Configure objective templates

Who can use this feature?

  • Global admins
  • Available on all plans

Great outcomes start with clear goals. Totango objective templates help you standardize customer outcomes, so your team can deliver value faster.

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. 

Create an objective template

Ready to create a template? Here's what you need to know:

  • Objective templates must include a name, owner, due date, visibility, flow, and completion criteria. Objective milestones and tasks are optional.
  • Any objective template you create will be available for use by all teams who have access to update account information.
  1. From Settings, expand Customer Engagement > Objectives.
  2. On the Objective Templates tab, click New Template.

    Define the objective settings

  3. 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.

  4. Choose the objective owner to indicate who is responsible for the overall completion:
    • Role: Dynamically assign the owner by account assignment
    • Team member: Indicate a named team member, regardless of account ownership.

      Choosing a customer as owner applies to ad hoc objectives but not within templates. 

  5. 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.
  6. Choose the objective visibility to determine whether the objective should be visible for only your teams (internal) or with the customer (customer facing).
  7. Choose the flow for categorization purposes in tasks and reporting.
  8. Choose a category to help classify your objective (if needed).
  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 (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).
    • 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:
    • 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.
    • Due in: The number of days before being considered overdue. Days start after the objective is assigned to an account. 
    • 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.
    • Assigned by: Choose the name of the assigner of the task (role or named team member).
    • Assigned to: Choose the name of the assignee of the task (role or named team member).

      Choosing a customer as owner for the task applies to ad hoc objectives/tasks but not within templates. 

  15. Optionally add post completion actions.
  16. Click Done to add the task.
  17. When finished editing objective details, milestone(s), and task(s), click Create Template.
    Any objective template you create will be available for use by all teams who have access to update account information.

Delete an objective template

Deleting a template does not delete any objectives that were created from the template, but it does prevent teams from choosing this template for future objective creation.

  1. From Settings, expand Customer Engagement > Objectives.
  2. On the Objective Templates tab, click the objective you want to delete.
  3. Within the objective template details, click the ... button in the lower, left of the template, and then click Delete Template.
  4. In the confirmation box, click Delete.

Configure objective category options

Categories help classify objectives in reporting and segments. Category items appear in the drop-down in the order they are added.

  1. From Settings, expand Customer Engagement Objective settings.
  2. From the Status tab, click +Add.
  3. Enter the category display name, and click the check to save.

The new categories are available in objective templates and one-off objectives.

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FAQs

Question: What happened to the custom objective status options?

Answer: You can no longer customize status values for the legacy version of objectives. Any legacy objectives that use these values will be available to view in a segment, but not in the new objective forms. Teams can still sort by category when generating an outcome success plan report.

 

Question: Can you copy objectives and/or milestones?

Answer: Not at this time, but it is on the roadmap!

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

Answer: Not at this time, but it is on the roadmap!

Question: Can I add a dynamic due date for milestones or tied to the overall objective date (e.g., x number of days before objective due date)? 

Answer: Not at this time, but it is on the roadmap!

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