If you’ve ever tried to roll out a “success play” and ended up with a dusty checklist nobody actually uses, you’re not alone. This guide is for customer success managers, team leads, and ops folks who want to get real value out of Totango success plays—without wasting time on busywork. You’ll learn what works, what trips people up, and how to build plays that actually make your team’s life easier.
What’s a Success Play in Totango (and Why Should You Care)?
Let’s get clear: in Totango, a “success play” is basically a set of tasks or steps your team follows when something important happens. Think onboarding, renewals, or tackling an at-risk account. The idea is to give everyone a repeatable process—so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel (or rely on tribal knowledge).
But here’s the catch: most teams overcomplicate things. They create sprawling, theoretical plays that look good on paper but never get used. The trick is to keep them actionable, specific, and tied to real outcomes.
Step 1: Pick One Problem to Solve
Don’t try to boil the ocean. Start by picking a single process where your team stumbles or drops the ball. Some good candidates:
- Onboarding new customers gets inconsistent results.
- Renewals slip through the cracks.
- Expansion opportunities aren’t flagged early enough.
- Churn risk isn’t caught until it’s too late.
Pro tip: Ask your frontline CSMs where they waste the most time or feel least confident. Build your first success play there.
Step 2: Map Out the Minimum Steps
It’s tempting to list every possible task. Resist. Focus on what actually needs to happen for the outcome you want.
- List 3-7 steps. If you hit double digits, you’re overthinking it.
- Make each step crystal clear. “Follow up” is useless. “Send intro email to Jane at ACME” is better.
- Avoid unnecessary approvals or handoffs. Every extra step is a chance for things to stall.
What to ignore: Fancy branching logic, conditional steps for every edge case, or anything that looks like it belongs in a flowchart from 1998.
Step 3: Get the Timing Right
A good success play is about when things happen, not just what happens. Totango lets you trigger plays based on account events, health scores, or even user activity.
- Trigger on real signals. Don’t just launch plays at random or on a fixed calendar.
- Use Totango’s automation to assign plays when they’re needed—like when a usage drop is detected or a renewal date is coming up.
- Give people enough lead time. If your play starts two days before renewal, you’re too late.
Reality check: If the trigger is too broad, you’ll overwhelm your team with noise. Too narrow, and you’ll miss important cases. Test and tweak.
Step 4: Assign Owners (Not Committees)
Success plays only work if someone owns them. In Totango, you can assign tasks to roles, but be specific:
- Assign a single owner for each task. “CSM team” isn’t enough.
- If you must have handoffs, make the transition point explicit (“When CSM completes step 3, assign step 4 to Solutions Engineer”).
- Avoid “FYI” watchers—if nobody is responsible, the step won’t get done.
Pro tip: Clear ownership means less finger-pointing and more accountability.
Step 5: Make It Easy to Follow (and Complete)
If your play is a pain to use, your team will ignore it. Use Totango features to make the process smoother:
- Pre-fill templates for emails or calls where you can.
- Add context links (to CRM, docs, or support tickets) in the task description.
- Keep instructions short—nobody reads long playbooks in the middle of a busy day.
- Use checklists or required fields only when they actually add value—not just to “cover your bases.”
What doesn’t work: Forcing people to log every tiny interaction for the sake of data. You’ll just get fake updates.
Step 6: Close the Loop with Feedback
The first version of your play is a guess. If you want it to stick, ask for blunt feedback:
- After a round of usage, ask CSMs what made sense and what was pointless.
- Look at completion rates inside Totango. Are tasks left undone? That’s a sign to cut or simplify.
- If people are skipping steps or inventing workarounds, dig into why.
Reality check: Plays are never “done.” They need regular clean-up or they’ll turn into zombie processes.
Step 7: Measure (But Don’t Drown in Metrics)
Totango has plenty of reporting—but don’t get obsessed with dashboards. Focus on a few real indicators:
- Are customers getting a better experience? (e.g., onboarding time, renewal rate)
- Is your team actually completing the play steps, or just checking boxes to make the reminders go away?
- Did the play solve the original problem you set out to fix?
What to ignore: Vanity metrics. If a play gets 100% completion but customers are still churning, something’s wrong.
Step 8: Keep Plays Focused and Prune Ruthlessly
You’ll be tempted to create a success play for every possible scenario. Resist. More isn’t better.
- Review your list of active plays every quarter. Kill off the ones nobody uses.
- Merge similar plays when possible.
- Don’t create plays for things your team already does well without prompts.
Pro tip: The fewer plays you have, the more likely they’ll actually be used.
Common Pitfalls (and How to Dodge Them)
Even experienced teams trip up here:
- Over-engineering: Building a play that needs a 10-page manual. Nobody will read it.
- Lack of buy-in: Rolling out plays without input from the people who’ll actually use them.
- Set-and-forget: Forgetting to update plays as your process or team changes.
- Analysis paralysis: Waiting for the “perfect” process before launching anything.
Done is better than perfect. Get something live, then improve it.
Real Talk: What Works, What Doesn’t
What works: - Short, specific, timely steps. - Real ownership. - Automating the boring stuff.
What doesn’t: - Trying to cover every scenario. - Forcing people to record useless data. - Letting plays get stale.
Keep It Simple, Keep It Useful
The best success plays in Totango are the ones your team actually follows without grumbling. Start small, focus on the basics, and revisit your plays regularly. If a step doesn’t help your team or your customers, cut it.
Don’t chase perfection. Instead, build plays that solve one real problem at a time—and fix them as you go. That’s how you get value, instead of yet another process nobody wants to use.