If you’re using Planhat to keep tabs on your customers, you already know it’s easy to drown in metrics. You want the real story—who’s engaged, who’s drifting, and which accounts are about to call it quits. This guide is for folks who actually use Planhat day-to-day: CSMs, CS leaders, and ops folks who have to make these numbers mean something. We’ll cut through the fluff, focus on what actually helps, and show you how to get the most out of Planhat’s engagement tracking.
Why Bother Tracking Customer Engagement?
You can’t fix what you can’t see. Engagement metrics tell you if customers are getting value, or if they’re just paying the bill and ignoring your emails. Catching warning signs early means fewer “surprise” churns and more chances to turn things around.
But not every metric is worth your time. Some numbers look good in a dashboard but don’t link to renewals, expansions, or customer happiness. We’ll flag the ones that matter—and the ones that don’t.
What Counts as “Engagement” in Planhat?
Let’s get clear: engagement isn’t just logins. It’s about meaningful activity that shows customers are using your product and getting value.
Common engagement signals in Planhat:
- Product usage: Are they using key features, or just logging in?
- Email opens and replies: Are they reading your emails, or ghosting you?
- Meetings and calls: Are they showing up, or rescheduling every time?
- Support tickets: Are they asking smart questions, or radio silent?
- NPS and feedback: Are they telling you what they think?
It’s tempting to track everything, but that’s how you end up with noise instead of insight.
Step 1: Get Your Data Clean and Connected
Before you even open Planhat, make sure your data pipes are actually flowing. Garbage in, garbage out.
Connect the essentials:
- Product data: Pipe in usage events from your app. Don’t just send logins—send events for actions that matter.
- Email/calendar: Integrate your email and calendar to log touchpoints automatically.
- Support tools: Connect Zendesk, Intercom, or whatever you use so you can track support interactions.
- CRM: Make sure account and contact info matches what’s in Planhat. Sync regularly.
Pro tip: If you have to manually upload CSVs every week, fix that first. Automation saves you from headaches later.
What to skip: Don’t bother integrating every tool under the sun. Start with the systems that actually capture engagement.
Step 2: Decide What to Track (and What to Ignore)
Here’s where most teams get stuck. You can track hundreds of things, but only a handful predict real outcomes.
Stick to these core engagement metrics:
- Feature adoption: Are customers using the features that drive value?
- Active users: Not just any user—focus on decision-makers and power users.
- Meaningful activity: E.g., number of dashboards created, reports exported, or workflows automated. Pick actions that tie to customer outcomes.
- Touchpoints: How often are you (and your customers) communicating? Quality beats quantity.
What usually doesn’t matter:
- Raw login counts: Lots of logins don’t mean much if nobody’s doing anything useful.
- Email open rates: Good to know, but not a leading indicator on their own.
- Every single click: Overkill. You’ll just end up with data nobody looks at.
Pro tip: Pick 3-5 metrics you can actually act on. If nobody on your team cares about a number, drop it.
Step 3: Build Dashboards That Actually Help
Planhat’s dashboards are powerful, but easy to overcomplicate. The goal isn’t to impress your boss with a wall of charts—it’s to spot risks and opportunities fast.
How to set up dashboards that don’t suck:
- Segment accounts: Group by health score, renewal date, or customer tier.
- Highlight outliers: Show accounts with dropping usage, overdue QBRs, or no recent touchpoints.
- Trend over time: Don’t just look at this week—see how engagement is changing month to month.
- Keep it simple: If you can’t explain your dashboard to a new hire in 60 seconds, it’s too complex.
What to avoid:
- Vanity metrics: Charts that look pretty but don’t drive action.
- Data overload: If your dashboard needs a legend to decode, you’ve gone too far.
Step 4: Use Playbooks and Alerts—But Only for What Matters
Automation in Planhat can save time, but misuse it and you’ll just flood your inbox with noise.
Set up smart alerts for:
- Drops in feature usage from key accounts
- No engagement from decision-makers in X days
- Negative NPS or bad survey responses
- Support tickets spiking (could signal trouble or a new rollout)
Don’t set alerts for:
- Every login, every ticket, every email
- Minor activity changes that don’t link to outcomes
Playbook tips:
- Trigger playbooks only on real risk signals—not on every blip.
- Review and tweak playbooks quarterly. What made sense last year might not work now.
- Don’t “set and forget.” Check if your playbooks are actually helping, or just creating busywork.
Step 5: Make Engagement Data Useful for Your Team
Having the right data is only half the battle. Getting your team to use it is the hard part.
How to make metrics actionable:
- Review engagement weekly: Bring up outlier accounts in your team meeting. Assign follow-up.
- Tie metrics to customer outcomes: Don’t just say “usage is down”—ask why, and what you’ll do about it.
- Give context: Add notes in Planhat when you know why engagement dropped (e.g., customer had layoffs, or a new admin is ramping up).
- Share wins: When engagement jumps after a specific playbook or outreach, let everyone know.
What to avoid:
- Policing your team with dashboards: Use engagement data to help, not to micromanage.
- Treating metrics as gospel: Sometimes the numbers lie. Always double-check with real conversations.
Step 6: Keep Improving—But Don’t Chase Every Shiny Object
Planhat (like any customer success tool) is always rolling out new features. Resist the urge to add every widget to your workflow.
What actually works:
- Periodically audit your metrics—what’s driving action, and what’s ignored?
- Ask your CSMs: “Which numbers help you spot churn or upsell opportunities?”
- Be ruthless: If a metric isn’t useful, kill it.
What doesn’t:
- Tracking more and more stuff just because you can.
- Letting the tool dictate your process, instead of the other way around.
Honest Takes: What Works, What Doesn’t, and What to Ignore
Works:
- Tracking a handful of meaningful engagement metrics tied to product value.
- Automating alerts for real risk—like steep usage drops or silent decision-makers.
- Reviewing engagement regularly as a team.
Doesn’t work:
- Tracking logins and calling it “engagement.”
- Building dashboards nobody reads.
- Setting up playbooks for every minor event.
Ignore:
- Most “engagement score” black boxes. If you can’t explain how it’s calculated, don’t bet the farm on it.
Wrapping Up: Don’t Overthink It
Tracking customer engagement in Planhat is about getting the right signals, not every signal. Start simple, focus on real actions, and tweak as you go. Your team—and your customers—will thank you for keeping it straightforward.