105 Customer Success

{: #customer-success}

The Customer Success department is part of the GitLab Sales function who partners with our large and strategic customers to deliver value throughout their journey with GitLab.

The team can be reached in Slack channel (internal only).

105.1 On this page

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105.2 Mission Statement

To deliver value to all customers by engaging in a consistent, repeatable, scalable way across defined segments so that customers see the value in their investment with GitLab, and we retain and drive growth within our enterprise customers.

  • The mission of the Customer Success Department is to provide these customers with experience in order to:
    • Accelerate initial customer value
    • Maximize long-term, sustainable customer value
    • Improve overall customer satisfaction & referenceability
    • Maximize the total value of the customer to GitLab

105.3 Vision Page

The “Customer Success Vision Page” provides the long-term view of company wide success to which the customer success will be building in partnership with the value centers of the GitLab organization (i.e., Marketing, Sales, Product/Engineering, Support, Finance and IT).

105.4 Department Initiatives

Our large and strategic customers are in need of an ongoing partnership that combines expert guidance with flexibility and adaptability to support their adoption and continuous improvement initiatives.

These customers expect that partner to provide a streamlined, consistent and fully coordinated experience that encompasses the full span of their needs as well as the fully lifecycle of the relationship. Need to focus on 4 main areas in order to grow in our existing accounts as well as land large and strategic:

  1. Awareness
  2. Adoption
  3. Usage
  4. Performance

105.4.1 Initiative: Awareness

Opportunity to improve the overall awareness of GitLab in order to promote and evangelize our brand and solution in a meaningful way to provide big business impact to our customers so that they believe in our vision and strategy.

105.4.2 Initiative: Adoption

Ensuring paying customers are successful in their onboarding in order to gain adoption and get the most out of our platform and remain happy, paying GitLab team-members and brand advocates.

105.4.3 Initiative: Usage

Collecting and making use of customer data and insights is key to customer success. It’s important to do more with data and when necessary share back with customers, which in turn helps and encourages our customers to improve and drive adoption.

105.4.4 Initiative: Performance

Utilizing built-in monitoring instrumentation and a scalable HA architecture, The Customer Success team helps ensure implementations of GitLab are operating at peak performance as organization scale and adopt more features.

105.5 Customer Success Playbooks

See the Playbooks Page

105.6 Customer Success Groups

105.6.2 Professional Services

105.6.3 Technical Account Managers

105.6.4 Demo Systems

105.7 Account Team

The account team is comprised of the Strategic Account Leader/Account Executive, Solutions Architect (Enterprise), and Technical Account Manager.

More information about the account team

105.8 Overlap Between Solution Architects and Technical Account Managers

In working with our prospects and then customers pre and post sale, there can at times be overlap between the SA and the TAM. Please reference the page linked here for more detail on who is the DRI when there is SA/TAM overlap.

105.9 Other Resources

105.9.1 Using Salesforce within Customer Success

Visit this page for more info on using Salesforce within Customer Success.

105.9.2 Using Gainsight with Customer Success

Visit this page for more information on using Gainsight within Customer Success.

105.9.3 Customer Success Metrics

We currently have a Customer Success Metrics Project within GitLab. This project is used to requesting new reports, dashboards and suggesting new metrics that we may need for the department.

This will sometimes be cross-referenced with a data & analytics project.

105.9.4 Optimized Account Growth Program

In order to evangelize and grow the use of GitLab in existing accounts, the Optimized Account Growth Program has been developed to facilitate collaborative sessions and workshops within customer environments. The program is intended to improve the partnership between GitLab and the customer, solving complex business problems while reducing cycle times and improving workflow, ultimately resulting in the growth in adoption and usage of GitLab in customer environments.

105.9.5 Dogfooding

Outside of Engineering the Customer Success team has the largest concentration of tooling development capability. The team has unique needs that can’t always be solved by GitLab’s single DevOps platform. However, it is important to dogfood and avoid dogfooding anti-patterns. As a result the Product organization heavily weights internal customers when considering prioritization. If you are considering building tooling in support of Customer Success priorities outside of GitLab, please follow the dogfooding process.

105.9.6 Customer Success AWS Test Account

In an effort to keep AWS spend down initiatives are being taken automatically clean up our AWS account. This account is primarily used as a proof of concept for IaC and creating demos for GitLab customers. An automated cleanup script is currently being tested that will tag, shutdown and delete old resources as they are no longer needed. The automation will:

  • Turn off and Tag Un-named resources. When resources are created a “Name” tag should be created with a value that’s meaningful and indicates who deployed the resource. Example: {initials}-GitLabRunner
  • New Resources will be automatically tagged with a Discovered and Expiration tag.
  • The Expiration tag is 14 days after the discovery. The script will only a tag an instance once. If you need additional time, please change the date to a reasonable date for cleanup (Add a month or two for prospective customers).
  • If a resource needs to be permanent please set termination protection on the instance. This should also include tagging the instance with an explanation on why it’s permanent and what its for.
  • On expiration the resource will be shut off and left for 7 days.
  • In 7 days if the instance is still off a snapshot will be taken and it will be terminated.
  • If the instance is still on but the expiration has not been changed it will be terminated.

105.9.7 Customer Success Tools and Scripts

By customer or internal request, we sometimes develop tools to automate certain GitLab tasks using the API. The resulting tools and scripts are publicly available for everyone to use and contribute to in the GitLab CS Tools group.

105.9.8 Frequently Asked Questions

Customer Success team members maintain a FAQ to keep questions customers ask documented in a place where everyone can view and contribute to.

105.9.11 Customer Success & Market Segmentation

For definitions of the account size, refer to market segmentation.

  • Large: Strategic Account Leader closes deal and stays on account for growth and renewal. Solutions Architect is assigned pre-sales and transitions the account to a Technical Account Manager after the sale to guide customer adoption and growth.
  • Mid-Market: Account Executive closes deal with Solutions Architect pre-sales assistance. Customer then transfers to Technical Account Manager to guide customer adoption and growth.
  • SMB: Web Portal with Sales Admin and SMB Technical Account Manager oversight.

105.9.12 Customer Success Meetings

Customer Success has a few standing meetings:

  • All CS Team Call - every other Thursday at 7am PST
  • VP of Customer Success Office Hours - every other Thursday at 7am PST
  • CS Skills Exchange - every Wednesday, alternating between 7:30am PST and 11am PST

The different groups within CS also have standing meetings, including meetings for the SAs, PS, and TAMs groups, regional groups, and social calls.

105.9.13 GitLab Release Technical Showcase

Following the latest GitLab release, once a month on the All CS Team Call, we have a few volunteers to discuss and/or demo new features from the most recent release:

GitLab Release Feature Presenter Role Region Recording
12.9 Dismissing Multiple Vulnerabilities Sameer Kamani Solutions Architect Public Sector Video
12.9 Group Export and Import via API Sameer Kamani Solutions Architect Public Sector Video
12.9 High Availability with Gitaly (alpha) Sophie Pouliquen Technical Account Manager Enterprise East Video
13.0 Gitaly and Praefect Simon Mansfield and Christiaan Conover Solutions Architect, Manager, TAM EMEA and Enterprise East Video
13.0 Standalone Vulnerabilities
Exportable Vulnerabilities Reports
WAF SIEM Integration
Chloe Whitestone Technical Account Manager Enterprise East Video
13.0 AWS ECS Auto DevOps Mark Cesario Solutions Architect Enterprise East Video
13.0 Terraform Plan View in MR and HTTP Terraform State Backend Jamie Reid Technical Account Manager Enterprise West Video
13.1 Fail Fast Testing Vladimir Ten Technical Account Manager Enterprise West Video