Objectives Overview

Objectives help you to manage the main goals of a success plan, so that you can establish the individual requirements necessary to achieve the success plan. After creating a success plan and establishing the individual aims outlined by your customer's needs, you can create objectives to provide a framework for the customer to achieve their goals. In addition, you can associate objectives with:

  • Playbooks to plan, detail, and manage the objective
  • Objective KPIs to track and quantify the performance and success of the objective
  • Business challenges to understand the challenges that your customers are facing
  • Opportunities to enhance the effectiveness of the sales-to-success handover

Permission Sets

To use this feature, users must have one of the following permission sets assigned to their profiles:

  • To view, edit, and delete objective records, and create both blank records and records from templates: CSC - Customer Success
  • To view and edit objective records, and create blank records only: CSC - Participant User
Note:

To enable users with the CSC - Participant User permission set assigned to add business challenges and opportunities when creating and editing objectives, the administrator must assign Read permission to the Account Name field of the Opportunity object in the CSC - Participant User permission set.

For more information, see Assigning and Removing Permission Sets.

Viewing Objectives

You can view objectives in:

You can view the following records associated with an objective in the Related tab of the objective's record page:

  • Playbooks
  • Playbook Tasks
  • Objective KPIs
  • Objective Business Challenges

Creating Objectives

You can create either blank objectives or objectives from templates. An objective created from a template inherits the information stored in the template, including its child record information. You can also select a record type for your new record if your administrator has set up custom record types.

You can create objectives using:

  • The Create Objective action in the Actions panel, which is available on the Customer Success Management Workspace. This action might also be available from a record page if your administrator has added the Actions panel to the page. This enables you to create either blank objectives or objectives from a template, as well as add objective KPIs and business challenges to your new objective.
  • The Add Objective button in Success Tracker. This enables you to create either blank objectives or objectives from a template, as well as add objective KPIs and business challenges to your new objective.
  • The New list view button in the Objectives tab. This enables you to create blank objectives only.
  • The Generate Objectives button found in the Success Tracker on a success plan record page. This generates objectives using AI.

For more information, see Creating Objectives.

Note:

You must have the correct permissions assigned to create objectives:

  • From templates
  • In Success Tracker

For more information, see Setting up Customer Success Cloud.

Objective Creation Guidelines

Consider these guidelines when creating objectives.

These guidelines apply to associating objectives with parent and child records:

  • To associate the objective with a success plan, the accounts of the objective and the success plan must be the same.
  • The account associated with the objective must match the account associated with the objective's success plan, opportunity, and business challenge. Selecting a success plan or opportunity in the Create Objective window automatically populates the Account field with the account of the selected success plan or opportunity.
  • The opportunity and success plan associated with the objective and its associated success plan must match the opportunity associated with the objective's business challenge. Alternatively, you can select a business challenge that has no opportunity associated with it.

  • The selected opportunity must be associated with the selected success plan. Alternatively, leave the opportunity or success plan blank.

  • The selected success plan must be associated with the selected opportunity.
Tip:

When the My Accounts checkbox is selected, you can view, search for, and select only accounts where you are a resource, along with their associated records. This checkbox is automatically selected if you are a resource on the account of any associated records. The selection is retained on the same computer, using the same browser. To select this checkbox, the currently logged-in user must be a resource on an account and have the correct permissions.

These guidelines describe which fields and field values you can view and select when creating objectives:

  • The available field values depend on the values selected in the fields of the record's parent objects.
  • The displayed fields might vary if your org uses custom record types. For more information, contact your administrator.

  • When creating an objective:

    • From an account record page, the Parent Account field is automatically populated with the account you are currently viewing.
    • From an opportunity record page, the Opportunity field is automatically populated with the opportunity you are currently viewing.

  • When creating an objective from the Actions panel or Success Tracker on a success plan record page:

    • The Success Plan field is automatically populated with the success plan you are currently viewing
    • The Account field is automatically populated with the success plan's parent account

  • When clearing selected values:

    • Clearing the selected parent account also clears the selected success plan and opportunity.

    • Clearing the selected opportunity also clears the selected business challenge.

    This does not apply when creating an objective in the New Objective window.

  • Editing an objective's success plan also updates the success plan of the objective's playbooks and playbook tasks.
  • The related playbook and playbook task records inherit the account selected in the Parent Account field.

  • The displayed opportunities, business challenges, and objectives are filtered by your selection:

    • Selecting an account displays only its related opportunities, success plans, and business challenges
    • Selecting an opportunity displays only its related business challenges
    • Selecting a success plan displays only its related business challenges

These guidelines apply to creating objectives from templates:

  • When the Template field is selected, you can select only template success plans. To view and select template success plans, the Template field must be included in the related page layout. If the field is not included, it is treated as deselected and no template parent records are displayed.
  • The start date of a record created from the template defaults to today's date. If you specify start and end dates when creating a record from a template, they override the dates copied from the template. If an objective template does not have an end date, the end date of a record created from the template is left blank.

  • Changing the start date of an objective affects the start and end dates of its child records. In this case, any changes you made to the start and end dates of child records will be lost and the start and end dates will be set according to the objective's new start date.

  • The end date of a record created from a template is calculated based on the number of days between the start and end dates on the template. If an objective template has an end date but does not have a start date:

    • The start date of a record created from the template defaults to today's date.

    • The end date of a record created from the template is left blank.

  • The new child record dates are calculated by using the child record start date incremented by the difference between the template's start date and today's date. The start and end dates of new child records are left blank:

    • If the template has no start date
    • If the template's start date is cleared when creating a record from the template

Blank Objectives

You can automatically associate blank objective records with accounts and success plans.

To automatically associate a blank objective record with an account, create the objective from the Actions panel:

  • On the account's record page
  • On the record page of a success plan associated with the account

This automatically populates the Parent Account field on the new record.

To automatically associate a blank objective record with a business challenge, create the objective from the Actions panel on the business challenge's record page. This automatically populates the Business Challenges field on the new record with the business challenge you are currently viewing.

To automatically associate a blank objective record with a success plan, create the objective:

  • Using Actions in Success Tracker on the success plan's record page

  • From the Actions panel on the success plan's record page

This automatically populates the following fields on the new record:

  • The Success Plan field
  • The Parent Account field with the success plan's parent account, if the success plan is associated with an account
Note:

The Actions panel might also be available on the record pages that your administrator added it to. If you want to use the Actions panel on a specific record page, contact your administrator.

Objectives Created from Templates

You can save an objective as a template by selecting the Template checkbox while creating your new objective. Objectives created from templates inherit their information and the following child records:

  • Objective KPIs
  • Playbooks
  • Playbook tasks
Note:

You can select a playbook task record without selecting its parent playbook record.

When creating a new objective record from a template that contains child records, the Select Records grid displays so that you can:

  • View the child records inherited from the template, such as playbooks and playbook tasks.
  • Deselect any child records that you do not want to include in your new record. By default, all of the template's child records are selected. If the template contains no child records, a message notifies you of this, the Select Records grid does not display, and you can finish creating your new record.

  • Edit the child records inherited from the template. When adding resources to new child records, ensure that the resources you want to add are active and are not PSA resources. You can add a single resource to objectives and playbooks, and multiple resources to playbook tasks.

When creating objectives from templates:

  • When selecting a template:

    • Only objectives with the Template checkbox selected are displayed.
    • You can switch between views using Cards and Lists. By default, the last-selected view is displayed.

    • To refresh the template information, click Reload.

Custom Record Types

If your org uses custom record types:

  • You can select a record type for your new record, if your administrator has set up custom record types.

  • The displayed fields might vary if your org uses custom record types. For more information, contact your administrator.

  • When creating a record of a specific type, the Record Type field is automatically populated and is read-only. To display this field, your administrator must add it to the necessary page layouts.

  • If there are no record types available in your org for the CS Activity, Objective, Playbook, Playbook Task, and Success Plan objects, the fields in their related creation and edit windows use the related field sets.

For more information, see Setting up Customer Success Cloud.

Editing Objectives

You can edit an objective to update its details:

  • In the Objectives tab
  • From Success Tracker

For more information, see Editing Objectives.

Notes:
  • When editing a record, the available field values depend on the values selected in the fields of the record's parent objects. If no values are specified for any of the parent objects, associating the record with a parent object can automatically populate the remaining related object fields on the record.
  • Clearing the selected parent account also clears the selected success plan and opportunity. Editing an objective's success plan also updates the success plan of the objective's playbooks and playbook tasks.

  • Clearing the selected opportunity also clears the selected business challenge.

  • The available field values depend on the values selected in the fields of the record's parent objects.
  • The displayed fields might vary if your org uses custom record types. For more information, contact your administrator.

  • If there are no record types available in your org for the CS Activity, Objective, Playbook, Playbook Task, and Success Plan objects, the fields in their related creation and edit windows use the related field sets.

  • When the Template field is selected, you can only select a success plan record that has its respective Template field selected.
  • Updating an objective's parent account automatically updates the account of the CS activities, playbooks, and playbook tasks associated with the objective.
  • Updating an objective's success plan automatically updates the success plan of the CS activities associated with the objective.

Allocating Resources to Objectives

You can manually allocate any active CS Cloud resource to an objective. The resource allocated to an objective record is also the owner of that record. The resource receives a notification whenever they are allocated to an objective. For more information, see Allocating Resources.

Associating Business Challenges with Objectives

The Business Challenges feature enables you to understand the challenges that your customers are facing. Customer success managers can use this feature to track, categorize, and provide more context about their customer's business challenges. You can associate business challenges with success plans and objectives.

Notes:

  • A business challenge can have the following records associated with it:

    • A success plan
    • An opportunity
  • Success plans and objectives can have multiple business challenges associated with them

For more information, see Business Challenges Overview and Associating Business Challenges with Objectives.

Deleting Objectives

You can delete objectives:

  • In the Objectives tab
  • In the Objectives related list in the Related tab of the parent success plan of the objective that you want to delete
  • In Activity Tracker

To delete an objective, you must first delete its objective KPIs. For more information, see Deleting Objective KPIs.

Objective KPIs

An objective can have multiple objective KPIs (key performance indicators), which enable you to track and quantify the performance and success of the objective. Customer success managers can use this feature to facilitate reporting to internal and external stakeholders, saving time, operational cost, and improving customer satisfaction.

For more information, see Objective KPIs Overview