Forecasting Retention With Ease

Forecasting Retention With Ease

Forecasting Retention With Ease

Forecasting Retention With Ease

Vice President of Customer Success at VoIP pioneer and Contact Center 8x8, shares how Planhat has impacted on the business.

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Dec 31, 2024

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Vice President of Customer Success at VoIP pioneer and Contact Center 8x8, shares how Planhat has impacted on the business.

In

Dec 31, 2024

Share

Vice President of Customer Success at VoIP pioneer and Contact Center 8x8, shares how Planhat has impacted on the business.

In

Dec 31, 2024

A lot of customers, little visibility

Jason Graham — My name is Jason Graham. I'm the VP of Customer Success at 8x8. We have about 60,000 customers, and our Customer Success team is relatively new in its current iteration we're about, we're just entering our third year servicing our customers.

With Customer Success being fairly new at 8x8, the biggest challenge that we had is we are coming from a company that is almost 20 years old and had a lot of tech debt and we weren't able to do a retention forecast to understand what was happening with our customers when they renew, and to understand what our churn forecast might look like.

And for us, retention is really the primary output and how we quantify our existence. And Planhat was able to do it in a way that no other company was able to do it. Prior to Planhat, it was Google Sheets, it was different trackers, it was Tableau, it was, you name it.

“We weren't able to do a retention forecast to understand what was happening with our customers. And Planhat was able to do it in a way that no other company was able to do it. ”

Jason Graham

VP, Global Customer Success

8x8

A lot of customers, little visibility

Jason Graham — My name is Jason Graham. I'm the VP of Customer Success at 8x8. We have about 60,000 customers, and our Customer Success team is relatively new in its current iteration we're about, we're just entering our third year servicing our customers.

With Customer Success being fairly new at 8x8, the biggest challenge that we had is we are coming from a company that is almost 20 years old and had a lot of tech debt and we weren't able to do a retention forecast to understand what was happening with our customers when they renew, and to understand what our churn forecast might look like.

And for us, retention is really the primary output and how we quantify our existence. And Planhat was able to do it in a way that no other company was able to do it. Prior to Planhat, it was Google Sheets, it was different trackers, it was Tableau, it was, you name it.

“We weren't able to do a retention forecast to understand what was happening with our customers. And Planhat was able to do it in a way that no other company was able to do it. ”

Jason Graham

VP, Global Customer Success

8x8

A lot of customers, little visibility

Jason Graham — My name is Jason Graham. I'm the VP of Customer Success at 8x8. We have about 60,000 customers, and our Customer Success team is relatively new in its current iteration we're about, we're just entering our third year servicing our customers.

With Customer Success being fairly new at 8x8, the biggest challenge that we had is we are coming from a company that is almost 20 years old and had a lot of tech debt and we weren't able to do a retention forecast to understand what was happening with our customers when they renew, and to understand what our churn forecast might look like.

And for us, retention is really the primary output and how we quantify our existence. And Planhat was able to do it in a way that no other company was able to do it. Prior to Planhat, it was Google Sheets, it was different trackers, it was Tableau, it was, you name it.

“We weren't able to do a retention forecast to understand what was happening with our customers. And Planhat was able to do it in a way that no other company was able to do it. ”

Jason Graham

VP, Global Customer Success

8x8

Greater visibility, greater flexibility.

Planhat gave us a little bit more flexibility than even Salesforce did because we can integrate not only the retention forecast with just an opportunity itself, but within the other aspects of what's going on within the customers.

So we can understand what our communications were with the customer, what their health is, all sorts of different aspects that we might not see in Salesforce where we're just looking at an opportunity and the events driving up to the end of that.

What Planhat allowed us to do is to really consolidate a lot of information into one place in a way that we weren't able to yet in a visualization tool. But beyond that, it's a tool that CSMs not only receive the information but input information. And so it's kind of bilateral. We can get customer health information within Planhat and we can input our feedback into Planhat as well.

And then that output can become available to whoever needs to view it. And so that solved our need.

“Planhat gave us a little bit more flexibility than even Salesforce did because we can integrate not only the retention forecast with just an opportunity itself, but within the other aspects of what's going on within the customers. ”

Jason Graham

VP, Global Customer Success

8x8

Greater visibility, greater flexibility.

Planhat gave us a little bit more flexibility than even Salesforce did because we can integrate not only the retention forecast with just an opportunity itself, but within the other aspects of what's going on within the customers.

So we can understand what our communications were with the customer, what their health is, all sorts of different aspects that we might not see in Salesforce where we're just looking at an opportunity and the events driving up to the end of that.

What Planhat allowed us to do is to really consolidate a lot of information into one place in a way that we weren't able to yet in a visualization tool. But beyond that, it's a tool that CSMs not only receive the information but input information. And so it's kind of bilateral. We can get customer health information within Planhat and we can input our feedback into Planhat as well.

And then that output can become available to whoever needs to view it. And so that solved our need.

“Planhat gave us a little bit more flexibility than even Salesforce did because we can integrate not only the retention forecast with just an opportunity itself, but within the other aspects of what's going on within the customers. ”

Jason Graham

VP, Global Customer Success

8x8

Greater visibility, greater flexibility.

Planhat gave us a little bit more flexibility than even Salesforce did because we can integrate not only the retention forecast with just an opportunity itself, but within the other aspects of what's going on within the customers.

So we can understand what our communications were with the customer, what their health is, all sorts of different aspects that we might not see in Salesforce where we're just looking at an opportunity and the events driving up to the end of that.

What Planhat allowed us to do is to really consolidate a lot of information into one place in a way that we weren't able to yet in a visualization tool. But beyond that, it's a tool that CSMs not only receive the information but input information. And so it's kind of bilateral. We can get customer health information within Planhat and we can input our feedback into Planhat as well.

And then that output can become available to whoever needs to view it. And so that solved our need.

“Planhat gave us a little bit more flexibility than even Salesforce did because we can integrate not only the retention forecast with just an opportunity itself, but within the other aspects of what's going on within the customers. ”

Jason Graham

VP, Global Customer Success

8x8

Visibility to action to ROI

We were able to build a whole retention forecast, a whole retention pipeline, and then kind of extend beyond that to say, okay, well this is the end of the customer subscription, now let's move forward and understand what's going on with the customer, what the pros and cons, strengths, weaknesses are that lead up into that final event.

What Planhat has done for us over the last year since we've implemented it is about one or two percent of retention. And a percent or two of retention is quite a bit of money for us over a year. It might be a company's ARR at another company because we're a larger company. And so that's quantifiable output, that increased visibility across the spectrum of each department and the drivable execution towards that has given us dollars in return.

“What Planhat has done for us over the last year since we've implemented it is about one or two percent of retention. And a percent or two of retention is quite a bit of money for us over a year.”

Jason Graham

VP, Global Customer Success

8x8

Visibility to action to ROI

We were able to build a whole retention forecast, a whole retention pipeline, and then kind of extend beyond that to say, okay, well this is the end of the customer subscription, now let's move forward and understand what's going on with the customer, what the pros and cons, strengths, weaknesses are that lead up into that final event.

What Planhat has done for us over the last year since we've implemented it is about one or two percent of retention. And a percent or two of retention is quite a bit of money for us over a year. It might be a company's ARR at another company because we're a larger company. And so that's quantifiable output, that increased visibility across the spectrum of each department and the drivable execution towards that has given us dollars in return.

“What Planhat has done for us over the last year since we've implemented it is about one or two percent of retention. And a percent or two of retention is quite a bit of money for us over a year.”

Jason Graham

VP, Global Customer Success

8x8

Visibility to action to ROI

We were able to build a whole retention forecast, a whole retention pipeline, and then kind of extend beyond that to say, okay, well this is the end of the customer subscription, now let's move forward and understand what's going on with the customer, what the pros and cons, strengths, weaknesses are that lead up into that final event.

What Planhat has done for us over the last year since we've implemented it is about one or two percent of retention. And a percent or two of retention is quite a bit of money for us over a year. It might be a company's ARR at another company because we're a larger company. And so that's quantifiable output, that increased visibility across the spectrum of each department and the drivable execution towards that has given us dollars in return.

“What Planhat has done for us over the last year since we've implemented it is about one or two percent of retention. And a percent or two of retention is quite a bit of money for us over a year.”

Jason Graham

VP, Global Customer Success

8x8

8x8

8x8

8x8

An abstract render of a Planhat customer profile, including timeseries data and interaction records from Jira and Salesforce.

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An abstract render of a Planhat customer profile, including timeseries data and interaction records from Jira and Salesforce.

Thought-leading customer-centric content, direct to your inbox every month.

Thought-leading customer-centric content, direct to your inbox every month.

Thought-leading customer-centric content, direct to your inbox every month.