This article will walk you through how to create Playbooks in the Cockpit tab, along with some examples of when Playbooks could be used.

What is a Playbook?

Playbooks are a collection of pre-defined tasks with relative dates. Playbooks help level the playing field for your whole CSM team and get everyone on the same page. They help ensure best practices are followed across the board, and provide a system for reviewing and revising the practices based on lessons learned and evolving needs. Playbooks can be used to standardize the process a user follows when a call to action is fired, or when an event occurs. Playbooks can be used to effectively answer questions such as:

  • How should I handle a poor NPS® score from a customer?
  • How do I address a decline in usage activity from a customer instance?
  • What do I need to do to prepare for a Quarterly Business Review with a customer?

Gainsight Admins can manage user permissions to create and edit Playbooks. For more information, refer to Assigning Playbook Permissions.

Note: After assigning permissions, if you are still unable to view Playbooks in Cockpit, disable the ad-blockers, used, if any. 

Playbook Templates

Playbook Templates

Gainsight's Vault contains best practice templates for various asset types, including Playbooks. From Cockpit > Playbooks, click the import button (circled in red above) to preview and download Playbooks into your own org. For more information on accessing Playbooks in Gainsight Vault, refer to Import Email Templates. To view a complete list of all the assets available in Gainsight's Vault, refer to Import Email Templates.

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Themes/folders are organized in a hierarchical structure on the left. You can click on the desired theme to view assets. When you download a Playbook (using the download icon), you'll be asked to map some values to the corresponding fields in your org. Downloaded Playbooks will have the theme name appended to their name. After downloading, you can customize the Playbook as needed.

Additional Playbook Templates

Additional Playbook Templates

In addition to the Playbooks available via Vault, along the left side of the page, you'll find existing Playbooks, some of which were available out of the box with Gainsight. As with the Playbooks from Vault, you can use these as-is, or edit them as needed, and apply them to CTAs manually or via the rules engine.

Create Playbooks

Create Playbooks

To create a new playbook:

  1. Navigate to Cockpit > Playbooks.
  2. Select the Account or Relationship radio button, depending on which one you want to create Playbooks for.
  3. Click +PLAYBOOK.
  4. If the playbook is for Account, enter the following details:
    • Type: Select the CTA type that this playbook can be applied to. The All type allows you to use the created playbook on all CTA Types.
    • Name: Enter the playbook name.
    • Comments: optional.

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5. If the playbook is for Relationships, enter or select the following details:

  • Relationship Type: Select the appropriate relationship type. For more information, refer to Setting Up Relationships.
  • Type: Select the CTA type that this playbook can be applied to. The All type allows you to use the created playbook on all CTA Types.
  • Name: Enter the playbook name.
  • Comments: optional.

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4. Click Save.

Once you create a playbook, you can add tasks to the playbook.

Add Task(s)

Add Task(s)

Before you start building out Playbook tasks, we recommend that you assess whether they're helpful or necessary to include for your CSMs. A few tips to consider:

  • Tasks should either be helpful reminders for CSMs which they might otherwise forget to complete, or that the business wants to ensure compliance with for a particular process. If the tasks doesn't meet at least one of these criteria, don't add it to the Playbook.
  • If two tasks are likely to be completed at the same time, enter them as one task.

To add a task to a playbook:

  1. On Playbook Details, click + Add Task.
  2. Optionally, click the sync icon to automatically sync the playbook tasks with Salesforce.  Alternatively, you can switch off the Sync icon present at the playbook level, and switch on the Sync icon at the individual task level. Syncing allows the tasks to appear on the SFDC Account page, for non-Gainsight users awareness of new tasks.
  3. On Add Task, select or enter appropriate values for the following:
  • Owner: Choose CTA Owner if this will be dynamic or pick a static name from list of users.
  • Subject: The task subject. For example, contact the power user.
  • Task Type: Select either standard Task, or Email Task. (see below for more information)
  • Date: Assign Date + [number] Days The due date by which the task has to be completed. This date information is filled in when the Playbook is applied against a CTA. Note: the task due date is different from the CTA due data potentially, and task due dates can cause a CTA to be marked overdue in Cockpit. For more information on due dates, refer to Managing Due Dates.
    • Skip all weekends: If selected, this will skip all weekends, if any, while calculating the due date. For example, if a task’s assign date is 8th Jul, 2015 (Wed) and the due date is set as Assign Date + 10 Days, the task’s due date after skipping 2 weekends will be 22nd Jul, 2015 (Wed).
    • Skip weekend if due on a weekend: If selected, while calculating the due date, this will skip weekends if the due date falls on weekends. For example, if a task’s assign date is 8th Jul, 2015 and the due date is set as Assign Date + 10 Days, the task’s due date after skipping 18th (Sat) and 19th (Sun) will be 20th Jul, 2015 (Mon).
    • Do not skip weekend: If selected, while calculating the due date, this will not skip weekends even if the due date falls on weekends. For example, if a task’s assign date is 8th Jul, 2015 (Wed) and the due date is set as Assign Date + 10 Days, the task’s due date will be 18th Jul, 2015 (Sat).
  • Priority: The priority of the task created.
  • Status: The status of the task created.
  • Description: The description of the task being created.

4. Click Save.

5. Optionally, repeat Steps 1 to 4 to add multiple tasks to the playbook.

See Also:

Email Tasks

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When you select Email as the Task Type, you will be prompted to select a Journey Orchestrator email template to associate with the Task, and to map any tokens in the template. From the Cockpit > Task detail view, end users can modify the template, select a recipient, and send the email. When you click the Reset icon, the latest content from Email Template will be imported here (Playbook task), and existing tokens will be reset. However, the latest content will not be reflected in the existing CTAs (where a Playbook containing this Email Template is used). 

For more information on configuring Email Tasks, see Configure Email Tasks to Send from Cockpit.

Playbook Task Order

In Playbooks, you can drag and drop the tasks to change their display order. Additionally, in Administration > Tasks , Admins can decide whether tasks should display in Cockpit based on the Playbook order, or based on Due Date. Currently, this option applies to all Playbooks, and is not configurable per Playbook.

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Managing Task Dependencies

You can assign a task’s due date based on another task’s due date or close date. In the following image, Task 2’s due date is Task 1’s due date + 2 days, whereas Task 1’s due date is the CTA due date - 2 days.

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Tip: We recommend that Playbook owners test any new Playbooks, or changes to existing Playbooks, to ensure understanding of the impact of due date dependencies on the CSM's workflow. For example, create a test CTA and apply your Playbook to the CTA. Then communicate with your CSM team about how the new due date dependencies work for that Playbook.

Managing Due Dates

You are provided with CTA due date, Task due date, and Task close date options that you can use in case of task dependencies.
 

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Assign Date: Date of assign a task

CTA due date: The date when a CTA is due. CTA due date cannot be less than any of its Task due dates.

Task due date: The date when a task is due

Task close date: The date when a task is closed

None: If there is no due date, or you want to allow the CSM to select it in Cockpit.

For more information on How to Manage CTA and Task Due Dates, click Manage CTA and Task Due Dates.

Report on Playbooks

It's not possible to export Playbooks from Gainsight, however, you can build a report on Playbooks. In the Report Builder, create a report on the "Playbooks Task" object. After you build your report, you can export to Excel or display it on a dashboard. 

You may want to include the following fields in your "Playbook Task" report: playbook id name, subject, description, display order, due date source name, delta days, priority, status, and then optionally 'skip option name' and 'has dynamic owner'.  

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