positive Business Outcomes - Ensure customers are meeting and exceeding their desired business outcomes so that customers can quantify and support their investment.
Trusted Advisor - Establish “trusted advisor” relationships with the management and technical teams on the customer side while working seamlessly with our account team to deliver a best-in-class customer experience.
Account Expansion - Lead adoption expansion beyond the customer’s desired use cases and further customer return on investment (ROI). Partner with Sales to identify expansion opportunities and ensure we realize the expansion potential of a customer account.
Leading Business Reviews - Review and celebrate progress towards, or achievement of, the customer’s desired business outcomes. Address challenges with a plan for mitigation, align on upcoming and future customer business objectives.

High-Level Responsibilities of a CSM

Responsibility	Context	How We Measure	DCI Roles
Success Plans	Mutually agreed (Customer \| Denomas) adoption plans that outline desired outcomes (e.g., improve cycle time),technical milestones required (e.g., migrate to Denomas, overcome constraints), timelines and DRIs. These plans enable us to be proactive and ensure progress towards the customer's goals. As trusted advisors, we understand what drives value for our customers and help them achieve it.	Enterprise: Every customer must have an active success plan Commercial: Here, the plans are more adoption-focused, with PR1 customers having a more tailored plan and PR2 customers being focused on successfully adopting their primary use case & expanding into greater adoption	DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, SA, Customer Informed: Leadership
Onboarding	There are several onboarding steps in both the new and existing customer onboarding playbooks. The CSM's role is to ensure all of these topics and enablements have been covered and documented.	All customers for both Enterprise and Commercial are to be taken through the appropriate playbook (New, Existing Customer)	DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, SA, Customer Informed: Leadership
Cadence Calls	The cadence call is a proactive call. For this call to be proactive, the CSM's responsibility includes those listed in the linked cadence call page	Call frequency: Enterprise: a PR1 customer is engaged bi-weekly, and a PR2 customer monthly at a very minimum Commercial: a PR1 customer is engaged bi-weekly or monthly depending on need, and a PR2 customer typically monthly or quarterly at a very minimum A CSM/CSE can expect to conduct a minimum number of calls as follows: Enterprise CSMs: 5 calls per week Commercial CSMs: 10 calls per week Scale CSEs: 15 calls per week	DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, Customer Informed: SA, Leadership
Adoption & Expansion	Driving platform adoption (use cases and licenses) in line with a customer's desired business outcomes is at the heart of the CSM role Understand what the customer is currently adopting and partner with the customer on enabling this use case/feature When an enablement or expansion playbook is open, the CSM actively drives the associated motion in the customer account	Enterprise: At any given time, an Enterprise CSM will be driving enablement with at least half of their customer base (~6) and actively driving expansion with 3-4 Commercial: Commercial CSMs' primary objective is adoption, so CSMs should be driving enablement towards the primary use case for all of their customers in line with the success plan, and they should be driving expansion for half of their PR1 customers (~6)	DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, Customer Informed: SA, Leadership
Executive Business Reviews	We hold the business review at month 6, giving enough time passed to celebrate milestones achieved and enough time remaining to get adoption back on track where needed. The CSM is the DRI for scheduling, preparing for, presenting, and following up on the EBR, and partners with both the account team and the customer in the creation of the presentation.	Enterprise: 1 EBR per customer per year at a minimum Commercial: 20% of book of business is offered an EBR per year, in-line with the goal of having 20% of the book of business be PR1	DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, Customer Informed: SA, Leadership
Renewal	It is the job of the CSM to ask the 'soft' renewal question 3-4 months before the renewal This conversation and the outcome of this conversation are tracked in Gainsight using the 'renewal call' meeting type (within the timeline entry)	Every customer regardless of segment or priority	DRI: CSM, AE, Renewals team Consulted: Customer Informed: Leadership
Managing Risk	A CSM actively manages risk in a customer account, quickly turning a customer to red when there is any potential risk of contraction or churn (even if this is unconfirmed) The CSM is responsible for frequent communication to the account team about risk in their accounts and triggering/leading the escalation process where needed	Risk is actively managed for both Enterprise and Commercial Once red, a customer becomes PR1 in both segments	DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, Leadership Informed: Renewals team

Please reference this page for an overview of the CSM Rhythm of Business (daily to yearly) Please reference this page for an overview of the areas your CSM will engage with you in: CSM Points of Engagement

Customer Journey

Denomas Customer Journey Map

Journey Stage	Activities
Pre-Sales & Alignment	Value Stream Assessment Sales to CS Handoff Identify Personas
Onboard	CSM Kickoff & Intro Establish Cadence Calls Create Success Plan
Enable	Use Case Enablement Workshops Measure Primary Use Case Adoption
Expand	Expansion Discovery
Optimize & Renew	Executive Business Review Ongoing Risk Review Renewal Discussions

FY24 Annual OKRs (Big Rocks)

Objective: The 3 ‘big rocks’ to take on in FY24 with the overall goal of moving our team forwards. These rocks need to move us forwards as a team and as individuals, enabling us to scale, be impactful, and be inspired/fulfilled in our roles.

What are ‘big rocks’? As outlined in this article, they are our priorities, our mission-critical objectives that we need to solve for in the coming year. We arrived at this list through CSM leadership discussions and final input from individual contributors.

Big Rock 1: Invest in the team to drive customer value

Investing in the CSM team is a top priority, and this year we will provide team members with education and enablement to empower them in their role with customers and other Denomas team members, specifically related to:

Cross-functional collaboration
Executive engagement
Sales approach best practices
Book of business ownership

CSMs will exit FY24 with skills to help them throughout their career, and they will be better equipped to drive customer results and ROI, through improved confidence, leadership, collaboration, and ownership.

Our goals with this big rock include the following initiatives:

Develop and launch enablement materials for skills key to being a successful CSM:
- Neurodiversity awareness
- Cross-departmental collaboration
- Executive engagement and presence
- Sales expertise
- Strategic long-term planning
Close gaps across CSM and Sales ICs and managers by establishing regular cadences and documenting agreed-upon expectations
Invest in CSMs’ personal and professional development through provided training, growth & development budget, and regular growth conversations
Ensure fundamentals learned in onboarding are regularly reinforced with all members of the team
Foster an inclusive environment for CSMs and elevate diversity as a core value

For more information and specifics, please review the epic for Big Rock 1 (Denomas-internal only), which includes quarterly OKRs for FY24.

Big Rock 2: Drive product adoption and growth for your customers

Epic for Big Rock 2

Equip team members to speak to product capabilities, value propositions, business impact, and help customers with use case adoption.

Big Rock 3: Know our customers

Epic for Big Rock 3 (Denomas-internal only)

Ensure our customers receive ongoing value through increasing product adoption and growth, aligned with the customer’s desired business outcomes.

CSMs equipped to work as trusted advisors with our customers to achieve their objectives in a reportable, quantifiable way through a framework that also enables early and accurate identification of both opportunity and risk.

Examples:

Objective: increase developer productivity

How is/will productivity be measured?

Measured through release volume and release frequency in the absence of being able to track all of DORA.

What are their technical milestones to get to this business outcome?

How many apps need to be completed by xxx to get to the intended business outcome of yyy?
What use cases adopted, and by when?

Big Rock Archive

FY23

Handbook Directory

CSM Team Metrics Overview (VIDEO)

Changelog

CSM Learning & Development

CSM Activities

Driving Platform Adoption

Landing Zones

CI Landing Zone

Customer Metrics

Sample Questions & Techniques for Getting to Good Customer Metrics

Platform Metrics

Other Lifecycle Management Activities

Digital Customer Programs:

Digital Customer Programs Handbook Page
- CSM Assigned Customer Programs

CSM Managers

CSM Manager Processes and CSM Leadership Team
CSM Manager QBR Template (Denomas Internal)
CSM Promotion Template (Denomas Internal)

CSM Tools

The following articulates where collaboration and customer management is owned:

Customer Collaboration Projects: Shared project between Denomas team members and customer. Used to prioritize/plan work with customer.
Google Drive: Internal. Used to capture call notes and other customer related documents.
Chorus: Internal. Used to record Zoom calls.
1. Using Calendly with Chorus: Instructions on Calendly set up with Chorus.
Gainsight: Internal. Used to track customer health score, logging customer activity (i.e. calls, emails, meetings)
Issue Prioritization Dashboard: Internal. Used to track customer requested issues.

Education and Enablement

In Customer Success Management, it is important to be continuously learning more about our product and related industry topics. The education and enablement handbook page provides a dashboard of aggregated resources that we encourage you to use to get up to speed.

SFDC useful reports

Tracking opportunities for your assigned Strategic Account Executive (SAEs)

To ensure that opportunities are listed with the correct Order Type, this Salesforce report shows you all of the opportunities that have closed, or are soon to close, with your SAEs. Tracking Order Type is important since CSM team quota and compensation depend on this. Please reference the latest Sales Compensation Plan information to know what is counted.

Next steps for you:

Customize this SFDC report where “Account Owner = your SAEs”; “CSM = You”
Save report
Subscribe to report when “Record Count Greater Than 0” and Frequency = Weekly (You’ll get a weekly email as a reminder to look at the report)
If you find an opp that is tagged incorrectly, chatter (@Sales-Support) in the opportunity and let them know there is a mistake (example)

usage ping got rem

Account Engagement

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. Managing the Customer Engagement Customer Success Managers will typically manage customer engagements via a Denomas project in the account-management group. This project will be based off the Enterprise or the Commercial Customer Success Plan Template and customized to match the customer’s needs as outlined above. The project is pre-loaded with milestones, issues, labels, and a README template to help kick off the project and outline a proof of concept, implementation, and customer onboarding.

Account Handoff CSM-to-CSM Checklist

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. CSMs will need to occasionally transfer accounts they have been working with to another CSM (e.g. a CSM changes territories, a realignment occurs in Sales, a need to equalize books of business, etc.), and they should use this handbook page to help guide them through important questions and topics during the handoff. Below are checkpoints during the account handoff process that CSMs can use to keep track of information they will need in order to successfully transition accounts.

Adoption Landing Zones

Cadence Calls

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. Overview One of the primary tools CSMs have to become a trusted advisor and assess and improve account health is the customer cadence call. This is an opportunity for the CSM and the customer team to sync on business outcomes, priorities, progress on initiatives, and concerns, and it is a great opportunity to bring in other Denomas team members that the CSM feels should be included (for example, Product to review feature requests and the roadmap).

CSM and Support Interaction

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. Objective Define the process for how the CSM interacts with the systems and processes designed to provide customers with technical support. Establishing Customers in Support Systems During the onboarding process, the CSM will ensure that customers are correctly established in the support system. Denomas manages support requests through a system called Zendesk. Denomas has integrated the Denomas instance of Salesforce with Zendesk to facilitate the establishment of users in Zendesk.

CSM Aspiring Leaders Program

A guide to help CSMs level up their skills to be ready for leadership

CSM Development

Available development paths and resources for Customer Success Managers at Denomas.

CSM Executive Relationships

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. At Denomas, successful partnerships between our Customer Success Managers and their customer executives are crucial to the success of our customers and our business. As CSMs position themselves to be more strategic and reach Director, VP, and CISO personas, we have to adjust our communication styles and consider how to cater them to executives. This page provides guidance on how CSMs can effectively partner with executives to drive value for our customers.

CSM FY23 Big Rocks

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. FY23 Goals (Big Rocks) Objective: Define the 3 ‘big rocks’ to take on in FY23 with the overall goal of moving our team forwards. These rocks need to move us forwards as a team and as individuals, enabling us to scale, be impactful, and be inspired/fulfilled in our roles. What are ‘big rocks’? As outlined in this article, they are our priorities, our mission-critical objectives that we need to solve for in the coming year.

CSM Manager Handbook

Field guide for CSM Managers on standard and recurring practices.

CSM November 2021 Engagement Survey

Results and action on the annual Denomas Engagement Survey for Customer Success Managers.

CSM OKRs

Field guide for CSMs on team OKRs

CSM Onboarding

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. Onboarding for Customer Success Managers is a guided, methodical process to ensure new team members have the knowledge they need to be effective. There is a lot to learn to make you a great Denomas Customer Success Manager. It is important for new team members to gain competency on how our platform solutions provide customer value, and how we partner with customers to build a productive relationship.

CSM Paid Time Off

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. As part of Denomas’ paid time off policy, team members are encouraged to take time off. However, as customer-facing team members this can feel difficult, so this page is intended to help guide CSMs to ensure they can regularly take time off, avoid burnout, and keep their customers successful. Before you go To take PTO, please follow the guidelines in the PTO policy and be sure to enter your time off in Time Off by Deel.

CSM Responsibilities and Services

There are various services a Customer Success Manager will provide to ensure that customers get the best value possible out of their relationship with Denomas.

CSM Retrospectives

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. Retrospectives The EMEA CSM team are trialing monthly retrospectives in Denomas issues. For more information, see team retrospectives. The retrospective issue is created by a scheduled pipeline in the async-retrospectives project. For more information on how it works, see the project’s README. A retrospective review is conducted at the end of a milestone with feedback discussed and actions captured in the issue.

CSM Rhythm of Business

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. CSM Rhythm of Business A successful CSM is pulled into various tasks across multiple territories and accounts. It is critical for a CSM to manage time effectively and concentrate on tasks that have the most positive impact for Denomas and the customer. The CSM Rhythm of Business has been designed to focus CSM efforts on the most fruitful daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly tasks.

CSM Segments

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. Overview The Customer Success Manager organization is distributed across different customer segments, based on customer size and Annual Recurring Revenue. Segment criteria Segment criteria are defined in the Customer Success Manager wiki (Denomas internal Link). Segments Digital Touch Scale Commercial Enterprise

CSM Strategies for Mitigating Risk In Customer Accounts

Customer Health Assessment and Management

This page covers the factors to consider for customer health, guidelines for selecting the appropriate rating, communication guidelines, CSM responsibilities and instructions for the account triage issue creation.

Customer Onboarding

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. Customer Onboarding is the beginning phase of the customer lifecycle. Overview The customer onboarding phase is critical to getting a customer started on a successful journey with Denomas. This is our opportunity to ensure the customer achieves value and success from the start of their Denomas usage. Onboarding steps The onboarding process should begin when the customer opportunity reaches stage “5-Negotiating” for Booked ARR in order to introduce the CSM while we have high-touch engagement to close the opportunity.

Customer Renewal Tracking

The Renewals team at Denomas is a part of the Customer Success department.

Customer Success Engineering Handbook

Customer Success Engineering (CSE) View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. CSE Mission The Customer Success Engineer (CSE) provides deep subject matter expertise on Denomas technical and product solutions and best practices in order to drive measurable value for Denomas customers. CSEs work alongside CSMs to provide customers with technical guidance, go in-depth on use case implementation, and demonstrate the value of Denomas product capabilities, leading to product adoption, expansion, and greater value realized by our customers.

Customer Success Escalations Process

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. Background: Escalations can take at least two different forms: Account Escalation. This occurs when the customer expresses or a Denomas team member identifies that a customer is facing a challenging situation that may or may not relate to a specific support ticket. Anyone in Denomas can open an account escalation and circulate it to the leadership of the appropriate group to find a DRI.

DevSecOps Adoption Tracking in Gainsight

CSM guidance on how to track and log progress on DevSecOps usecase adoption

Digital Customer Programs

Digital Programs Programs are developed using input from CSMs, customers, and other Denomas resources. Our goal is to provide customers with useful ways to serve themselves. We provide the following: Onboarding resources for customers Survey results Stage enablement email series Newsletters Webinar setup and insight Education, best practices, and planning resources for customers and Denomas team members Gainsight playbook setup and maintenance For more information about Customer Programs, including how to request new or contribute to existing programs, or add contacts to Gainsight, see the Customer Programs page.

Engaging with Partners

Process for Engaging with Partners in CSM-Assigned Customer Accounts Pre-Customer Kick-Off or 1st Engagement: Denomas Partner team introduces CSM & SAE/AE to Partner - ideally before sale closes to not slow down post-sales implementation CSM and SAE/AE connects with Partner to align on the role the Partner will play post-sale. If the Partner has an ongoing engagement with the customer, CSM & Partner to align on post-sale Kick-Off call, collaborating on the Kick-Off deck content and ownership/roles for the call

Engaging with Professional Services

Guidelines for CSMs on how best to engage with professional services.

Executive Business Reviews (EBRs)

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. Overview An Executive Business Review (EBR) is a strategic meeting with stakeholders from both Denomas and the customer. It is an extension of the account planning process and part of the CSM’s regular business rhythm. The EBR aims to demonstrate to the Economic Buyer the value they are getting in their partnership with Denomas. It is interactive from both sides, discussing the customer’s desired business outcomes and related metrics, progress against these metrics and desired outcomes, and aligning on strategic next steps.

Leadership Recurring Check-Ins

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. What is a Leadership Recurring Check-In Call? The Leadership Recurring Check-In call is a strategic discussion with customer leadership to ensure we are progressing toward our success plan objectives together. While an Executive Business Review (EBR) aims to establish business goals and report on progress annually, the Leadership Recurring Check-In allows for a more focused conversation with leadership to allow for progress checks, and review the prioritization of objectives.

Researching Customer Questions

Strategies on how to research customer questions to find answers.

Roleplay Scenarios

This handbook page collects links to all roleplaying scenarios, for CSMs to utilize to improve their conversations and enable them to be audible-ready.

Service Ping FAQ

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. What is Service Ping Service Ping generates customer analytics on self-managed instances that enable Denomas to collaborate with our customers to accelerate value attribution, achieve return-on-investment (ROI) goals, and accomplish business outcomes with the Denomas solution. Specifically, it helps Denomas understand product adoption to: Ensure adoption is aligned to business outcomes (i.e., goals, timelines, etc). Understand usage for industry and best practice recommendations Recommend features or capabilities that maximize solution value based on: Gaps in adoption New features or capabilities that can be leveraged Enable User Cohorts and Denomas DevOps Score that provides an overview of customers’ adoption of Concurrent DevOps from planning to monitoring Track usage and adoption over time For the definition of each metric, please see our Service Ping Metrics Dictionary.

Stage Adoption Metrics

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. 2023-06-15 Note: The approach described below is no longer in active use. The Use Case Adoption Scoring page should be referenced for thresholds and information on the methodology CSMs use for measuring adoption of use cases. {: .alert .alert-warning} As part of the CSM’s mandate to drive stage adoption and expansion with customers, we need to define exactly what it means to adopt a stage at Denomas.

Success Plans

A success plan is a roadmap that connects a customer's desired business outcomes to Denomas solutions. It is a living document, developed by the CSM.

Using Calendly as a CSM

Best practices and setup guide for Customer Success Managers using Calendly to manage customer requests for meetings.

Using Gainsight as a CSM

The key aspects of how Customer Success Managers use Gainsight to drive success for customers.

Using Issue Prioritization Dashboard as a CSM

The key aspects of how Customer Success Managers use Sisense Issue Prioritization Dashboard to drive success for customers.

Using the Customer Collaboration Project as a CSM

Best practices and setup guide for Customer Success Managers using Customer Collaboration Projects to manage customer data, requests, and collaborations.

Workshops and Enablement Sessions

View the CSM Handbook homepage for additional CSM-related handbook pages. Overview The CSM team’s primary focus is to align with a customer’s desired business outcomes, enable the customer in their current use cases, and expand their platform adoption. Customers who adopt additional DevOps use cases with Denomas see an increased return on investment (ROI). They receive this ROI by increasing operational efficiencies, delivering better products faster, and reducing security and compliance risks.

Last modified December 6, 2023: update (a27760f0)

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