partners with our customers to deliver value and positive business outcomes throughout
their journey with GitLab
---
The Customer Success department is part of the [GitLab Sales](/handbook/sales/) function who partners with our customers to deliver value and positive business outcomes throughout their journey with GitLab.
The team can be reached in [Slack channel](https://gitlab.slack.com/archives/customer-success)(internal only).
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@@ -13,68 +14,26 @@ The team can be reached in [Slack channel](https://gitlab.slack.com/archives/cus
To deliver value to all customers by engaging in a consistent, repeatable, and scalable way across defined segments so that customers see the value in their investment with GitLab, and we retain and drive growth within our enterprise customers.
- The mission of the Customer Success Department is to provide these customers with experience in order to:
- Maximize the total value of the customer to GitLab
## Vision Page
The ["Customer Success Vision Page"](/handbook/customer-success/customer-success-vision/) provides the long-term view of company wide success to which the customer success will be building in partnership with the value centers of the GitLab organization (i.e., Marketing, Sales, Product/Engineering, Support, Finance, and IT).
## Department Initiatives
Our large and strategic customers are in need of an ongoing partnership that combines expert guidance with flexibility and adaptability to support their adoption and continuous improvement initiatives.
These customers expect that partner to provide a streamlined, consistent and fully coordinated experience that encompasses the full span of their needs as well as the fully lifecycle of the relationship.
Need to focus on 4 main areas in order to grow in our existing accounts as well as land large and strategic:
1. Awareness
1. Adoption
1. Usage
1. Performance
### Initiative: Awareness
Opportunity to improve the overall awareness of GitLab in order to promote and evangelize our brand and solution in a meaningful way to provide big business impact to our customers so that they believe in our vision and strategy.
### Initiative: Adoption
Ensuring paying customers are successful in their onboarding in order to gain adoption and get the most out of our platform and remain happy, paying GitLab team-members and brand advocates.
The mission of the Customer Success Department is to provide these customers with experience in order to:
- Maximize the total value of the customer to GitLab
Collecting and making use of customer data and insights is key to customer success. It's important to do more with data and when necessary share back with customers, which in turn helps and encourages our customers to improve and drive adoption.
## North Star Metrics
### Initiative: Performance
Our top-level metrics are:
Utilizing built-in monitoring instrumentation and [a scalable HA architecture](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/administration/reference_architectures/index.html), the Customer Success team helps ensure implementations of GitLab are operating at peak performance as organization scale and adopt more features.
## Customer Success Playbooks
See the [Playbooks Page](/handbook/customer-success/playbooks/)
## Customer Terrain Mapping Engagements
Terrain Mapping discovery engagements provide customers with the benefit of GitLab's experience with DevOps methodologies, Git, GitLab, CI, CD, and monitoring by brainstorming a high level, first draft discovery of the elements of a success plan to address various challenges. They are also mapped to professional services that can help with some of the elements identified in the engagement.
See the [Terrain Mapping Engagements Page](/handbook/customer-success/customer-terrain-mapping/)
@@ -85,6 +44,10 @@ See the [Terrain Mapping Engagements Page](/handbook/customer-success/customer-t
-[Demo Systems documentation](/handbook/customer-success/demo-systems/)
### Customer Success Decision Tree
[CSMAE Decision Tree](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Ot-NwW-2LnZI2I38F9K6mj8SgZhCvrN97xxY1MUxLRw) - internal only
## Account Team
The account team is comprised of the Strategic Account Executive/Account Executive, Solutions Architect (Enterprise), and Customer Success Manager.
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@@ -101,7 +64,11 @@ SA owns 1) pre-sales technical evaluation and relationships prior to the initial
### Education and Enablement
As a Customer Sucess team member, it is important to be continuously learning more about our product and related industry topics. The [education and enablement handbook page](/handbook/customer-success/education-enablement/) provides a dashboard of aggregated resources that we encourage you to use to get up to speed.
As a Customer Success team member, it is important to be continuously learning more about our product and related industry topics. The [education and enablement handbook page](/handbook/customer-success/education-enablement/) provides a dashboard of aggregated resources that we encourage you to use to get up to speed.
## Customer Success Playbooks
See the [Playbooks Page](/handbook/customer-success/playbooks/)
### Customer Workshops
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@@ -130,23 +97,27 @@ Outside of Engineering the Customer Success team has the largest concentration o
In an effort to keep AWS spend down, initiatives are being taken to automatically clean up our AWS account. This account is primarily used as a proof of concept for IaC and creating demos for GitLab customers. An automated cleanup script is currently being tested that will tag, shutdown and delete old resources as they are no longer needed. The automation will:
- Turn off and Tag Un-named resources. When resources are created a "Name" tag should be created with a value that's meaningful and indicates who deployed the resource. Example: {initials}-GitLabRunner
- New Resources will be automatically tagged with a Discovered and Expiration tag.
- The Expiration tag is 14 days after the discovery. The script will only a tag an instance once. If you need additional time, please change the date to a reasonable date for cleanup (Add a month or two for prospective customers).
- If a resource needs to be permanent please set termination protection on the instance. This should also include tagging the instance with an explanation on why it's permanent and what its for.
- On expiration the resource will be shut off and left for 7 days.
- In 7 days if the instance is still off a snapshot will be taken and it will be terminated.
- If the instance is still on but the expiration has not been changed it will be terminated.
- New Resources will be automatically tagged with a Discovered and Expiration tag
- The Expiration tag is 14 days after the discovery. The script will only a tag an instance once. If you need additional time, please change the date to a reasonable date for cleanup (Add a month or two for prospective customers)
- If a resource needs to be permanent please set termination protection on the instance. This should also include tagging the instance with an explanation on why it's permanent and what its for
- On expiration the resource will be shut off and left for 7 days
- In 7 days if the instance is still off a snapshot will be taken and it will be terminated
- If the instance is still on but the expiration has not been changed it will be terminated
### Customer Success Tools and Scripts
By customer or internal request, we sometimes develop tools to automate certain GitLab tasks using the API. The resulting tools and scripts are publicly available for everyone to use and contribute to in the [GitLab CS Tools group](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-cs-tools).
**Note: Those tools are not supported by GitLab Support.**
**Note:** Those tools are not supported by GitLab Support.
### Communities of Practice
[Community of Practice](initiatives/communities-of-practice.html) are cross-functional groups of SME's (or aspiring to be!) within the CS organization dedicated to a topic within GitLab or the broader DevOps space. The goal is to build assets, best practices, demonstrations, and share experiences we learn from prospects and customers. In turn, CoP will build broader technical depth within our CS organization to better advise our customers and influence our product roadmap.
Anyone can establish a [Community of Practice](initiatives/communities-of-practice.html), and anyone can be a part of one. To be [efficient](/handbook/values/?source=post_page---------------------------#efficiency) and [transparent](/handbook/values/?source=post_page---------------------------#transparency), we have set guidelines on how Communities of Practice should operate.
## Customer Terrain Mapping Engagements
Terrain Mapping discovery engagements provide customers with the benefit of GitLab's experience with DevOps methodologies, Git, GitLab, CI, CD, and monitoring by brainstorming a high level, first draft discovery of the elements of a success plan to address various challenges. They are also mapped to professional services that can help with some of the elements identified in the engagement.
See the [Terrain Mapping Engagements Page](/handbook/customer-success/customer-terrain-mapping/)
### Frequently Asked Questions
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@@ -174,11 +145,10 @@ Customer Success team members maintain a [FAQ](/handbook/customer-success/faq/)
-[FAQ from prospects](/handbook/sales/faq-from-prospects/)
-[Client Use Cases](/handbook/marketing/use-cases/)
-[Proof of Value Guidelines](/handbook/solutions-architects/tools-and-resources/pov)
-[Account Planning Template for Large/Strategic Accounts](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yQ6W7I30I4gW5Vi-TURIz8ZxnmL88uksCl0u9oyRrew/edit?ts=58b89146#slide=id.g1c9fcf1d5b_0_24))
-[Account Planning Template for Large/Strategic Accounts](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yQ6W7I30I4gW5Vi-TURIz8ZxnmL88uksCl0u9oyRrew/edit?ts=58b89146#slide=id.g1c9fcf1d5b_0_24)
| [Sales Operations](/handbook/sales/field-operations/sales-operations/) | [How to Engage a Solutions Architect](/handbook/solutions-architects#when-and-how-to-engage-a-solutions-architect) | [Client Use Cases](/handbook/marketing/use-cases/) | [Customer Reference Sheet](https://docs.google.com/a/gitlab.com/spreadsheets/d/1Off9pVkc2krT90TyOEevmr4ZtTEmutMj8dLgCnIbhRs/edit?usp=sharing) |
| [Deal Desk](/handbook/sales/field-operations/sales-operations/deal-desk/) | [Account Planning Template for Large Accounts](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yQ6W7I30I4gW5Vi-TURIz8ZxnmL88uksCl0u9oyRrew/edit?ts=58b89146#slide=id.g1c9fcf1d5b_0_24) | [Dealing with Security Questions From Prospects](/handbook/security/#security-questionnaires-for-customers) | [Customer Reference Case Study Dynamic Board](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/strategic-marketing/customer-reference-content/case-study-content/-/boards/1804878?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&) |
| [Field Enablement](/handbook/sales/field-operations/field-enablement/) | [How to Engage a CSM/CSE](/handbook/customer-success/pre-sales-post-sales-transition/) | [How to conduct an executive meeting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSGMyoEFuMY&feature=youtu.be) | [GitLab Support Handbook](/handbook/support/) |
