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Anyone else built a dashboard to reduce dependence on CS for reference requests?
We’re exploring a way to reduce friction in our sales reference process. Right now, getting approvals (confirming details) from CS and CS leadership takes days (sometimes weeks), while Sales is pushing for urgent turnaround. To move faster, we’re considering going directly to customers (who have already opted in or have done references before). 🫠
To do this responsibly, we’re compiling a Customer Sales Reference Dashboard with key signals to help us assess if a customer is referenceable without waiting on CS. So far, we’re pulling in:
• Incident Reports – to avoid customers recently impacted by bugs or outages
• Upcoming Renewals – so we don’t reach out during sensitive deal cycles
• Churn Risk Trackers – to avoid customers flagged as at-risk
Has anyone else done something like this? What other signals or red flags do you track? Would love to know if:
• You’ve done this in your company
◦ You’ve gotten pushback from CS or Sales
Open to any tips, cautions, or learnings!
tell me more about this part getting approvals (confirming details) from CS and CS leadership takes days (sometimes weeks) are you saying it's taking them weeks to just say it's ok to reach out to the customer to ask about doing a reference or weeks for the customer to confirm?
What are your organization's CMS and/or CS tools, if any? And how do you define referenceable, customer has agreed to be contacted at some point or customer is happy enough to be contacted? I have some thoughts, but it would vary based on what you're working with.
@Amanda Peacock Yes, we experience delays in getting confirmation from CS of use case details based on what the AE is asking for.
@Sarah Miller They use Catalyst. We define referenceable as customers that either CSM recommends, or customers who we've partnered with on events, or activities and know that they can speak to the specific use case for the reference call. Also want to make sure their account is healthy
@Deja Darrington I have a few thoughts - jumping into calls until 2 then will respond! do you have a tool like gong that's recording their monthly/regular cadence customer calls by chance
I LOVE Gong, yes! so we are also leveraging Peerbound to get customer sentiment. So essentially we would use the dashboard + Peerbound (access customer sentiment summaries from Gong)
This is helpful <@U0806J8HHHR>! Sounds like our CS team may be switching from Catalyst back to Gainsight too