Lifecycle Advantage (LCA) Customer Success gives you the information you need to lead your customers through the lifecycle and help you scale your customer success practices. Check out the FAQs below for more information.
Show me my insights > Sign me up >Now available in LCA Customer Success, enhanced telemetry provides a deeper understanding of how customers are progressing in their deployment with direction on how to use the data to better support them.
Click on a topic to explore FAQs or search by keyword to learn more about LCA Customer Success.
Success Programs are a targeted adoption motion focused on a particular solution to ensure eligible customers realize the value of their investment with Cisco.
Digital engagement is the foundation of the programmatic approach. The Lifecycle Digital Journey provides an “always on” engagement with customers.
The programmatic approach increases efficiency and transforms lifecycle insights into recommended actions to prioritize at-risk customers, allowing LCA Customer Success Managers to drive targeted actions, when needed, to overcome adoption barriers, address customer risk, and help customers progress through the lifecycle journey.
LCA Customer Success gives you the information you need to lead your customers through the lifecycle and help you scale your customer success practices. LCA Customer Success can help you better manage accounts, act on recommendations, connect data to your customers, and ultimately help customers get the most from their investments.
After logging in to the Lifecycle Advantage platform, you can locate LCA Customer Success in the navigation at the top of the home screen.
Daily data refreshes take place to provide you with the most current and accurate data.
No, a customer will not continue to receive the same notification repeatedly. As part of the digital journey, a customer may receive additional notifications as their telemetry data changes even if they do not progress stages. If a customer is not moving at all, they will continue to receive notifications, with different messaging, to try and help them progress.
New offers are announced in the Lifecycle Advantage Digest email. You have 30 days to apply exclusions before the first digital journey email send. If you are signed up for other Success Programs, we will automatically enroll you in any new Success Programs we launch. But don't worry: You will still be able to review and exclude any accounts or use cases prior to the first email send. Should you wish to unenroll, you can do so within Settings > Journey Settings.
Partner CSMs can be notified when a new use case is added by signing up for the alerts within the Customer Success settings. You can also use the Quick Filter in the UI to pull all recently added use cases (within the last 30 days).
There is no way to change a Cisco-provided contact. Partners can add their own contact information (up to five) for each use case. All emails added to the contact field are checked for valid email format and checked to make sure the email did not bounce or unsubscribe.
Digital journey playbooks can be viewed here. Use the dropdown on the top right to navigate between journeys and languages. Digital journey playbooks walk you through each digital touchpoint in the lifecycle. Each email contains resources to help customers onboard, implement, and use the product as well as engage, adopt, and optimize the solution as they advance.
Use cases are created based on a PID mapping. Each use case has a set of PIDs that can include licenses, subscriptions, appliances, and hardware. The customer must have all the PIDs for a use case to appear in LCA Customer Success.
Daily data refreshes take place to provide you with the most current and accurate data.
Telemetry must be enabled in the product and the customer must opt to share the data with Cisco. Once that selection has been made, telemetry data will then display on accounts where a customer has purchased from a single partner. In cases where a customer has purchased from more than one partner, telemetry data is only displayed when the customer signs a digital consent form. Once the customer completes this form, the partner will receive an approval notification and telemetry data will be available in LCA Customer Success.
Risk of non-renewal (only available for Cisco Secure Endpoint, use case Endpoint Protection at this time) uses a data science model that accesses 62 different telemetry data attributes, evaluates these data points to see how a customer is progressing in using Secure Endpoints, and compares it to whether a customer has or has not renewed in the past.
The top six drivers of the risk measurement are:
• License end gap
• Contract line status
• License start gap
• Percent install
• Deployment status
• Exclusion list from the data telemetry points
The wider the previous licensed gap, less installed, and those not actively deployed are more likely to be at risk for renewal.
Health scores are simplified scoring methods measuring usage and adoption and are only available for use cases where telemetry is enabled. Health scores deliver insights on overall performance, product relationship, and future customer behavior. To calculate a health score, points are awarded for every use case activity or stage throughout the customer lifecycle from purchase through adopt. Most stages are worth 20 points, and purchase and onboard stages are combined to equal a total of 20 points.
The health scores displayed in LCA Customer Success are not linked to any certification
Health scores are not available for customers/usecases where telemetry is not currently enabled or when the customer has regressed in stage.
Health scores are based on the total value of points earned within each stage and are calculated as the average score between all active solution domains.
• Red: 0 – 32
If a health score falls between 0-32, the number will be shown in red and indicates the customer is in danger of not using and adopting their investment.
• Yellow: 33 – 65
If a health score falls between 33-65, the number will be shown in yellow, and indicates the customer is at risk of not using and adopting their investment.
• Green: 66 – 100
If a health score falls between 66-100, the number will be shown in green, and indicates the customer is successfully using and adopting their investment.
The insights currently available today in LCA Customer Success are:
Please note that risk of non-renewal data is available only for Cisco Secure Endpoint at the moment.
The values in the enhanced telemetry section will provide a closer look at the data and insights we collect, giving partners an even deeper understanding of how customers are progressing in their deployment.
More information can be found here.
Days in Stage are calculated using the first booking date, when the use case moves to Purchase. Telemetry data will determine how the lifecycle stages progress and the Days in Stage update. A single use case can have many sales order numbers. The sales order number displayed in LCA Customer Success is aligned with the most recent order associated with the use case and therefore may not align with the stage of the use case.
A sales order does not always have a one-to-one mapping to a use case. It's typically a many-to-many relationship, meaning that many sales orders can map to multiple use cases. Furthermore, a lot of events must occur after a sale happens before a customer will show in LCA Customer Success, and those events vary by Solution Domain. Here are some of the more common reasons data may not be showing:
Data for customers will be visible in LCA Customer Success without telemetry being enabled, however; you will only see telemetry data if the customer has their telemetry enabled and digital consent has been provided by the customer.
All PIDs needed to achieve the outcome of the use case need to be present for a use case to be eligible.
An adoption barrier, internal or external, is an issue/situation that is preventing the customer from moving one or multiple stages in the lifecycle journey, or from realizing the full value of the product.
Adoption barriers provide highly valuable insights into the issues that a customer is facing. By surfacing those issues, we can make sure that the right teams put the right solutions in place to support the customer. Adoption barriers can be at the account level, the solution domain level, and/or the use-case level.
When there is a CSM assigned, partners will have visibility into the adoption barrier type, reason, next step action owner, and next best action (if that action is on the partner). If there is not a CSM assigned, partners will have visibility only into the adoption barrier type and reason.
An adoption barrier will be closed when the issue identified is no longer preventing the customer from moving to the next stage in the lifecycle journey.
An adoption barrier that is logged by Cisco is for visibility only whereas an adoption barrier logged by the partner is expected to be managed and resolved. When an Adoption Barrier’s status is updated to “Cancelled”, “Resolved”, or “Expired” (automatically set at 365 days) they will no longer appear in LCA CS after the following data refresh (24-48 hours).
View more information here .
There are three use cases for Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller in Cisco Cloud Network products.
For a customer to have the Software Image Management and Distributed Networking use cases, they must first have the Fabric Provisioning and Operations use case, which determines the digital journey entry criteria and email progression for all three use cases. We made some minor modifications to the way that these use cases are displayed to support the serial and interdependent nature of the Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller journey.
The content for each use case has been combined into one journey. Any contacts that you wish to add must be added to the first use case, Fabric Provisioning Operations. Those contacts will automatically receive the content for the other two use cases, if available. Additionally, exclusions and/or the addition of a partner CSM contact applied to the first use case will also extend to the other use cases.
This is an identified opportunity for a partner to help their customer progress along the lifecycle journey. For example, a stalled in stage alert identifies that the customer is not progressing as quickly as they should be. The recommended action is to contact the customer to identify what support they need. It is possible that the customer has an adoption barrier that has caused them to stall.
Highest booking partners are calculated based on the product identifiers (PID) that create the use case. This can include both hardware and software and may or may not include EA. Services are not included currently in the calculation.
Highest booking partner is by use case and is not based on who holds the EA or at the architecture level (i.e. Security). There could be a few reasons you are not seeing all use cases with the EA:
The customer entity for an EA is a different grain of data than the customer entity for a given use case. The customer entity with the EA you are searching for may be part of a different customer entity within LCA Customer Success. (See end customer related parties to find the correct customer. If you can’t find that end customer name in the customer related parties section, then please see the question, "Why can't I see my customers in LCA Customer Success?")
PSC can be managed in two locations, the UI or via the Excel download/upload feature. Within the UI, add account level contacts (one per account) under the “customer adoption contact” field. Add use case level contacts to the UI by navigating to the “Full Account View” under “Contacts” and add them to the “Partner Provided” table. For bulk editing within Excel, contacts that should be leveraged across an entire customer account (only one account level contact per account is supported) to receive notifications for all use cases should be added to the Account file. For adding contacts that should be leveraged for specific use cases only, add them (up to five per use case) in the use case contacts file.
Cisco supplied contacts can be managed in two places, the UI and the Excel download/upload feature. In either location, partners can view all contacts that are eligible to receive a co-branded notification for each use case shared in the data and selected whether to include that contact for co-branded notifications. In the UI, this can be found under the “Cisco Provided” table on the “Contacts” tab in the “Full Account View”. In the Excel, it can be found within the “Cisco Supplied” tab of the “Use Case Contacts” Excel download file. Cisco supplied contacts cannot be overwritten.
Default CSMs can be assigned at a solution domain level. This means that for any new use cases that are brought in to LCA, they will automatically be assigned to the CSM for the solution domain it falls under, eg. A new “Endpoint Protection” use case added to LCA would default to use the CSM applied under the Solution Domain of “Integrated Secure Operations”. Note that these CSMs can be searched under the Advanced Filters but will not display within the UI. To modify the CSM assignment at a more granular level, CSMs can be applied to individual accounts and/or use cases. Add account level CSMs in the “Partner CSM Contact” field of the account or to the Excel “Account” download file. Add use case level CSMs in the “Partner CSM Contact” table within the “Contacts” tab in the “Full Account View” of the UI or in the “Use Case” Excel download file. Please note, a solution domain level CSM is only used when neither an account level or use case level CSM is provided. An account level CSM is only used when a use case level CSM is not provided.
Once a tag is created within the LCA Customer Success Settings UI, a partner can add them to use cases within the Use Case Excel download/upload functionality. A separate tab in the file, labeled “Partner-Provided Segmentation Tag” will indicate all tags that have been configured by the partner. To add one or more of these tags to the use case, simply type the tag name exactly as it appears in the settings. To use more than one tag, separate them with a double pipe delimiter, which looks like this: ||
Cisco will use the information you enter if/when the Cisco team needs to work directly with you to drive customer success. Providing this information is key to enabling Cisco to contact the right person within each of our partners' organizations.
The alert view in LCA Customer Success looks across all alerts and notifications and brings everything to one location making it easier for you to review and proactively manage alerts for each account. You can also note when you’ve taken action by indicating what you did and what the status is.
The scores are broken out by lifecycle stage, each exit criteria completed ultimately adds to the total score. Purchase and Onboard stages are combined to equal a total of 20 points. From there each stage from Implement to Adopt are 20 points. Once a customer progresses from Adopt the customer for that use case has reached the max health score it can earn - 100 points. Optimize and Renew do not add any more points.
Please note that there might be a slight delay with displaying the health score for new offers and use cases.
Health score is by use case so each use case can have their own health scores.
It covers only mandatory activities (required exit criteria). Health scores are calculated based on points for each activity so if it's in onboard and 5/6 activities are completed, the health score will be higher than 20 but lower than 40.
No. That use case will no longer have a health score populated going forward.
No. Health scores are only generated for those that have telemetry enabled.
Currently, partners cannot do a manual update to the lifecycle stage, only SPM/CSE’s can – those without telemetry enabled and manually driven will not update the health score.
Yes, all current use cases in LCA CS have a health score – with that said not all use cases will have a health score as there are certain criteria for a health score to be generated in the first place from our source team – i.e. telemetry must be enabled, a use case cannot have regressed in lifecycle stage, etc. Also, when we bring in a new offer/use case into LCA CS if upstream does not have it when we go live then there could be a delay in us getting that health score for that offer/use case.
Criteria for a health score to be generated into a use case:
In Lifecycle Advantage Customer Success, customers can now request the transfer of their use case(s) from their current to their preferred partner who will be driving the adoption of their Cisco Use Case(s).
An alert icon will be visible next to any account where a customer associated with that account has stalled and is no longer progressing through the lifecycle.
Stalled accounts indicate that a customer is not progressing through the digital lifecycle, and ultimately not getting the most out of their investment.
Updating customer contacts plays a big role in communicating with customers effectively and efficiently. To update an account or use case contact in LCA Customer Success, navigate to the full account view for that account and click on Contacts. Within this single cohesive view for each customer account, you can:
You can also update contacts using the Excel download method.
Missing or invalid contacts can prevent customers from successfully moving through the lifecycle. If you have a missing (digital journey) or invalid (bounced) contact in your account, you will receive an alert and recommended action. You will have the opportunity to enter a new contact or update your existing contact. Once completed the alert will disappear. You can also use the “Missing customer contact info” within Quick Filters. Applying that filter will show all accounts without a contact.
Co-branded digital journeys are sent to both partner-provided contacts as well as Cisco-provided contacts.
This differs from our process for the Renewals and Growth journeys. For those journeys, if you supply a contact, it will overwrite the Cisco-provided contact so that no message is triggered to that contact.
In LCA Customer Success, you may now only add contacts who are not part of your partner domain. This is to help increase and improve customer contactability..
There are three types of files for Contact Management within Cisco® Lifecycle Advantage Customer Success. They are each dedicated to a different purpose and allow you to manage specific type of data. Learn more here.
To access the Contact Management section in Lifecycle Advantage Customer Success, navigate to the full account view for that account and click on Contacts.
This view brings customer contact management into one location, providing you with greater visibility and enhanced feature functionality. Within this view you can:
For partner provided contacts and Cisco provided contacts, the Delivery Barrier column indicates if the email for the contact hard bounced (the email has failed to deliver for permanent reasons), or if the contact opted out (the recipient no longer wants to receive email). If neither of those reasons are listed, there is no currently known barrier to that contact receiving a notification.
If a partner provided contact has bounced or unsubscribed, we recommend providing a new contact through the “Add Contact” selection or selecting “Edit” to provide a new email address for that existing contact. This will ensure your customer is receiving relevant customer success notifications.
A use case may be missing from an account due to business rules such as total addressable market (TAM) assignment and eligibility. Some use cases may be excluded because customer intent is marked as non-active.
One reason your customer may not be showing the most recent lifecycle stage is due to the data refresh schedule. We pull new data daily (Monday through Friday). There could also be multiple sales orders that feed into a use case and LCA Customer Success pulls the most recent. Lifecycle stage and days in stage are based off the most recent sales order. An additional prerequisite for showing correct lifecycle stage is that the customer must have telemetry enabled and it can only be a single deployment.
The customers displayed in LCA Customer Success are rolled up into a higher entity that is being displayed, therefore the customer name that you made the transaction with may not be the same name displayed in LCA Customer Success data. All associated CR Party ID names can be found in the “Full Account View.”
There could be several reasons why you are unable to see customer information in LCA Customer Success. The most common reasons include:
Only accounts that have an “alert” will show recommended actions. The types of alerts that may appear are:
This can happen if the use case becomes ineligible or the intentions of that use case change to one that is inactive.
Regressions most commonly occur when there is a change to the exit criteria or the thresholds within. These changes, driven by Cisco, are often made to better understand if a customer is actively engaging and using the product. Additionally, if the exit criteria is no longer being met then regression will happen organically and will be a true representation of regression.
A solution domain is a repeatable, scalable, and templatized structure for delivery of a solution. A solution domain is aligned with sales plays, use cases, or a type of business outcome. It is mapped to the customer outcome scope that can span across multiple architectures and business entities.
A use case is a specific technology outcome that includes solutions and intellectual property that work together to deliver business outcomes across architectures.
A customer success lead is determined when a partner assigns a LCA Customer Success Manager from within the LCA Customer Success Settings section in LCA Customer Success. See also How do I add a partner CSM name? How does Cisco use my partner CSM information?
To provide account-level exclusions, simply check the box to the left of the company name. Note that including/excluding customer accounts will override previous individual use case preferences within the account.
You can also apply exclusions at the use case level. Note that including/excluding at the use case level applies only to the use cases selected.
Exclusions can also be applied by using the Excel download file option.
Applying custom segmentation tags will allow you to segment your accounts based on how you view and report your business. You will also have visibility into the Cisco CX Theater which is a read-only field to provide awareness and can be used to align more effectively with Cisco Customer Success.
Segmentation tags can be set in the LCA Customer Success Settings tab in the settings section of Lifecycle Advantage. You can set as many tags as you feel will be useful to your business. After the tags are saved you can apply them throughout the UI.
Digital journeys guide your customers through specific milestones of the lifecycle. Playbooks can help you visualize the adopt motion and bring adopt to life by giving visibility into what notifications your customers receive and why. LCA Customer Success playbooks contain specific information about exit criteria and resources available to progress a customer through each stage.
The standard stage durations are as follows: | ||
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Health scores are simplified scoring methods measuring usage and adoption. Health scores deliver insights on overall performance, product relationship, and future customer behavior. To calculate a health score, points are awarded for every use case activity or stage throughout the customer lifecycle from purchase through adopt. Most stages are worth 20 points, and purchase and onboard stages are combined to equal a total of 20 points.
The health scores displayed in LCA Customer Success are not linked to any certification
Health scores are not available for customers/usecases where telemetry is not currently enabled.
Health scores are based on the total value of points earned within each stage and are calculated as the average score between all active solution domains.
• Red: 0 – 32
If a health score falls between 0-32, the number will be shown in red and indicates the customer is in danger of not using and adopting their investment.
• Yellow: 33 – 65
If a health score falls between 33-65, the number will be shown in yellow, and indicates the customer is at risk of not using and adopting their investment.
• Green: 66 – 100
If a health score falls between 66-100, the number will be shown in green, and indicates the customer is successfully using and adopting their investment.
The digital customer journey is a path customers follow post-sale that helps guide them to adopt and realize value from their investment. The journey delivers resources to customers at certain touchpoints to help them set up, get started, successfully use, and ultimately renew their Cisco solution.
The stages of the digital customer journey are:
Onboard: In this first stage of the digital journey, customers receive resources for how to get started with their Cisco solution, including understanding the fundamental concepts of its use. Customers become familiar with best practices and review key steps to prepare for architecture transformation.
Implement: This stage helps the customer build upon their initial setup and understand basic details about their investment. Oftentimes, in the implement stage, customers will create accounts, claim devices, and begin basic configuration.
Use: In this stage, customers receive resources to support the use of their solution, including logging in, setting up the environment, and completing the final steps of the onboarding process.
Engage: This stage provides resources to advanced topics, troubleshooting, additional support, and expanded solution deployment. Often times, in the engage stage, customers are invited to attend Ask the Expert sessions, specialized trainings/webinars, or to join community discussions to help advance and better understand their purchase.
Adopt: During the adoption stage, customers are using their solution regularly and to its full potential. Customers begin to realize value from the product and see its use impact their business goals.
Optimize: In this stage, customers continue using their product and move beyond adoption to upgrading, maintaining, and continued, advanced enhancements.
You can indicate that a CSM is leading a use case within the Contact Management section in the Full Account View.
No. Lifecycle Advantage settings only affect co-branding of the digital journey emails and not the data flow into LCA Customer Success. Partners will see offer data in LCA Customer Success if they are not enabled in a given offer, but the notifications sent to their customers will be sent without their co-branding. You can enable specific digital journeys in the Campaign Settings.
No. You will need to enable the Adopt journey and/or by offer to send co-branded notifications.
A lifecycle Stage can progress or regress at any time. If telemetry is turned on then the lifecycle stage is progressed based on the stage exit criteria and telemetry data. If telemetry is not turned on lifecycle stage is progressed based on an internal Cisco SPM/CSE.
This is the lowest grain a customer can be identified and represents a unique customer/address.
The Advanced Customer Experience Specialization is an evolution of Lifecycle Advisor. It is the first in a new class of business specializations to help Cisco partners build business practices. A partner must meet certain requirements to become an advanced CX certified partner.
A use case can be comprised of one or more sales/contracts and a sale/contract can feed multiple use cases. Any one of those sales/contracts can be up for renewal at any point in time, but the contract lines related to a use case may not be up for renewal.
Telemetry connects customers, partners, and Cisco with secure insights and telemetry across specific target systems. It also combines technology and intelligence with proactive insights and guided recommendations to solve problems faster and optimize operations—from viewing the health of the infrastructure and potential issues to automating case openings when faults are detected.
Use this link to initiate the digital customer consent process.
Telemetry must be enabled in the product and the customer must opt to share the data with Cisco. Once that selection has been made, telemetry data will then display on accounts where a customer has purchased from a single partner. In cases where a customer has purchased from more than one partner, telemetry data is only displayed when the customer signs a digital consent form. Once the customer completes this form, the partner will receive an approval notification and telemetry data will be available in LCA Customer Success.
Telemetry is one of the most critical components in understanding how your customers are progressing in their deployment. Enhanced Telemetry provides a deeper level of data, insights, and understanding based on each lifecycle stage, and prescriptive direction on how to use the data to better support your customers. This bolstered telemetry data view now provides increased visibility to telemetry, recommended and required exit criteria, extra context around customer telemetry points (at the member/deployment level (ID)), understanding how data is measured, and interface improvements which provide clarity on when exit criteria has been completed. All within a standardized and simplistic format across offers.
In the Enhanced Telemetry section, you will be able to view:
Please note that each unique customer reference ID represents a unique deployment for that customer/product.
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The Customer-Defined Adoption Partner process allows your customers to decide who is their dedicated Adoption Partner that will assist in driving adoption per Cisco Use Case. This guide will assist you in leading your customers through the process of how to change their selections.
The Customer Defined Adoption Partner allows you to send your customer a request to change the partner they prefer to drive adoption for their Cisco use cases. That process can be initiated by sending this link to your customer.
If you are signed up to receive new use case Webex notifications you will be sent a notification that way.
If the customer selects you as the adoption partner you can expect to see the changes in Lifecycle Advantage within 48-72 business hours.