Workfront’s first Customer Success implementation with a competitive solution didn’t provide the reporting functionality it needed. When its second attempt – a complex Google Doc – failed to close the gap, Workfront selected Totango to positively drive its business results, giving the Customer Success team real-time customer monitoring with automated reports.
Imagine 40 team members trying to manage the post sales health of thousands of customers in a Google Sheet. That’s what the Customer Success Management team at Workfront struggled with before Totango. Workfront sells its cloud-based work management and project management software as a monthly subscription. The company manually logged each client touch point and integrated usage metrics to calculate a customer health score so the CS team could better manage customer adoption, retention, and expansion opportunities. The sheet included data on high level usage, dates CS spoke to clients, the context of conversations and next steps.
But the sheet wasn’t actionable, query-able, or automated, and they wasted a lot of time manually updating it. In addition, the CS team questioned the accuracy of the health scores, especially when it came to at-risk accounts. “All the CSMs would update customer health, entering action notes, but the Google Sheet was the bane of our existence,” says Jon Fotheringham, Director, Customer Experience Operations. “It was a nightmare to use, often crashed, and the formulas sometimes didn’t work.” Growing increasingly frustrated with the internal process, Workfront knew it was time to look for a better solution.
Taking what it learned from the first failed CS solution from a Totango competitor, and trying to manage the process with Google Sheet, Workfront knew exactly what to look for in a new CS solution. After much research, Workfront selected Totango, which gave it real-time customer monitoring with automated reports and an accurate view of customer health. “We chose Totango for the power of its reporting and the true partnership we felt,” Fotheringham says. “Totango took the time to learn our business, understand our business objectives and then provided an easy-to-use tool that made CSMs much more productive.”
The entire Workfront team was happy to stop managing the gigantic Google Sheet and put an end to their frustrations. “We fully migrated to Totango in 6 weeks. Once that happened, Rachel Sakurai, (Business Operations Analyst at Workfront), and I ordered a large sheet cake decorated as the infamous Google Sheet and we celebrated by eating the cake until it was gone,” Fotheringham says.
Workfront implemented Totango in just 6 weeks. The CS team gained insights immediately from Totango’s seamless integration with several applications, including Salesforce and Tableau. “Adoption is very high with our team,” Fotheringham says. “Our CSMs use Totango every day and the workflow is great.” With Totango, CSMs are instantly more productive and have access, workflow automations and much improved insight into customer health. “We currently conduct risk sessions out of Totango,” says Fotheringham. “It’s much easier to track health trends for each customer and not have to click sheet by sheet by sheet.” It takes a lot less time to prepare for the weekly meeting, and “we’re using a system that doesn’t crash at midnight,” he adds. In addition, “Our CSMs can update their forecasts, get a quick look at renewals and identify which customers are most at-risk, and which have the highest Current Annual Recurring Revenue (CARR),” says Sakurai. “We have full functionality and can sort instantly. And we know the system is accurate and responsive.”
Part of that full functionality is the ability to automate certain actions called Success Plays. “As data flows into Totango, we can view customer product usage, a change in a contact and automatic recommendations, and we’ve programed next best actions for the team,” says Sakurai. “Armed with (Workfront) product usage, CSMs are automatically notified of a drop of usage or if health is declining, so they don’t have to chase down each customer account to find out what’s going on. They get an instant, quick glance as soon as something changes.” Totango’s integration with other data sources greatly improves Workfront’s ability to renew subscriptions, sell additional products and keep revenues consistent. “We’re able to pull more information from more places to get a much better picture of customer health,” Fotheringham says.
In addition to implementing the Totango Customer Success solution, Workfront launched Totango’s customer data application, Zoe, which gives teams outside of CS instant access to customer information no matter where they are. “Zoe has been a huge hit with the entire company,” says Fotheringham. “We rolled out Zoe a few weeks before our annual customer conference, LEAP, which meant executives, sales reps or CSMs could, on the fly, on their phone, look up activity, product usage, customer health and notes as they were walking into a lunch meeting with a customer.” Previously, an executive, sales rep or CSM would have to spend time before the conference researching a customer and creating a limited executive briefing report, one that didn’t include Salesforce or other data if the person didn’t have access. “Zoe drastically transformed and improved the way we interact with customers and prepare for customer meetings,” Fotheringham said. “It continues to be used by CSMs and sales but also various departments throughout Workfront.” Most of the team at Workfront used Zoe during LEAP, with more than half using it as a mechanism to gain customer information on the fly. “And that’s with only one campaign around adoption” says Fotheringham. “If we promoted it more, we could easily see monthly usage climb.”
Workfront’s ability to renew subscriptions, sell additional products and keep revenues consistent requires constant attention to the health of their subscription customers. When CSMs struggle and have to hunt for information they need, they spend less time with their customers. Totango’s Customer Success Management solutions and customer data application Zoe helps Workfront provide actionable, real-time insights into customer health, saving CSMs time and helping them focus on at-risk customers proactively. “Our decision to go with Totango was based on their commitment to our success, powerful reporting capability and great working relationship we have,” says Fotheringham. “Totango is worth every penny.”
