What Makes a Good CTA
Gainsight NXT
What makes a Good CTA?
Cockpit is the day-to-day workspace for CSMs. Calls-to-action, or CTAs, are tied to customers and are the backbone of Cockpit. Cockpit allows the CSMs to work proactively in creating an action (CTA/Task) based on an activity that has occurred or some situation that exists or there are some recurring tasks that should be scheduled.
The benefits of using Cockpit include:
- Standardization- ensure that you have a single source of truth for your team’s action items
- Collaboration - enables collaboration by making your action items, and associated updates, available to others in your organization
- Integration - links your action items to your Opportunities (Expansion), Activities, Persons, Cases, and much more
- Automation - configure rules to automatically trigger action items based on customer data or time factors
- Reportability - report on your action items to communicate progress to your team
To learn more about Cockpit, click Cockpit Overview.
This article explains about what makes a “Good CTA” and how best you can use Cockpit in your day-to-day workspace.
When to Create a CTA: CTAs are easy to create, but CSM should make sure that the CTA has an action that can be taken and hence the name “Call to action”. Ensure that you are creating a CTA, that has a task or set of tasks that should be completed by the assignee within the due date. Creating a CTA, just for awareness, can be valuable, but may end up being clutter in a CSM cockpit.
The effective way to define CTA attributes are:
CTA Title
Ensure that the CTA Title is very specific to the action/task and to the point. There is limited space in the Cockpit when viewing the CTAs, so be cognizant.
Note: CTA's in Cockpit will max out at 1000 in each view. You can use the built in filters/groupings to narrow your search and it will still respect the 1000 views.
CTA Priority
This field can be used for filtering the priorities within the Cockpit, so be smart about the priorities for each and every CTA generated. Perhaps keep a list or document of all the CTAs possible and make sure as you add more CTAs to the system, the priority of each CTA is consistent with other CTAs at that same priority.
CTA Type
The CTA types shipped out of the box work well. But, you may create a new type (category), especially if you want the CSMs to be able to sort on a specific class or special type of CTAs.
CTA Status
Take a step back and walk into the future a little. Think about the CTA reports that you want to create in 6 or 12 or 18 months. You may want to add CTA statuses to segregate or segment at a later date. For example, CTA was closed but ineffective, CTA was closed but unsuccessful. CTA was closed, no customer response. You can have your own meanings of the word unsuccessful or ineffective. Also, while the CTA is “in progress”, you will most likely want more statuses, like “Waiting on Customer”, “Waiting on Support”, etc.
CTA Owner
Don’t forget CSMs are not the only people that can be CTA assignees. CSM can assign CTAs to another person in your organisation also.
CTA Due Date
When should the CTA be due ? The CSMs are most likely going to use this data field to sort through “what to work on next” in the Cockpit. Give the CTA enough time to be completed. Run some periodic reports during a time period. Is a particular CTA always being completed after the Due Date? Or always being competed 3 days before its due? Then, you might want to adjust the Due Date when the CTA is generated.
CTA Comment
Provide guidance and reminders to the reader according to the purpose and meaning of the CTA. Point to specific objects, such as opportunities, cases, or persons if the CTA is related to any of these items. Add pointers to process documentation as to how to process the CTA or help notes that gives the assignee reminders of how to best complete the CTA.