Alerts work as an early warning system that helps you track important customer behaviors and allows you to respond to them in a proactive manner. Users with role permission to "configure product settings" can create and modify alert rules at the "Alert Rules" page in "Management Center" under "Settings".
To create a new alert rule, click "Add New Rule" on the top right.
On the alert configuration page:
1. Name the alert rule.
2. Specify the alert type.
Natero provides five default alert types (churn, renewal, expansion, conversion, and engagement) which you can use to further segment the alerts. You can optionally type in your own preferred alert type which will be saved for use in other alert rule configurations.
3. Assign a playbook to this alert.
Playbooks are intended to be a simple checklist that the CSMs should follow when an alert is triggered.
4. Specify if alerts should be triggered for churned accounts.
5. Specify alert retrigger delay.
Retrigger delay tells Natero how frequently it should trigger the same alert for the same account following the previous alert being triggered, if that account still matches the condition defined in the alert rule. For example, if an alert triggered for an account on March 1st and closed on March 3rd and that account still matches the condition defined in the same alert rule, with a retrigger delay set to 7 days, Natero will trigger the next alert for this account on March 8th.
Learn example use cases for retrigger delay.
6. Specify if Natero should never retrigger this alert for an account.
7. Specify if alerts should be auto-generated as alert tasks so that the responsible users can track and close the tasks following the action items defined in the associated playbook. And receive task email notifications from those alert tasks.
8. If yes on #7, select a user group to be subscribed to the tasks generated from this alert.
9. Add a description of this alert rule.
The description entered here will be shown as alert reasons once the alert triggers It is recommended you provide as much detail about this alert as possible here.
10. Construct alert rule conditions.
a. Filter accounts based on dimensions
The "Attributes" section is where you filter a specific segment of your accounts for whom the alerts will be triggered. For example, you can specify the alerts to trigger only for accounts in a certain country, industry, tier or stage. You'll also be able to filter the accounts by the custom dimensions you send to Natero.
b. Specify behavior and timeframe based on metrics and dates
The "Metrics over time and event occurrences" section is where you specify the behavior, changes in behavior or a specific account date you'd like to track for your accounts. There are four ways to do so:
1). Compare a metric to a value
e.g. Usage of module "Dashboard" is less than 5 mins a day.
2). Compare a metric to another metric
e.g. Usage of module "Dashboard" is at least 30% less than usage of module "Reporting".
3). Compare a metric to itself over time
e.g. Usage of module "Dashboard" over the last week is at least 10 mins more than the usage of the same module over the week before.
4). Check for an event
e.g. Account next renewal is within the next 45 days.
You'll then select both the start date and the end date of the time period over which the metric will be aggregated.
1). Begins after an event or day
e.g. 7 days after the "Account join date" or 3 days after "Account last seen" date
2). Begins before an event or day
e.g. 7 days before "Current day" or 30 days before the "Account renewal date"
3). Begins on an event or day
e.g. "Current week", "Account join date"
4). Begins on specific date
e.g. Dec. 1. 2015
c. Preview the accounts currently matching this alert rule.
This feature allows you to quickly preview a list of accounts who are currently matching the conditions for this rule, so that you have an idea of what those accounts look like and how many alerts will be generated all at once after this rule is saved.
Click "Preview Rule" and all accounts who are currently (at the time of the button click) matching the condition statement will be displayed in the table below.
11. Save the alert rule.
If everything looks fine, click "Save" to successfully save the alert rule. If there are more than 10 matching accounts to this rule at the time of "Save" button click, a warning window will pop up asking if you'd like to proceed with the action.
You might want to refine the conditions of this rule to make it more specific and targeted to limit the number of alerts to be generated all at once. This is helpful in case where a general rule is created that will trigger alerts to most of your accounts. Otherwise, you can ignore the warning and save the alert rule anyway.
Note that Natero automatically runs alert rule for each account every 3 hours based on the latest data collected. You can manually run an alert rule by clicking “Run” in an alert rule’s action drop-down.
Learn more about managing alert tasks.
Learn more about using dimensions, metrics, and dates in alert rules.
View our example alerts.