Success Plans Overview

A success plan enables you to capture customer information and expectations in a centralized location, enabling you to capture all of the goals that your customer has. From here, you can also begin to understand your customer's expectations and how you're able to help them achieve success.

Permission Sets

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

  • To view, create, edit, and delete success plan records: CSC - Customer Success
  • To view success plan records: CSC - Participant User

For more information, see Assigning and Removing Permission Sets.

Viewing Success Plans

You can view success plans in:

You can view the following records associated with a success plan in the Related tab of the success plan's record page:

  • Business challenges
  • CS activities
  • Objectives
  • Playbooks
  • Playbook tasks

You can also view and manage objective KPIs of a single success plan in Value Tracker. For more information, see Value Tracker Overview.

Creating Success Plans

You can create either blank success plans or success plans from templates. A success plan 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 success plans using:

  • The following actions in the Actions panel, which is available on the Customer Success Management Workspace:

    • Create Success Plan: This enables you to create either blank success plans or success plans from a template, and add business challenges to new success plans.
    • Create Success Plan from Opportunity: This enables you to create a success plan from an opportunity. The new success plan inherits the business challenges and objectives related to the opportunity.

    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.

  • The Add Success Plan button in Success Tracker. This method enables you to create either blank success plans or success plans from a template, and add business challenges to new success plans.
  • The New list view button in the Success Plans tab. This enables you to create blank success plans only.

For more information, see Creating Success Plans.

Note:

You must have the correct permissions assigned to create success plans:

  • From templates
  • In Success Tracker

For more information, see Setting up Customer Success Cloud.

Success Plan Creation Guidelines

Consider these guidelines when creating success plans.

These guidelines apply to associating success plans with parent and child records:

  • When creating a success plan from an opportunity, the success plan:

    • Is automatically associated with the opportunity if you create the success plan:

      • From an opportunity record page
      • From an objective or business challenge record page, if they have an opportunity associated with them
    • Inherits the business challenges and objectives related to the opportunity. This includes any business challenges and objectives they have associated via objective business challenges records.
  • If you create a success plan from an opportunity, objective, playbook, playbook task, or success plan record page, the success plan is automatically associated with the record's account. Clearing the selected account also clears the selected opportunity. An opportunity can only be associated with one success plan.
  • You can only create a success plan from an opportunity that does not yet have a success plan associated with it.
  • The selected opportunity must be associated with the selected account. Alternatively, leave the account blank.
  • You can only select an opportunity that has no success plan associated with it. In addition, an opportunity's related records, such as business challenges and objectives, cannot already have a success plan associated with them.
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 success plans:

  • When creating a success plan from an opportunity, you can select only the opportunities that are related to the account you selected.
  • The currently logged user is automatically set as the success plan's owner.

These guidelines apply to creating objectives from templates:

  • When selecting a template:

    • Only success plans with the Template field 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.

  • When creating a success plan from an account record page, the Account field is automatically populated with the account you are currently viewing.
  • The account details are inherited by any associated records and their related records.

  • The Template field is selected by default when creating a record from the Actions panel on the record page of a template success plan, objective, or playbook, or from Success Tracker.

  • The effective date of the new success plan defaults to today's date, but you can specify a different one. When creating success plan records via flows, you must specify an effective date.
  • Changing the effective date of a success plan 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 success plan's new effective date.

  • The new child record dates are calculated by using the child record start date incremented by the difference between the template's original effective date and the new effective date that you specify when creating a record from the template. The start and end dates of the new child records are blank:

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

You can create success plans using the following custom actions in the Salesforce Flow Builder:

  • ActionCSPFO to create success plans from opportunities
  • ActionCSPFT to create success plans from templates

For more information about using custom actions and flows, see Custom Actions and the Salesforce Help.

You can automatically associate a blank success plan record with an account. To do this, create the success plan from the Actions panel on the account's record page. This automatically populates the Account field on the new record.

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.

Success Plans Created from Templates

You can save a success plan as a template by selecting the Template checkbox while creating your new success plan. Success plans created from templates inherit their information and the following child records:

  • Objectives, including their related objective KPIs
  • Playbooks
  • Playbook tasks
Note:

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

When creating a new success plan 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 objectives, 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.

  • Edit, create, and delete objective KPIs, if the success plan template has one or more objectives.

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 Success Plans

You can edit success plans from:

  • The Success Plans tab
  • Success Tracker

For more information, see Editing Success Plans.

Notes:
  • 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.

  • Updating a success plan's account automatically updates the account of the CS activities associated with the success plan.

Allocating Resources to Success Plans

You can manually allocate any active CS Cloud resource or automatically allocate the most suitable CS Cloud resource from a pool of resources to a success plan. The resource allocated to a success plan record is also the owner of that record. The resource receives a notification whenever they are allocated to a success plan.

For more information, see Allocating Resources and Auto-Allocating Resources to Success Plans.

Success Plan Customer Success Resources

The Success Plan Customer Success object provides a view of resources associated with success plans. This object establishes a relationship between the CS Cloud Resource and the Success Plan, streamlining the resource allocation process.

Note:

You cannot directly create, update, or delete a success plan customer success resource from this object.

To do this, enable the Bypass Success Plan CS Resource Trigger field in the CS Cloud Process Settings custom setting.

There are specific scenarios where a success plan customer success resource is not created, including:

  • If the success plan is marked as a template.
  • If the success plan has no owner associated.

If a resource is updated in the success plan, a new success plan customer success record is created with the updated resource. The previous record is marked inactive and assigned an end date corresponding to the change date.

Similarly, if a success plan is designated as a template, an end date is automatically added to the existing success plan customer success record. Creating and updating success plan customer success records depend on factors such as the success plan’s template and owner allocation. Different scenarios might arise based on these conditions and the user’s interaction.

Note:

To create Customer Success Plan Success Resource records for all your existing success plans, paste and run the Success Plan Customer Success Resource script in the Developer Console.

For more information, see Success Plan Customer Success Resource Creation Script.

Associating Business Challenges with Success Plans

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.

Creating a Success Plan Skill

You can a create success plan skill to determine the skills and competencies a resource must have to be suitable for allocation to the success plan. You can associate CS skills with a success plan from the Success Plan Skills tab or the Success Plan Skills related list of the success plan's record page. For more information, see CS Skills Overview and Creating a Success Plan Skill.

Deleting Success Plans

You can delete success plans in the Success Plans tab only.

Value Tracker

Value Tracker enables you to view and manage all the objective KPIs of:

  • Objectives associated with a success plan
  • Objectives associated with an account
  • A single objective

This consolidated view of objective KPIs gives customer success managers more control over them.

For more information, see Value Tracker Overview.

Note:

By default, Value Tracker is displayed on success plan record pages, but your administrator can add it to additional record pages, app pages, and workspaces. For more information, contact your administrator.