Automated playbooks

An automated playbook is a saved sequence of actions linked to a trigger. When the trigger happens, the tool creates tasks, sends messages or notifies someone, without anyone having to remember the steps. For example, when a new customer signs up, the playbook might send a welcome email, create a task to book an onboarding call after three days and send a reminder if the customer has not logged in after a week. ChurnZero, Custify, Gainsight, Planhat, Totango, Userpilot and Vitally are tools in the library that list this feature.

Customer work is repetitive, and steps get missed when the team is busy. Playbooks make sure the same good process happens for every customer, not only the ones someone happens to remember. They are most useful for onboarding, renewals and at-risk accounts, when the same series of steps applies each time. You may not need them with a small number of accounts, where a simple checklist does the job.

• Which triggers are available, such as a score change, a date or a user action.
• Whether a playbook can mix automatic steps with tasks assigned to people.
• Whether you can build and edit playbooks yourself or need the vendor to do it.
• How you see which playbooks ran, which steps were skipped and what the outcome was.