Customer support · Production

Appen uses Gong to onboard CSMs 4 months faster and improve customer success visibility

The problem

Before Gong, Appen's CSM onboarding took 6+ months, and managers had no way to validate what was actually said on customer calls, relying instead on CSMs' subjective summaries in an unreliable 'telephone game' that caused missed insights and wasted time and effort.

First attempt

Manual note-taking caused CSMs to miss critical details on customer calls, and managers had no mechanism to verify what was actually discussed, leaving them reliant on subjective second-hand reports with no way to go back and validate.

Workflow diagram · grounded in source
1
Call and email recording
integration
“All calls and emails for the entire lifecycle of the account are recorded and easily searchable”
2
CS call library creation
output
“One of the first things Shali did after deploying Gong was to build the customer success library. She began creating playlists and critical areas to help with the onboarding process”
3
Churn risk alerting
ai_action
“Gong's insights help teams uncover the lead indicators of customer churn — quickly and efficiently get alerted on critical renewals for competitive and market-risk accounts”
4
Manager call review
human_review
“an experienced manager can go into the call and pinpoint exactly what the customer said and when”
5
Upsell snippet sharing
output
“Shali and her team began sharing CSM calls with the Sales team: "Listen to this Gong snippet. It sounds like a great expansion opportunity"”
6
Voice of customer distribution
output
“Gong helps share the true voice of the customer with product, product marketing, customer education, and operations teams”
Reported outcome

Appen can now onboard a fully productive CSM managing a full book of business within their first quarter rather than 6+ months before Gong, while managers can proactively monitor account health, detect churn risk, and surface upsell opportunities by reviewing recorded calls directly.

Reported metrics
CSM onboarding speed improvement4 months faster
CSM onboarding time before Gong6+ months
CSM time to full productivity after Gongwithin their first quarter
Reported stack
GongGainsightSalesforce
Source
https://www.gong.io/customers/case-studies/gong-for-cs-appen-wants-it-loves-it-needs-it
Read source ↗

Frequently asked questions

What did this team achieve with this AI workflow?

Appen can now onboard a fully productive CSM managing a full book of business within their first quarter rather than 6+ months before Gong, while managers can proactively monitor account health, detect churn risk, and…

What tools did this team use?

Gong, Gainsight, Salesforce.

What results were reported?

CSM onboarding speed improvement: 4 months faster; CSM onboarding time before Gong: 6+ months; CSM time to full productivity after Gong: within their first quarter (source-reported, not independently verified).

What failed first in this deployment?

Manual note-taking caused CSMs to miss critical details on customer calls, and managers had no mechanism to verify what was actually discussed, leaving them reliant on subjective second-hand reports with no way to go…

How is this customer support AI workflow structured?

Call and email recording → CS call library creation → Churn risk alerting → Manager call review → Upsell snippet sharing → Voice of customer distribution.

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