Manage success plans and objectives

Success plans allow you to capture mutual objectives with customers and document an action plan to achieve them. You can optionally share success plans with your customers, so that they can view and complete tasks assigned to them within their own portal.

For more guided training, check out the Totango for Daily Use course.

Add a plan summary

The plan summary is a text area to capture your customer's high-level objectives and key milestones. A best practice is to document what the customer is looking to achieve in the next 3-12 months. Other team members can view the plan summary and add to it if they have appropriate permissions. 

The plan summary is not shareable with customers, so you can include internal notes.

  1. Open the Plan tab for the account profile view that you want to update.
  2. In the Plan Summary, click Add or Edit if a plan summary exists.
  3. Make your notes in the editor, using formatting options available as needed.
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  4. Click Close.

The last updated user and the time stamp is visible in the summary.

About objectives

What makes a "good" objective?

Objectives are the high-level outcomes or goals you want to help your customers achieve. They represent the value your customer expects from your product or service. Use the VALUE framework to ensure objectives are framed clearly:

  1. VERIFIABLE: Can be tracked, measured, and completed
  2. APPROVED: Key customer stakeholders have signed off
  3. LIMITED: In time and scope; one goal in a defined timeframe
  4. UNIQUE: Tailored to a customer + your products/services
  5. ESSENTIAL: Tied to the customer's strategic initiatives


Use the following examples of a guideline for how to write objectives.

These examples represent objectives that the customer wants to achieve within their own customer base (co-owned objectives).

Bad Example ❌ Good Example ✅
"Improve customer retention."

Reduce churn by 2% within the tech-touch segment by the end of the fiscal year.
"Improve customer engagement."

Increase weekly active free-tier users of Product A by 25% by Q3 close.
"Implement a dashboard to track customer journey stages."

"Achieve 85% of on-time implementation with enterprise accounts in Q2."

Building blocks of an objective

Each objective includes the following components:

1. Objective

High-level outcome tied to customer value realization or key account moments (e.g., renewal, onboarding, expansion). Track objectives using a combination of milestones and tasks.

Example: Grow leads by 50% in 6 months.

2. Milestone

Key markers of progress. Milestones break down the objective into measurable metrics that help ensure you know how to gauge when you have been successful.

Example: For the above objective (grow leads), a milestone might be: Lead count > 75 in 3 months.

3. Task

Actionable, often tactical steps that help achieve milestones. Tasks are more granular than milestones, usually representing the day-to-day work.

Example: For the above milestone (lead count), a task might be: Build the lead dashboard. 

Understand objective pacing and progress

Once applied at the account level, the objective automatically tracks pacing and completion with regard to the number of milestones and/or tasks completed.

  1. On track: No milestones or tasks are overdue
  2. Behind: At least one milestone or task is overdue
  3. Overdue: The objective due date has passed with open milestones and tasks remaining

Objectives must have a "Due Date" set in order to calculate pacing.

Furthermore, if multiple objectives are applied to an account, the overall progress for all objectives is front-and-center from the account success plan (Plan tab). The following counts apply to the objective statuses.

  1. Active: In progress
  2. Complete: Complete
  3. At Risk: Blocked | On hold or has an overdue task
  4. Not counted: Not started | Cancelled | Failed

For tracking objectives across accounts, refer to the My Business | Value Tracking view and objective segments.

Add an objective

Ready to create an objective? Here's what you need to know:

  • You can create objectives ad hoc or start from a template. Your administrator can also configure SuccessPlays to automatically add objectives to an account.
  • Objectives that are denoted as customer-facing can be shared with customers.
  1. On the Plan tab of an account, click the Quick Actions (+) bar, and then click Add Objective (solid flag icon).
    A new form appears. The objective is automatically added to the account, and changes are saved as you go.

    Define the objective settings

  2. Enter the name and description of the objective. Refer to the VALUE framework above for examples!

    Use SHIFT+ENTER to add multiple lines to objective descriptions.

  3. Set Owned By to indicate who is responsible for the overall completion:
    • Team member: Indicate a named team member, regardless of account ownership.
    • Account contact: Indicate a named contact on the account.
  4. Choose the objective due date to indicate pacing.
    • Specific date: Choose a date on the calendar. 
    • Dynamic date: Choose any account-level date attribute to automatically set completion date x # of days before or after the chosen date (per account). Example: 90 days before contract renewal.
  5. Choose the objective visibility to determine whether the objective should be visible for only your teams (internal) or with the customer (customer facing). See sharing success plans for more details.
  6. Choose the flow for categorization purposes in tasks and reporting.
  7. Choose status to indicate progress.
    • Not started
    • Cancelled
    • Failed
    • Blocked
    • In progress
    • On hold
    • Completed
  8. Choose a category to help classify your objective (if available).
  9. Choose the objective completion criteria to indicate when the objective is complete. Totango automatically tracks and displays progress based on how you want to measure completion:
    • Tasks are complete
    • Milestones are complete
    • Milestones + tasks are complete
    • Manually marked as complete

    Define the milestone settings

  10. Click Add Milestone.
  11. Optionally set a milestone due date:
    • Static: A specific date from the calendar (does not update automatically)
    • Dynamic - Objective Due Date: X Days Before/After the date of the objective 
    • Dynamic - Objective Due Date: X Days Before/After the value of a date attribute
  12. Choose how to track the milestone, and then enable each one:
    • Automatically: Select a target metric to know when the milestone is met. This data point must exist within Totango. Supported account attributes: Numerical, currency, lifecycle and “days in” stages, list, and hierarchy calculations (count).

      Automated milestones may take up to 20 minutes to refresh when attribute values update.

    • Manually: Describe the milestone, and then either enter start/target values -OR- mark complete by check box.

    Define the task settings

  13. Click Add Task.
  14. Enter the task details:
    • Associate with users: Optionally associate with an account user within task details. Associating a user with a task provides context for the work and prompts a post-completion touchpoint when the task is completed (e.g., defaults the user in the Participants field of the touchpoint).
    • Task title: Required field. Best practice is to use an action-oriented language (e.g., investigate tickets).
    • Description: Required field. Supports rich text formatting, such as bullets, hyperlinks, images, and more to document the details of the action. If enabled, you can generate text with the help of AI.
    • Add Attachment: Add supporting assets on the account profile.
    • Flow: Select the appropriate flow for this interaction.
    • Assigned to: Choose the named assignee for the task: 
      • Account team members, shown in the Account Assignment widget on the account profile
      • Account contacts, shown in the Contacts widget on the account profile
      • Other team members who have access to this account
    • Due Date: The date this task must be completed by before being considered overdue. Overdue tasks appear in red.
    • Priority: Choose high, normal, or low to prioritize the task. Priority and due date determine the order in which the task appears in the Plan tab of an account profile and Workspace.
  15. Click Add task. 
  16. When finished editing objective details, milestone(s), and task(s), close the objective form. 

Add an objective from a template

Objective templates are pre-built by your administrator.

  1. On the Plan tab of an account, click the Quick Actions (+) bar, and then click Add Objective from Template (checkered flag icon).
  2. Choose from the list of objective templates. Click to expand the objective to see the details, milestones, and tasks included.

    If you have administrative privileges, you can create a new objective template from this window.

  3. Click Use Template.

    The objective is applied to the Plan tab of the account and opens in a new form.
  4. Customize the objective details as needed. Changes are automatically saved as you work.

Complete an objective

An objective is considered "Complete" depending on the settings in the objective.

You can also change completion status through API. See details here.

  1. Open the objective you want to complete.
  2. Review the "Objective is complete" setting.
    • Automatic 
      • Tasks are complete: Mark all tasks complete
      • Milestones are complete: Mark all milestones complete
      • Milestones + tasks are complete: Mark all tasks and milestones complete
    • Manual: 
      • Manually marked as complete: Update the Objective Status to Complete

        If you attempt to complete an objective with automatic completion criteria, Totango prompts you to change the completion criteria to "Manual." 

  3. The objective automatically saves. Refresh the page to see updated status.

Re-open a completed objective

Totango allows you to change an objective status from Complete to another status. If the objective is set to complete automatically based on conditions, Totango prompts you to change the completion criteria to "Manual" to prevent the objective from automatically closing again. 

View plans across your account hierarchy

If you are using complex hierarchy, use the hierarchy filters within the Plan tab to view the plan for the current account and all the child accounts in a single view.

Generate an outcome success plan report

If you have access to view standard reports within a SuccessBLOC, you can generate an outcome success plan report to see all objectives for the team's account scope. You can sort the report by column headers, including objective start date, end date, status, and category.

FAQs

Question: Can I set an objective due date based on the date the objective is assigned?

Answer: Not at this time.

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