- Product
Explore Dooly
See Dooly's core features for yourself with these on-demand interactive tours.
Check it out >
Explore Dooly
See Dooly's core features for yourself with these on-demand interactive tours.
Check it out >Net retention increased in one year
extra day back per CSM per week
CS/sales handoffs
“Dooly is a game-changer when it comes to organization velocity across our teams. The amount of time recovered each week adds up fast! Getting time back each week gives CSMs more time for strategic thinking, delivering more business value, and, ultimately, improving the customer experience.”
ThoughtExchange is the only Enterprise Discussion Management platform powered by patented anti-bias technology. Modern leaders use ThoughtExchange to quickly gain critical insights and improve strategic decision-making. Whether you’re engaging ten stakeholders or a community of 10,000 people, ThoughtExchange allows leaders to drive strategic discussions at scale.
With enterprise clients like GE, SAP, and Oracle, the team needed to streamline its processes for new and existing business — from sales-CS handoffs to internal QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews). There are often many people involved in ensuring the success of a customer, and everyone needs access to the full customer narrative to ensure an exceptional customer experience and avoid duplicative work.
Originally, the ThoughtExchange team was using Quip to document account plans and update records in Salesforce. Adoption didn’t go as planned and the RevOps team realized they needed a better way to integrate Sales and Customer Success processes to ensure a smooth transition of customers between teams.
RevOps needed a single notes solution to improve sales and customer success handoffs, guide CSM workflows, and increase customer net retention.
“I thought we were just looking for a note solution. But Dooly’s integration with Salesforce, along with its opportunity and account pipeline functionality, was a huge bonus and value add.”
Dooly exceeded the revenue team’s productivity and collaboration needs with its Salesforce integration and custom pipeline views, which gave them unique visibility into their data that they never had before.
After they were introduced to Dooly, the ThoughtExchange team started a pilot program with a small group of Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and sales reps to assess how the tool would impact note taking, Salesforce updates, and customer interactions.
The pilot was a huge success and the team unanimously gave a thumbs up to roll Dooly out across ThoughtExchange’s Sales and Customer Success teams.
Dooly delivered customized, hands-on training and office hours sessions separately for each of the teams to ensure adoption based on their unique workflows. Although Dooly “just works” and is easy to learn, when rolling out new software to large teams, it’s important to get aligned on a consistent and repeatable process. And for the business to set expectations on usage and get buy-in on the value of using.
“Our CS team was definitely one of the first groups to get trained and pick up on the value of Dooly,” said Christine Alves, Team Lead for Customer Success Education.
Soon, Sales picked up on its value, too, and the two teams started using Dooly to improve collaboration, communication, and deliver a seamless customer experience.
For instance, the CS team created shared Dooly boards that allow them to easily track the priorities of each account and another that allows them to see what other educators — a key segment for ThoughtExchange — are doing. Those insights help them share relevant examples and inspiration with the rest of their customers.
“Having that flexibility in the tool to be able to configure what we need in order to be better and quicker at our jobs, and provide relevant information in a timely manner has been really, really helpful.”
One of the major sticking points for the Sales and CS teams at ThoughtExchange was making a smooth transition from new to existing business once a deal was signed.
“Dooly has been very useful in that handoff process,” said Kailyn Skuban, a CSM at ThoughtExchange. “We’ve built out templates to make the transition process smoother, making sure we have all the key points we need to launch a successful kickoff for the account.
As AEs bring on new business, they use Dooly to take notes about what the customer wants to achieve with ThoughtExchange. The CS team can then pull that information up at kickoff so they’re already up to speed when they kick things off with the customer.
Having access to sales discovery notes about pain the customer wants to solve, desired business outcomes, and a use case vision means the CS team does not need to duplicate work, can build a deeper relationship right away, and advise the customer on how they can best achieve the outcomes they desire.
“There’s definitely been a reduction in the time spent on communicating — internally and externally — the details of what’s most important to the customer.”
Dooly has also helped make QBRs more impactful with its sharable, filterable sales notes. “Before, we didn’t have an easy way to track our QBR success plans,” Christine told Dooly. “Now, we have a dropdown to label a meeting note as a QBR, which then populates in Salesforce as an event.”
With this new approach, CSMs can now quickly pull up the right Salesforce field and update priorities based on the QBR notes.
“Being able to update Salesforce fields in meeting notes is so efficient. I now spend less time on administrative work and more time on strategic work.”
“It’s much easier to update things like contact fields and strategic priorities,” Kristen said. “It’s just simpler than having to click several times to click into and update a Salesforce field.”
As a CSM, Kailyn was blocking off 30 minutes for morning admin and a full hour at the end of her day to make sure her Salesforce notes were accurate and up-to-date. But now? “I don’t need that hour,” Kailyn said. “I just have more free time toward the end of my day”
Kristen finds even more time savings in the flexibility Dooly offers. “Being able to configure exactly what we need in order to be faster at our jobs and provide relevant information in a timely manner has been really helpful,” she added.
“It's much easier to update things like contact fields and strategic priorities in Dooly, compared to working in Salesforce. Dooly’s interface is user-friendly and more efficient ”
“I have a terrible memory,” Kristen confided. “If I don’t jot down next steps or important information, it’s gone. Now I’m in the habit of taking notes in Dooly for every customer call I have. I use it many, many times a day.”
But it’s not just the immediate note taking capability of Dooly that the CS team appreciates; the versatility of the tool goes a long way, too. The CS team has built out a handful of templates that the entire team relies on for meetings, follow ups, and quickly uncovering customer priorities.
“Dooly is really supportive not only of my immediate workflow, but also looking ahead.”
Between these templates, task lists, and board views, CSMs and team leads have a better grasp of both what’s coming up for them and what their teammates are focused on.
Staying organized, having a better idea of what work to prioritize and what to do next takes a lot of stress out of the day.
"In the last year, we increased NR by 26.8% and Dooly was one of the ways we worked to achieve that."
Dooly makes it easier for the CS team to keep their Salesforce records straight — but how does that impact their work experience and the experience they’re providing to customers?
Dooly helped ThoughtExchange give their customers more (and better) attention in two ways:
Strategically assessing accounts in Dooly with custom views gives CSMs more visibility into the health of each, helping them prioritize their work.
“I’ve spent less time doing time-consuming admin work, and more time actually digging into how I can help my customers."
“Dooly has had a direct impact on making my daily workflow more efficient, which frees up my time to think more strategically about my accounts,” Kailyn said. “If I have time to take a more strategic approach with my accounts, I’ll ultimately have more impact with them.”
With better notes about customer priorities and more time to do outside research, CS communications with customers have become more relevant to what’s happening now, instead of recapping a conversation that happened three weeks ago.
The hour Kailyn was blocking off for admin work within Salesforce at the end of the day? She doesn’t need it anymore.
“I have more free time in my day to get in exercise, walk my dog, eat a nice meal with my partner — without rushing to finish my day by six o’clock.”
The team also appreciates the ability to see what everybody is working on, getting real-time updates instead of having to ping each other on Slack. (Except for puppy photos from Kailyn, of course.)
“The biggest impact for the team has been visibility and creating more structured processes,” Gagan said. “There’s more continuity, and we’re focused on the right things.”
