Workflows


Workflows are long-term processes that you apply to accounts, such as onboarding, a complex renewal or periodic Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR). Workflows are intended to help you track and manage your customer journey or account lifecycle.


Workflows are composed of a series of key milestones, which become tasks for account owners. Within each milestone, you can specify a checklist of subtasks that need to be performed in order to complete that milestone. A milestone can be tracked in parallel with other milestones or pending on the completion of another milestone.


Natero tracks time spent by individual milestone as well as the total workflow.


Playbooks


Playbooks allow team leads to to specify how they would like CSMs to respond to specific customer alerts. Playbooks provide CSMs with a list of detailed steps, guidance or best practices, and ensure customers receive a consistent customer experience from the CSM team.


Playbooks are associated with alerts, not accounts.


Playbooks are fully customizable in Natero and can include links to relevant documents or even let CSMs share techniques for particular situations. They can include things like questions to ask, suggestions to make, ideas on how to address customer objections, or even a list of approved offers or discounts.


Natero does not track time spent in playbooks.


Summary of Key Differences


Task Management

  • Workflows generate tasks, but are more involved than Playbooks.
  • Playbook is a template for a single task; Workflow is a template for a series of dependent tasks with potential due dates.
  • Workflows can be deployed based on rules or manually deployed; Playbooks must always be paired with an Alert.


Team Performance

  • Natero provides comprehensive reporting on workflow performance, such as milestone durations, workflow durations, deviation from targets, etc.
  • Playbooks are embedded as subtasks under Alert tasks which are reported separately as a task group.


Use Cases

  • Playbooks are used for urgent/timely account situations where the actions are simple and straight-forward. For example, you might instruct CSMs to ping a customer when their usage metric drops by 20% week-over-week.
  • Workflows can help you track and manage more in-depth and involved processes that cover 30-90 day periods.
  • Workflows help CSMs track processes, while workflow reporting helps managers track how those processes are working overall.