Creating Playbooks Overview

Playbooks overview:

Akita's playbook technology allows our users to automate many of their repeatable processes and save themselves significant amounts of time. It also ensures your can regulate the standards you require when it comes to customer engagement and ensure the correct action is taken at the perfect time.

Akita's Playbooks can be applied to 2 entities:

Accounts i.e. tasks/messages within a Playbook can relate to the overall performance of the company(s) you are managing and/or specific individuals within that company(s). E.g. A Company enters the Renewal Segment, the Renewal Playbook is triggered and an automated email is sent to the contact tagged as 'Bill Payer'.
Contacts i.e. Playbooks are triggered based on the behavior and profile of an individual user/contact, irrespective of where they work. E.g. A contact/user provides a score of 10 on an NPS survey, automatically adding them to the Contacts segment called NPS Promoter, in turn triggering the NPS Promoter playbook, sending an automated email to the contact with a link to complete a G2 Crowd Survey.

Creating a Playbook:

Click the Playbooks tab in the sidebar and then click on the +New Playbook button to begin.

In the resulting pop up box, give the Playbook a name (Churn risk, On boarding etc) and select whether you want this playbook to apply to Accounts or Contacts.

Playbook Settings:

You will now need to configure your 4 playbook settings [see image below].

1. Playbooks can be cancelled manually or when the criteria for triggering them no longer applies. You may or may not want the Playbooks' associated tasks to be either cancelled or to require completion, toggle here for the desired option.

2. You may have certain playbooks that can (should) be repeated e.g. Renewal playbook. You may also have playbooks that should only be triggered once e.g. On boarding playbook. Toggle here for the desired option

3. You may utilize playbooks that need to be triggered and run regularly and potentially overlap. In these cases toggle Yes here. In most situations it is unlikely you will want your playbooks to run simultaneously, in these cases toggle choose the No option.

4. If you leave this option toggled to 'No', you can create a buffer before this playbook is triggered again E.g. You likely won't want to trigger an 'Ask for G2 Crowd Review' Playbook to be triggered more than once per year, in which case you leave the toggle set to No and type 365 into the text field [See below].

Alternatively, you may want to have a repeating playbook. This can be set to re-trigger a certain # of days after a playbook has been previously triggered or marked as complete. E.g. a Quarterly Review Playbook might be set to re-trigger every 90 days [see below].

Building Your Playbook's Steps

Akita Playbooks are processes that can be automatically or manually triggered and can include task(s) and/or Email Message(s).

In the Playbook context:

Tasks are assigned to you or other members or roles within your company/team and will be visible in the Planner tab or in the related Account record's Activities tab.
Messages are automated emails sent to customers (Contacts) that have been Tagged with a specific persona (Power User, Decision Maker etc).

To Begin, navigate to the Playbook you wish to add steps to and click the Steps option [Below].

To schedule an automated email, click on the Add a Message link at the top of the page. A box will appear with a number of fields and dropdowns to complete... [Below]

Name or Label...
Send as... You have the option to send this message either as a specific member of your team or a Role you have created i.e. If you have created the Role 'CSM' and choose the option 'CSM' here, the message will be send from whomever is assigned as the CSM for the relevant Account.
Use Template... This dropdown will list all of your previously created Message Templates.
Send to contacts tagged... You will want the message to be sent to a specific person/persona at your customer Account. Here you can select the specific tagged person to send this message to.
Instructions for CSM...
Assign this task - Here you can decide when you want this message to be sent. You have the option of sending it a specific number of days after one of the other steps in the Playbook.

To schedule an automated task for you or one of your team, click on the Add task link at the top of the page. A box will appear with a number of fields and dropdowns to complete... [Below]

Name or Label...
Assign task to... You have the option of assigning this task to a specific member of your team or a Role you have created i.e. If you have created the Role 'CSM' and choose the option 'CSM' here, the task will be sent from whomever is assigned as the CSM for the relevant Account.
Priority... this will be visible within the task record, in the list views in planner and can be used to filter tasks in the Grid View.
Overdue if not completed in... This will ensure any overdue tasks are moved to the Overdue tab in the Planner after the requisite number of days. You will also be able to run reports listing overdue tasks in the Playbooks Tab and in the Planner's Grid View.
Instructions for CSM... In order to build best practice into your repeatable processes, you can detail in this space the requirements for this particular task.
Assign this task - Here you can decide when you want this task to be assigned. You have the option of assigning it a specific number of days after one of the other steps in the Playbook.

Once you are satisfied with the playbook steps, you will need to Activate the Playbook [Below].

Creating a Playbook Trigger:

Once you have created your Playbook, designed the steps and configured your playbook settings you now need to ensure the playbook is triggered in the correct circumstances.

Click on the Triggers Tab in the relevant playbook page and click on the +New Playbook Trigger link on the right hand side of the page. A pop-up box will appear [see below].

Playbooks are triggered when an Account or Contact are automatically added to a particular Segment. In the pop-up box, there is a drop down in the Select a Triggering Segment field. Here you can select the relevant Segment.

Below this you will need to select what you want to happen If a trigger no longer applies... What this means is the Account or Contact no longer meet the conditions of the triggering segment. In this situation, you may want to cancel the playbook (and all associated Tasks or Messages) e.g. It may be redundant to continue with a Renewal Playbook once the renewal payment has been made, in which case click the Cancel Playbook button and click Save. In other situations the playbook should be completed irrespective of whether the Account or Contact is still in the triggering segment, in this case click the Continue Playbook button and then click Save.

You will now need to activate the trigger.

In the relevant playbook page, click on the Triggers tab. You will see a list of one (or multiple) triggers relating to this playbook. To activate the trigger, click on the Activate link in the Actions column. A pop-up box will appear, giving you the options to trigger this playbook for the Accounts or Contacts ALREADY IN the associated Segment (the number of Accounts/Contacts affected will be indicated). If you leave the box un-checked, only Accounts/Contacts that are added to the related Segment from this point on will have the relevant playbook triggered for them.

Once you are comfortable with your selection, click Activate trigger...