RealVNC is a leading provider of remote access solutions, helping some of the biggest companies in the world connect people through devices. As the company that pioneered the RFB (“Remote Framebuffer”) internet protocol that is now the standard across the industry, RealVNC is at the forefront of its evolution, with software in more than one billion devices worldwide. The company has recently worked with nCloud Integrators to implement Gainsight Essentials Plus.
Francesca Barnes, Customer Success Manager Team Lead with RealVNC, discusses this implementation and provides insight about the benefits of setting specific business outcomes at the beginning of the process.
What was RealVNC setting out to accomplish with its Gainsight implementation?
Our first goal was to have objective data about our customers and automation to impact our health scores, painting a clearer picture of our customers and identifying potential risks sooner. This allows us to streamline processes, scale our team, and have a positive, consistent interaction with all of our customers. We also wanted to further enhance our user experience, product adoption and customer retention rates. As part of this, we needed to really understand how our customers are using our products as well as identify accounts at risk earlier so we can mitigate those risks quickly.
What has significantly helped with user experience, product adoption and customer retention?
Our customer health score is now based on a number of different data sets so we have a more accurate picture of each customer. In the past, we only had the CSM perspective and sentiment on the account. Today, our health score is based on overall customer experience with data inputs that include NPS scores, support tickets and CSM sentiment, as well as customer outcomes, which includes deployment time, engagement with the solution and milestone achievements. Tracking these experience and outcome key variables enables us to see how customers are adopting our products and achieving a return on their investment.
Was there anything unique about your Gainsight implementation?
We have complex data that needs to be brought into Gainsight for everything to work. nCloud Integrators helped us identify the key data fields that we needed in order to configure the system correctly. Our consultant has been down this road before, so he was able to pull from past experience to guide us in the best ways to integrate the data. Now that everything is centralized with the necessary integrations so our CSMs have access to valuable customer information, and managers can view simple, digestible reports.
The overall Gainsight implementation seemed challenging at first, but nCloud Integrators helped us set very clear, specific goals at the beginning of the project. With these business outcomes in mind, we were able to accomplish what we wanted at each phase of the rollout.
What do you think is the biggest advantage to using nCloud Integrators to help with your implementation?
nCloud Integrators’ implementation process was straightforward with a clear structure - and expectations for the rollout were understood by all parties from the very beginning. Also if something was complex, our nCloud consultant would walk us through that process step-by-step and really educate us so we would have the knowledge to move forward independently. In addition, nCloud was accommodating to our needs and flexible with the time zone differences since we are headquartered in Cambridge, whilst they are in the States.
Even though it is early in your use of Gainsight, do you have any results that you can share?
Having the right data to feed the health scores and the reporting has helped us give a clear, overall visual perspective on each customer. Also, everything is now standardized with Playbooks and CTAs, so nobody misses a beat and we all understand step-by-step what needs to be done. CTAs are triggered based on different life-cycle events so we know each customer gets the attention they need along their journey.
Can you talk about an automated process that enables your team to be more efficient?
We streamlined our Executive Business Review (EBR) process. A CTA triggers so a CSM knows that it is time for an EBR, and then we have a Playbook with emails and presentation templates so it is a consistent experience for each customer that can be personalized as needed. Also, the pre-work leading up to these meetings is so much easier because now we have a centralized location with all the information about how each customer interacts with our products, use cases, and the customer’s overall onboarding experience. We really understand a lot more about each customer going into the meeting and have all the key data points in one centralized location.
What advice would you give to others looking to implement Gainsight?
Make sure that you know where your data is and how you want to set it up at the beginning of the implementation. If you have the data, then the other parts of the implementation will fall into place. Then be clear on the business outcomes you want to achieve with the initial rollout. Gainsight is so customizable that you could go in a number of different directions at each phase, but if you have a clear picture of what you want to achieve, then the decisions you need to make are a lot easier.