Customer Success Management Handbook

The Customer Success Management team at GitLab is a part of the Customer Success department, acting as trusted advisors to our customers and helping them realize value faster.

Customer Success Segments

Mission Statement

Accelerate customer success by aligning passionate CSMs with customers to:

Drive adoption aligned with business outcomes
Enable customers in current and future GitLab use cases
Expand ROI from GitLab

What is a Customer Success Manager (CSM) at GitLab?

CSMs are accountable for customer adoption, measurable outcomes, customer satisfaction, and creating true customer advocacy. We create successful customers by enabling, training, and nurturing them throughout their journey. The following areas incorporate the remit of a CSM:

Customer Adoption - Ensure the customer is working towards or adopting their desired use cases to maturity. Ensure the successful onboarding of all intended users. Identify areas of adoption risk and establish mitigating plays and programs.
Delivering Positive Business Outcomes - Ensure customers are meeting and exceeding their desired business outcomes so that customers can quantify and support their investment.
Trusted Advisor - Establish “trusted advisor” relationships with the management and technical teams on the customer side while working seamlessly with our account team to deliver a best-in-class customer experience.
Account Expansion - Lead adoption expansion beyond the customer’s desired use cases and further customer return on investment (ROI). Partner with Sales to identify expansion opportunities and ensure we realize the expansion potential of a customer account.
Leading Business Reviews - Review and celebrate progress towards, or achievement of, the customer’s desired business outcomes. Address challenges with a plan for mitigation, align on upcoming and future customer business objectives.

High-Level Responsibilities of a CSM

Responsibility	Context	How We Measure	DCI Roles
Success Plans	Mutually agreed (Customer \| GitLab) adoption plans that outline desired outcomes (e.g., improve cycle time), technical milestones required (e.g., migrate to GitLab, overcome constraints), timelines and DRIs. These plans enable us to be proactive and ensure progress towards the customer's goals. As trusted advisors, we understand what drives value for our customers and help them achieve it.	Every customer must have an active success plan	DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, SA, Customer Informed: Leadership
Onboarding	There are several onboarding steps in both the new and existing customer onboarding playbooks. The CSM's role is to ensure all of these topics and enablements have been covered and documented.	All customers are to be taken through the appropriate playbook (New, Existing Customer)	DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, SA, Customer Informed: Leadership
Cadence Calls	The cadence call is a proactive call. For this call to be proactive, the CSM's responsibility includes those listed in the linked cadence call page	Call frequency: Customer is engaged weekly or biweekly, monthly at a very minimum A CSM/CSE can expect to conduct a minimum number of calls as follows: CSMs: 5-7 calls per week CSEs: 15 calls per week	DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, Customer Informed: SA, Leadership
Adoption & Expansion	Driving platform adoption (use cases and licenses) in line with a customer's desired business outcomes is at the heart of the CSM role Understand what the customer is currently adopting and partner with the customer on enabling this use case/feature When an enablement or expansion playbook is open, the CSM actively drives the associated motion in the customer account	At any given time, a CSM will be actively driving expansion with half of their book (3-4 customers)	DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, Customer Informed: SA, Leadership
Executive Business Reviews	We hold the business review at month 6, giving enough time passed to celebrate milestones achieved and enough time remaining to get adoption back on track where needed. The CSM is the DRI for scheduling, preparing for, presenting, and following up on the EBR, and partners with both the account team and the customer in the creation of the presentation.	1 EBR per customer per year at a minimum	DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, Customer Informed: SA, Leadership
Renewal	It is the job of the CSM to ask the 'soft' renewal question 3-4 months before the renewal This conversation and the outcome of this conversation are tracked in Gainsight using the 'renewal call' meeting type (within the timeline entry)	Every customer regardless of segment or region	DRI: CSM, AE, Renewals team Consulted: Customer Informed: Leadership
Managing Risk	A CSM actively manages risk in a customer account, quickly turning a customer to red when there is any potential risk of contraction or churn (even if this is unconfirmed) The CSM is responsible for frequent communication to the account team about risk in their accounts and triggering/leading the escalation process where needed	Risk is actively managed for all customers	DRI: CSM Consulted: AE, Leadership Informed: Renewals team

Please reference this page for an overview of the CSM Rhythm of Business (daily to yearly) Please reference this page for an overview of the areas your CSM will engage with you in: CSM Points of Engagement

Customer Journey

GitLab Customer Journey Map

Journey Stage	Activities
Pre-Sales & Alignment	Value Stream Discovery Sales to CS Handoff Identify Personas
Onboard	CSM Kickoff & Intro Establish Cadence Calls Create Success Plan
Enable	Use Case Enablement Workshops Measure Primary Use Case Adoption
Expand	Expansion Discovery
Optimize & Renew	Executive Business Review Ongoing Risk Review Renewal Discussions

FY25 Vision & Strategy -3 Pillars

Vision & Strategy Deck (Internal - GitLab Only)
Success At Scale
Use Case Adoption
Success Plan Services

Big Rock (Annual Strategy) Archive

FY23
FY24

Handbook Directory

CSM Team Metrics Overview (VIDEO)

Changelog

CSM Learning & Development

CSM Activities

Driving Platform Adoption

Landing Zones

CI Landing Zone

Customer Metrics

Sample Questions & Techniques for Getting to Good Customer Metrics

Platform Metrics

Other Lifecycle Management Activities

Digital Customer Programs

Digital Customer Programs Handbook Page
- Available Customer Programs

CSM Managers

CSM Manager Processes and CSM Leadership Team
CSM Manager QBR Template (GitLab Internal)
CSM Promotion Template (GitLab Internal)

CSM Tools

The following articulates where collaboration and customer management is owned:

Customer Collaboration Projects: Shared project between GitLab team members and customer. Used to prioritize/plan work with customer.
Google Drive: Internal. Used to capture call notes and other customer related documents.
Chorus: Internal. Used to record Zoom calls.
1. Using Calendly with Chorus: Instructions on Calendly set up with Chorus.
Gainsight: Internal. Used to track customer health score, logging customer activity (i.e. calls, emails, meetings)
Issue Prioritization Dashboard: Internal. Used to track customer requested issues.

Education and Enablement

In Customer Success Management, it is important to be continuously learning more about our product and related industry topics. The education and enablement handbook page provides a dashboard of aggregated resources that we encourage you to use to get up to speed.

SFDC useful reports

Tracking opportunities for your assigned Strategic Account Executive (SAEs)

To ensure that opportunities are listed with the correct Order Type, this Salesforce report shows you all of the opportunities that have closed, or are soon to close, with your SAEs. Tracking Order Type is important since CSM team quota and compensation depend on this. Please reference the latest Sales Compensation Plan information to know what is counted.

Next steps for you:

Customize this SFDC report where “Account Owner = your SAEs”; “CSM = You”
Save report
Subscribe to report when “Record Count Greater Than 0” and Frequency = Weekly (You’ll get a weekly email as a reminder to look at the report)
If you find an opp that is tagged incorrectly, chatter (@Sales-Support) in the opportunity and let them know there is a mistake (example)

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