In Brief
Based in Brazil, RD Station is known globally for its SaaS marketing and sales automation platform, especially in emerging markets. As their offering has evolved over the last ten years, so has their use of Gainsight CS, and more recently Gainsight Customer Education (CE). Leveraging Gainsight’s suite of products, RD Station’s application of a Digital Customer Success program has empowered the team to realize tremendous efficiency gains; it has also enabled them to increase upsell and cross-sell revenue, driving growth.
Challenge
Keeping Growth and Quality in Balance
Renato Vieira leads RD Station’s Customer Experience, and Scale teams.
In total, RD Station has more than 150 CSMs. Vieira’s scale CS team consists of 30 Customer Success Managers (CSMs) is categorized into three divisions: Pooled CS (proactively delivers outcomes at scale), Lifecycle Programs (provides a framework of result validation for renewals), and Experience Programs (prioritizes customer education and communication). All are organized to help CSMs do more with less.
The first challenge Vieira needed to overcome was keeping up with their customer growth. RD Station’s customers had been segmented into mid- and high-touch models, and for years CSMs were able to work closely with customers to ensure proper activation and adoption—proving crucial to retention and expansion. The methodology worked incredibly well until their customer base surpassed 11,000 customers, and product-led growth (PLG) strategies and new products were introduced, creating new pain points.
One of those pain points was that historically, RD Station’s CS operation had always been based on 1:1 meetings, delivering excellent service. As the number of customers increased, with complex software and a customer profile that required close support, we needed to find a model that would not impact the customer experience, maintain healthy adoption metrics, and not threaten sustainable growth.
In 2021, we saw product adoption and engagement decrease, increasing attention primarily on the renewals of the first contract.
The CSM team also felt disconnected from familiar CS practices; they dedicated substantial time and effort to their work, but felt that all the effort did not generate impact on the customer journey and company results. The following year, in 2022, the eNPS decreased to the improvement zone.
Solution
Harnessing Gainsight for Digital Customer Success
RD Station engaged Gainsight, focusing initially on organizing CSMs’ calls to action (CTAs) to enhance productivity and effectiveness. This improved retention, outcome achievement, and revenue capture through automated CTAs for expansion opportunities.
“It is important to organize the routine for the CSM, because these have an impact on the customer experience.” Regarding the CTAs, Vieira said, “We are using the CTA, for example, to cross-sell or upsell with matched opportunities.”
RD Station continued to adopt Gainsight features in order to create digital scale while maintaining a world-class experience for their customers. To manage churn, RD Station developed a Customer Happiness Index (CHI) that analyzes over 150 hypotheses representing key customer behavior indicators and is used to predict churn. Integrating CHI with Gainsight CTAs, RD Station is able to proactively act on customers with lower engagement.
The implementation of Gainsight’s Timeline and Journey Orchestrator streamlined communication and scheduling, reducing CSM efforts and increasing customer engagement. The Pooled CS system significantly improved acquisition, adoption, retention, and expansion. RD Station will look to continue boosting these improvements through the recent implementation of Gainsight CE.
Vieira explains, “Features like Timeline and Journey Orchestrator have really improved our communication and scheduling processes. They enable us to provide personalized customer journeys, while scaling our CSM program effectively.”
Finally, dashboards were developed to monitor actions, portfolio management, and tasks, enabling the restructuring of CSM teams for specialization and efficiency. By continuously monitoring and evaluating customer health, RD Station’s CS teams could more readily identify churn, upsell, and cross-sell opportunities. Vieira’s team created playbooks based on usage data and customer milestones to operationalize this strategy, leading to more personalized efforts and communication, even within the digital experience.
Impact
Improving CSM Efficiency and Financial Outcomes
The partnership between RD Station and Gainsight has resulted in a Digital CS program that automatically identifies customer adoption milestones and prompts educational sequences for further guidance. Since implementing their Digital CS strategy, RD Station achieved an 85% improvement in customer adoption and a 25% increase in CSM coverage without expanding the team.
Their educational initiatives engaged over 11,000 participants, saving 7,000 hours of CS education time. Scaled education motions led to 20% of customers executing upsells or cross-sells. The Help Center saw 100,000 visitors and 3.5 million articles read, further reducing time spent through CSM inquiries and support tickets.
Beyond the efficiency gains, RD Station’s program has also generated impressive financial results, including:
- The program created 1,000 upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
- The team achieved monthly MRR Churn and Net Churn results within the top quartiles of major market benchmarks.
- During the 2023 Brazilian economic downturn, the employee Net Promoter Score Increased nearly 100%, moving to the excellence zone.
These efforts resulted in the highest CS results in RD Station’s history with Gainsight, showcasing the power of their strategic partnership.
What's Next
Powered by Gainsight, RD Station will continue to push Customer Success boundaries in several ways. The company is hiring customer education resources as part of its strategy to further amplify experience and efficiency at scale across its customer base. Additionally, RD Station data engineers are already applying AI for the company’s Customer Happiness Index. Vieira is also exploring the application of Gainsight AI features that will continue to reinforce CSM efficiency while optimizing customer engagement. Aside from improving internal processes, the company, with Gainsight, is committed to reducing CSM cognitive load to maintain high happiness rates for their teams and their customers.